If you can’t stand the smoke, get away from the campfire. But if eating unidentified oil-soaked substances in the dead of night awakens some long-buried sense of adventure, read on.

The sky was already darkening as we started to cook, so we have no way of knowing if these foods would have been as appealing if we could see what we were eating. To maximize our chances of success, we moved from the most vegetable-like selections to the sweetest. To maximize ease of production, we wrapped all food items in foil, stuck the packets into the fire, and checked on them periodically to see if they were ready. The kids, ages 4 through 8, were all eager to help remove the packets from the fire with oven mitts and tongs, under the supervision of trained adults.

While I now think that pretty much anything would taste good cooked with olive oil over a campfire, we started with separate packets of mushrooms, zucchini rounds, eggplant rounds, and potato cubes, each flavored with olive oil, salt, and pepper. While using enough olive oil seems to be key, caution is advised. As Fred noted toward the end of the meal, “My shirt is completely soaked with olive oil! I should have brought another shirt!”

Photo by Judy Sobeloff

While our friends’ 8-year-old took to all the fire-cooked veggies right away (“This is too good! I like all of these! It’s like a snack bar!”), my children took longer to warm up, so to speak, both of them initially expressing shock. “Mom! I don’t like cucumbers! It’s hot and gross!” my daughter first said of the zucchini. Of the eggplant, her brother’s first reaction was, “Mom, I wasn’t supposed to have that in my bowl!” but later he said he really liked it, adding, “Mom, can you help me get stuff? Because I want more stuff to eat!”

The “french fries,” however, were immediately and universally appreciated by everyone. As we began passing around pieces of food in the dark and musing about what made everything taste so good, the adults agreed that the smoky flavor was probably as essential as the olive oil. “I don’t know if you could duplicate this by bundling things together on a barbecue,” Fred said.

Moving along, we sampled our first dessert, apple crisp, made by throwing sliced apples and granola together in foil and putting the packet into the fire. In this case, however, as we waited (and waited) for the crisp to cook, we learned another valuable lesson about campfire cooking: Start cooking the dessert when you cook the rest of the dinner—otherwise the fire will die down too much. As it was, the crisp wasn’t ready the first time my friend, Nancy, checked, and still wasn’t ready when she checked another 15 minutes later: “It’s less cooked now than it was before!” Those of us who ate it anyway still appreciated the smoky flavor of the cold apples though.

By then it was really too dark to see, despite our ever-useful headlamps, and our hosts were falling asleep, so we opted to delay the piece de resistance, Banana Split Canoes (a.k.a. vegan s’mores) for another occasion. Apart from carrying kosher (non-vegetarian) marshmallows for Passover, the Co-op carries Ricemellow Creme in place of regular marshmallows year-round. In trying to come up with a way to use this fluff over the fire, Nancy remembered having eaten “banana split” s’mores made with marshmallow fluff while she was growing up, and I remembered cooking bananas with chocolate chips over a fire in fourth grade during our unit on Africa—go figure.

Despite the opportunity to cook these variant s’mores in a friend’s solar pizza box cooker, we ended up baking them less glamorously in our own kitchen. Though I’m sure they would have been even better cooked outside in fire or pizza box alike, we liked the indoor version just fine.

For those seeking new frontiers in food preparation this summer, consider the method used by Nancy’s parents on long car trips when she was growing up: cooking on the engine block.

Veggie and Apple Crisp recipes inspired by Kelby Carr, familytravel.suite101.com

Foil-Roasted Veggies

Dice veggies of choice; douse or spray with olive oil; add salt and pepper, as desired. Wrap in foil and place closed packet onto campfire for 30-45 minutes.

Campfire Fries

Add olive oil (or spray) to foil and cut potatoes. Add salt and pepper as desired or seasoning such as Old Bay. Wrap in foil and place closed packet onto campfire for 45 minutes.

Apple Crisp

Spray canola oil or other vegetable oil on foil wrapper. Place diced apples and granola inside. Optional: Add peanut butter chips. Close and roast on fire for 20-30 minutes.

Banana Split Canoes (Vegan S’mores Alternative)

Leaving the skin on a banana, cut a slit the long way. Spread Ricemellow Creme on one surface and insert chocolate chips. (Note that Enjoy Life chocolate chips at the Co-op are dairy, gluten, and soy-free.) Wrap the banana in foil and place packet on campfire or grill (or home oven at 350 degrees) for 5-10 minutes.