Detailed or not
The menu is simply a list of dishes that will be served for one or more meals. It doesn't have to be detailed. A simple list of meals will do for most campers as long as your family receives a balanced diet. As I explain below, I often move meals around and cook difference recipes with the ingredients on hand.
The menu can take any form. It can be etched in your brain's memory bank or scribed in a notebook. On overnight camping trips, I often pen the menu onto my brain as I browse the supermarket's isles. My menu plan unfolds as I stroll from the meat counter to the produce section and the isles in between.
Longer jaunts require detailed planning. I'll ask my wife and kids for their preferences and build a menu of family favorites. In order to help me develop a shopping list, I record the menu in a notebook as ideas come to me. (I've used 200-page Mead composition notebooks to record my camp cooking exploits for 15 years.)
You don't have to list every menu item by name. The accomplished camp cook can simply list one or more ingredients for each meal (generally the meat, starch and vegetable). For example:
Chicken breast
Rice
Broccoli
This method works well for camp cooks who like to pack a wide variety of ingredients and make menu decisions just before each meal. The cook could pack, for example, bottled barbecue or teriyaki sauces to flavor the chicken breasts. Or, the cook could bring the ingredients for a dish like Saffron Chicken Pilaf with Raisins and Pine Nuts.
This method gives you the most flexibility. But it does take some experience. (See my comments on menu evolution below.)
The less experienced camp cook may want to plan the menu in greater detail. For example:
Grilled chicken breast with lemon-caper sauce
Rice pilaf
Buttered broccoli
This way the camp cook ensures that each ingredient for each dish is packed in the larder. There's no second-guessing. Because the cook wrote down each ingredient after reading each recipe, he's confident that chicken stock, fresh lemons and bottled capers for the chicken breast recipe are packed.
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