How to Plan Food for Pennsic

Hi, my name is Arthes and I have a problem.  Admitting it is the first step.  I have trouble going anywhere and not including the kitchen sink.  And the entire contents of the pantry.  We may need a snack bar, why not throw in the whole package?  And maybe just the mixer with the dough hook in case it’s a good time to make bread.  Does this sound familiar to you?  My first Pennsic I swear I brought as much food home as I took there in the first place.  There were a lot of things I did not think about, such as the fact that we can leave site, there are vendors there, and some people are going to feed us whether we like it or not!  I packed four or five different types of boxes of energy bars.  I planned on cooking three meals a day for the entire event.

That’s not going to happen.

Unless it’s your job to stay in camp all the time, you are never going to want to cook three meals a day at Pennsic.  You can always donate your leftover provisions to Paladin’s Pantry, a great service set up to work with local food banks to donate both fresh and non-perishable food that may be leftover from S.C.A. events.  You can also choose to make a smarter plan in the first place.  These are the lessons I needed to learn from my first Pennsic.

• You’re not going out into the wilderness. People leave Pennsic all the time to run to town for various things.  Sometimes, you actually want the excuse to get out of the rain or get into the air conditioning for a few moments.  It is unlikely that you will go for your entire vacation and not leave Cooper’s Lake.
• You’re REALLY not going out into the wilderness. If you do not have access to a vehicle, you still have options for fresh provisions while on site.  There is a decent variety of essentials at the Cooper’s Store like cheese, milk, marshmallows and eggs.  Amazon delivers to Pennsic.  Pizza can be delivered to Pennsic.  Many vendors sell homemade goods, some of which include unprepared food items such as honey or jelly.  If you have the means, the prepared food vendors on site make a wonderful selection.  It is probably not in my budget to eat out for all of war, so I need to pack some food.
• Summer is hot. No, really… I sit here and make grandiose plans at my computer in my air conditioned living room and think about how happy I’ll be when my campmates help me eat whatever delicious dish I make.  I remember working at Girl Scout camp all summer, where we didn’t have air conditioning, and cooking food over the campfire a lot.  I have always felt hotter at Pennsic.  I think there is a little less tree cover at most campsites than we had at Girl Scout camp.  The people are packed in much tighter.  I feel Pennsic actually has more infrastructure that goes up in each camp than the permanent structures at Girl Scout camp.  Even though I am used to cooking at camp, Pennsic makes it harder to be motivated.
• Other people want to feed you. Sometimes your campmates make too much.  Sometimes they only make that dish at Pennsic because they don’t have enough people to eat it at home.  We have a barony party every year where they provide food.  There are numerous places and parties around Pennsic where people WANT to share with you.  I did not think of any of these things when I planned to go the first year.

First, decide how many days you are going to the event.  Let’s say that we are going from middle Friday through Saturday of war week.  We plan on arriving in the afternoon on Friday, and we plan on leaving in the afternoon on Saturday.  This leaves us 1 meal Friday when we arrive, 2 meals Saturday when we leave, and 3 meals a day for each of the days in between.  That gives us a total of 24 meals, 8 breakfasts, 8 lunches and 8 dinners.  This scenario made that math easy!

Second, take out any meals that you think you will be doing something else.  My husband loves the Beast and Boar’s lamb night, so that removes one dinner.  Our Barony hosts a party every year which removes another.  We plan on going to two other gatherings where there will be food.  Both of them are in the evening.  That puts us down at 4 dinners instead of 8.  We are likely to eat out for at least one more meal just because it will be more convenient to eat at a vendor than to go all the way back to camp just to eat and turn around to go back up to the battlefields or the college again.  Now I am down to 8 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 4 dinners, at most.  One of my dinners just needs to be a single, larger dish to share as a potluck for my camp.

Pennsic often keeps me up late at night chatting with friends by the campfire.  Morning comes early though, and the sun forces you out of bed even if you want to sleep in.  There are so many things to do that I do not plan on cooking in the mornings.  Getting to a 9 a.m. class is hard enough without having to do dishes first.  If I were just throwing things in, there would be a box of Cliff bars from Sam’s, another couple boxes of other flavors of breakfast bars, however many pounds of dried meats I had decided to buy in the six months leading up to Pennsic, dried fruits, applesauce, pre-boiled hard boiled eggs, pre-cooked bacon and fruit cups.  The problem is that this would have been enough food for all of Pennsic by itself, not just breakfast.  I need to slow down and count rather than throwing entire packages in.

