Two weeks ago, I learned that spaghetti for 25 people isn’t a great camping meal.
Each spring, Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences funds a spring break field trip for its students. The trip is organized by two competent undergrads who, this year, planned for us to hop across Utah’s rocky red landscape. We spent the afternoons sun-soaked and dusty and the evenings layered in fleece. Though I didn’t plan the trip, I did help coordinate the eating portion of our outing.
Any culinary vision that we had was constrained by our cooking supplies — two camp stoves, a few different pots, one heroic cast iron pan — and a moderate list of dietary restrictions. Worried about flavor, I brought along a bag of monosodium glutamate, or, MSG, a naturally occurring savory flavor compound found in parmesan cheese and salty snacks like Doritos.
Our days in the southwest followed a rhythm of breakfast, driving to look at rocks, lunch, hiking to look at more rocks, then dinner. Every day, we woke up at 6:00 a.m. for a modest selection of cereals, bagels, oatmeal and fruit, along with a pot of boiling water for tea or instant coffee. Lunch was sandwiches on repeat, eaten off the bed of a truck or at the overlook of a hike.
If that sounds uninspired, we tried to make more of a thing out of dinner. On our first night in Zion National Park, our spirits saturated with anticipation, we threw together a tofu stir-fry with mushrooms, bok choy and carrots. The seasoning was a soy sauce-ginger-sesame oil-honey-MSG situation. Not show-stopping, but it did add intrigue to five pounds of otherwise unseasoned tofu. In all honesty, scaling up the stir-fry wasn’t entirely successful: The vegetables released too much liquid and we didn’t make quite enough food. To atone for this, we supplied a mountain of chopped peanuts and two jars of chili crisp for people to garnish liberally.
These minor flops continued into the second day. A pot of pasta sauce scorched slightly on the bottom after being left unattended, leant a peculiar unplaceable flavor to dinner. Parmesan cheese was offered in an attempt to disguise the error. Still, surrounded by turrets of sediment and a navy-black sky, no one seemed to mind too much.
By day three, we found our groove. In Kodachrome Basin State Park, a landscape collaged with dark greens and bright oranges, we made ramen. Three culinarily well-endowed underclassmen led the charge, preparing a miso broth with a supporting cast of colorful vegetables and a tangle of noodles. The stars were especially great that night, and, bellies full, we splayed out on the smooth rocks to watch them together.
Given some dietary constraints on onions and garlic, I was worried about how to add complexity of flavor to the chili we made on our fifth evening, in Canyonlands National Park. Earlier in the day, with about 30 minutes of signal on the highway, I had found some advice on the internet. I decided maybe the answer was a bit of instant coffee, a few squares of dark chocolate and MSG. While the chili simmered, we turned our attention to the glut of bread, cheese and butter in our possession to make grilled cheeses. There was something synesthetic about grilling cheese in the desert: The way the aroma of toasting bread, browning butter and caramelized cheddar twisted into the orange sediments around us. When dinner was finally ready, people served themselves, found a rock to perch on and tucked in.
Our final day of camp cooking was a culinary puzzle. Feeding 25 people without food waste is tricky, and at this point certain ingredients were in excess: zucchini, bread, parmesan cheese and canola oil. We began by crumbling slices of sourdough into bread crumbs before adding parmesan and spices. We combined a bit of vegan mayonnaise and a splash of oat milk to create a batter. Then, we breaded and shallow fried our zucchini wedges. Meanwhile, the trip’s resident saucier, an enthusiastic geophysics sophomore, had mixed together a dipping sauce of lime, paprika, vegan mayonnaise and some pickle brine for acidity.
On our last night in Utah, we stayed in an AirBnB outside of Salt Lake City. Dinner was uncomplicated and apt: Costco pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’m sure there was MSG in there somewhere, but I wasn’t the one who had to add it. That night there was no fuss over cramped camping stoves and no washing dishes in the dark. People were showered and there was an apple pie ready to be eaten. Still, it didn’t compare to a week of eating together — grimy tired bodies and all — in the open Utah desert.
Service: laid-back, casual
Sound level: conversational, windy
Recommended dishes: Parmesan-crusted fried zucchini, miso ramen
Hours: 6-7:30 a.m., 12-1:00 p.m., 7-8:30 p.m.
★★★/5.
