A Tasty Camping Food for All Seasons

When I was engaged in Survey works for new road construction in North-Eastern India, couple of my fellow engineers and myself found it difficult to carry packed lunch with us. Lunch could not be prepared at that early hour as we used to start from our camp at 6:00 clock. It was very difficult to send lunch at noon also as we would be inside thing jungle about 6 to 7 kilometers from our camp. So we used to carry uncooked raw items and a pressure cooker with us and made our camping food in the jungle everyday. It took just half an hour to cook the food. It was simple and tasted good.

Here is the version of food we used to prepare during our camping days.

This recipe will serve four people

• One cup of Rice
• Lentils, half the quantity of rice. you can mix few varieties for more taste.
• Two medium sized onions
• Two tomatoes
• One large sized potato
• Green chilies to your taste
• Green vegetables. you can add any vegetables like green beans, carrot, radish and cabbage. Here I have used a small portion of cabbage.
• Optional... a small piece of ginger and few garlic pods
• A tablespoon of cooking oil
• Optional... A tablespoon of masala powder
• Salt to taste
• Water, three times that of rice

You can mix rice and lentils together. wash them in clean water and store separately

• Finely slice the tomatoes
• Chop onions
• Cut potato in to long pieces as used in french fries
• Split green chilies in two
• Finely chop Ginger and garlic
• Chop cabbage or any other vegetable to choose to add

• Place pressure cooker over medium heat and add cooking oil
• Add chopped onions to the oil
• Add split green chilies
• And chopped ginger and garlic
• Stir till above ingredients are properly cooked in oil.

• Add potato pieces and cabbage to the cooker and stir fry for a minute.
• Add chopped tomatoes
• Add rice and lentil mix to the cooker
• Add masala powder. This is optional, you can do without masala also.

Mix all ingredients together and cook for about two to three minutes

• Now add measured quantity of water to the mix
• Add salt to taste
• Close the pressure cooker lid and cook for about five to six minutes or three times pressure release from the cooker
• remove from heat and keep separately to cool

Once the pressure in the cooker drops down, you can open the lid. Your Camping food is ready.

Serve hot...