Foiled Fish

This is the camping version of en papillote -- the French method of cooking in a parchment packet so that the food inside steams gently as it roasts and comes out moist, tender, and lovely. Over a campfire, though, it's even better, since you get the bonus of the smoky flavor infusing everything. Just be sure to use the very freshest fish you can find (for example, cod from Cape Cod, as shown here), although you could also cook ground beef and sliced potatoes in a foil packet like this, and then you'd get to call it all kinds of delightfully retro names like Silver Dollar Pack, Poor Boy, or Hobo Dinner. We pair the fish with Foiled Squash: sliced zukes that are cooked exactly like the fish for 15 or so minutes until they're browning and meltingly tender.

Pie-Iron Pizza

Um, what's a pie iron? It lets you cook grilled cheese sandwiches and fruit pies over a campfire. You put the food inside a cast-iron compartment, then long handles let you maneuver it over a fire. Almost like a panini press on a stick.

Hobo pies make a filling and delicious amusement: two pieces of buttered bread sandwich your favorite contents, then toast over the fire in a pie iron ($16 at amazon.com) to make the original, low-tech hot pocket. You can crimp any filling you like inside the crisp, delectable pies--cheese, marshmallows and Nutella, peanut butter and jelly, even tinned pie cherries -- but this is our favorite.

One-Pot Camp Couscous

I have been making this meal for twenty years (Twenty years! Because I am a thousand years old!), and my kids refer to it as "The Camp Dinner." You could do this over the fire, but I make it over the same teetering one-burner camp stove we've been using for decades. It's so easy and satisfying and wholesomely wonderful that the truth is I sometimes make it even when we're not camping.