From the retro illustration on the cover to the cheekily over-the-top can-do attitude of the recipes – at one point author Scott Cookman suggests hiking with an egg wrapped in a bandanna tucked under your hat so you can make hush puppies in a backcountry camp – “The Great American Camping Cookbook” ($17.95, Broadway Books) is pure joy. Forget all of those dehydrated-lentil stews with brick-heavy brown bread and fried eggs in a paper bag; this is food you actually want to eat while camping: Backpacker’s Carbonara and Modernized
Brunswick Stew and Spit-Roasted Acorn Squash, Fried Ham and Red-Eye Gravy and Hot Buttered Rum. The aptly named Cookman, a veteran feature writer for Field & Stream, includes savvy grub lists that balance basic and gourmet, as well as solid (and blessedly short) advice on the gear you need to make the grub happen.
