Fire, Marshmallow and Foil Dinners

Friday at Aspen Grove Campground


It was time to make a fire.  We had a very nice fire pit!  Got to love it.

Everything thing in the campground was wet. It rained all week until we arrived and then we had one day of no rain, that was Friday. Saturday was rainy more on than off. So we only made a fire on Friday- mainly so we could do marshmallows and foil dinners. It was a good decision to make the fire dependent stuff on the day that was not rainy!!

So to make the fire, I raided our neighbors fire pit. They had just left and I found 4 half burned logs that were cold and dry. They also left the two unburned kindling in the photo. And a pile of smaller twigs that were soaked. So I took the half burned logs and the 2 pieces of large kindling back to our fire pit.

Our fire pit had a very wet base. So I took some cardboard and put it on the bottom. Then I really cheated and put two tea candles on the cardboard. I built a log cabin arrangement of twigs up around the candles and put a line of twigs making a roof. Then I put some dryer lint on the twigs and some wadded up paper and then put some larger twigs in a TeePee method over that and the half burned logs and 2 larger kindling.

I then lit the candles and poof! the fire started and it never stopped! I was pretty proud of myself. I am a good fire builder, and I wanted to do it differently this time. It was fun and I had no problem with the wet base or wood. I had to dry up a lot of wood before it would burn.

Here I have added a bundle of firewood to burn down for coals to cook our dinner.

My feet are up and I am just enjoying the beautiful fire, sounds and just right warmth of the air. I wanted to shut my eyes and take a nice nap, but NO WAY! the kids came back to camp to use the fire.

They got the fixings for marshmallows - smores, that is. They wanted to roast them right away- even though the fire was blazing and there were no coals yet, they loaded up the roasting forks and went for it. Angel says that she prefers the flame to roast her marshmallows with because she didn't want to wait for the coals to do the better job. So, she mainly set hers on fire, blew them out and then ate them. Pilot was a bit more careful, he didn't want his to burn, he has a bit more patience that her.



This is Pilots first try at roasting, he decided that even though the log was a wonderful seat he would have to get closer to get his marshmallows into the heat of the fire.

I asked Pilot to bring two chairs over to the fire pit, but he only brought one. So he and Angel traded off using it. They really did a good job of cooperating. I was proud of them.

Pilot ate his marshmallows between graham crackers but when he did use chocolate, he used the original Hershey chocolate bar.



Here is Angel showing off her burnt marshmallow. One is bad, one is pretty good, at least in the lighting of this photo.

She put them between graham crackers with magic shell ice cream topping squirted on the marshmallow. She thought they tasted great!!

By the way, the marshmallow roasting was done before dinner! Isn't camping fun? I kind of let the kids do what they want when they want. They are bigger now, and understand what they are doing.

I finally decided to add some charcoal to the fire and after about an hour, the fire was nearly ready to cook. I made the foil dinners with help from the kids. I brought up premixed meatloaf in a large zip lock bag and made meat patties from that. Then we put sliced onions, potatoes and baby carrots in the packet. A sprinkle of onion soup mix, salt, pepper and a dash of water were added. Then we wrapped the meal. I used two layers of foil. The first layer was of non-stick and the second was heavy foil. They cooked in the fire for about an hour, 15 minutes too long is my guess. Still they tasted great.

Hubby had not come down from the mountain, so I served the kids first. They won the luck of the draw and got the unburned ones. Lucky kids! I then opened the last two and combined the good parts for Hubby and tasted from his. I had also made one baked potato that was only 1/4 burned and a bundle of fresh beans and baby carrots that turned out perfect.


They cooked and we ended up with two perfectly cooked meals and two generously burnt ones. But all was well as I was able to salvage a good amount of food from the two burnt ones to serve to Hubby.

I didn't get photos of the finished product. Forgot somehow. I sure wish I had because I would have enjoyed remembering how wonder it was.