In this scenario, there are three of us going.  If we make one dozen hard boiled eggs and each eat two for breakfast, that is two breakfasts.  We will also have a fruit (dried, applesauce or whole) and probably 1 lb of pre-cooked bacon.  This leaves 6 breakfasts.  I bet there will be one day while we’re there that I actually feel like cooking.  I will bring 2 servings of Aunt Jemima’s complete pancake mix to make some pancakes and sausage on the stove or fire.  This leaves 5 breakfasts.  We are going to plan on a piece of fruit and a cereal bar for each of us for the remainder of the breakfasts.  5×3 =15, so I need 15 snack bars for breakfast.  They usually come in 6 packs.  I am going to bring a total of 18 cereal bars (we can eat the rest for snacks) and 18 fruit items for breakfast and snacks.

I want to bring things that are already made for lunch, or things I can pack and take with us when we leave our camp. I personally use lunch and dinner as fairly interchangeable meals.  Some days we end up eating what I planned for lunch as the last meal of the day.  Sometimes we will eat it in the middle of the day where it belonged.  I describe lunch as the smaller of the two meals when I am planning.  We will need 7 lunches through the week.  Peanut butter sandwiches, chicken salad or tuna salad or egg salad, lunch meat, cheese and nut snack packs, individual packages of snack crackers or chips, and some snackable veggies such as celery or carrots.  This is where it gets tricky.  I use a spreadsheet to manage how much of each item is in a package.  I do not want to plan on having peanut butter sandwiches for three days, but then put two jars of peanut butter in because I’m worried about running out.  There are about 14 servings in a 16 oz jar.

1. One jar of peanut butter is about 2 meals for us. We need 12 slices of bread, so right now we’re only at one loaf.  The bread we buy usually has about 20 slices.  We can also make peanut butter wraps instead.  Wraps will be better later in the week.
2. I want to eat cheese and nut snacks the day we are going to spend at the archery range so we do not have to make that trip twice in one day, so that is 3 lunches down. I am only going to build 3 cheese and nut packs.  I am going to take some apples or other hand fruit with us.
3. I will definitely have a salad like chicken salad or egg salad prepared for the day I just can’t cook but a sandwich just won’t cut it. If I’m going to bother making the salad at all, I may as well make enough for two meals.  I will have to eat that lunch early in the week to ensure it does not go bad.  I will pack a box of crackers to eat with whichever salad I choose.
4. Lunch meat is the easiest to pack and take with us, and it is one of my husband’s favorites. Smoked meats will stay good for a long time even if they get a little warm in the cooler. We will bring 1.75 lbs of turkey.  That is 28 oz, with 4 oz portions it will make 9 sandwiches.  We will take 1 lb of cheddar cheese.  That is 22 slices if I purchase Sargento’s.  We will take .5lbs of hard salami and .5lbs of pepperoni.  The hard cheese will last better in the cooler.  I can also make mountain pies when I have salami, pepperoni and cheese leftover.  That is a total of 7 lunches so far.  We would eat veggie straws with them.
5. Cold chicken wraps are another easy and easy to carry meal. Since I can use bagged or canned chicken, it is easy to save for later in the week.  Chicken, pre-cooked bacon and some ranch dressing make a great wrap!  We will probably want some carrots and chips as well.

I am going to take all of these ingredients and put the number of servings I need for the week into a spreadsheet.  I will then add how many servings are in a package.  I want to have enough food to feed 6 extra meals over the course of the entire week, and snacks.  The extra meals are for those who may have forgotten something, days we do a lot and are particularly hungry or for those who may not have planned properly.  The last step is dinner.  Dinner can be more adventurous, which is a plus and a minus.  It makes me excited about food!  It also means that there is a little more work.  Thankfully, very few of the days we are there actually make me prepare for three full meals.

1. My potluck dinner is going to be a healthier, gluten free version of my favorite campfire stew recipe. It is one of my absolute favorite camp recipes and it’s always too much for just my family to eat.
2. Tacos make awesome camp food. I can make beef or chicken tacos.  With chicken tacos, I can use canned chicken and taco seasoning on the camp stove.  I can heat up some Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice, and then roll it into a soft taco shell with some cheese, salsa and hopefully some fresh lettuce.
3. One pot lasagna has always been a favorite camp food as well. It’s hearty and makes very little mess!  I’ll definitely make this for one dinner.
4. My last dinner will be foil packets. I like choosing them because if it’s rainy, I can just cook the ingredients on the camp stove like I would at home.  Potatoes keep well for the entire week, I’m going to have baby carrots anyhow, and I can freeze steak chunks in vacuum sealed bags with marinade before we go to extend their life.

So now the hardest part is choosing exactly how much of each item to pack.  This is where that spreadsheet helps me stay on track.   Without it, I would just end up wandering around my house and the grocery store saying “oh that sounds good!” or “I might want something like that.”  I hope that this little list helps all of you others who end up carrying around too much stuff save your backs this summer!