Food, glorious food!

Whenever I talk about caravan living with people who don't indulge in the pleasures of a life well towed, there are two things that always come up.

The first is toilets - either chemical or of the "toilet block" variety. I freely acknowledge my own dislike of toilet/shower blocks and I seldom use them, although this is more to do with my own anti-social tendencies than any worry about cleanliness. Indeed, particularly on site operated by the two big clubs the facilities are generally spotless, comfortable and rather nicer than my own bathroom at home. It's just that I have a toilet and a shower in my caravan, both of which are significantly nicer than the ones in my first house. Why on earth would I want to share?

I equally will freely acknowledge that chemical toilets are a little bit strange if you let yourself think about it too much, and there is most certainly something rather eccentric about walking across a field carrying a box full of your own poo. Although this is, on reflection, not really any stranger than walking across a field carrying a little bag full of your dog's poo...

Anyway, however proud I might of fixing the flush mechanism of our Thetford unit without any help from anybody who actually knew what they were doing, I don't really want to talk about toilets. The other thing people usually comment on is the food. "All you can cook is sausages and beans" is one of the more common views expressed.  Indeed, it's not just non-towers who have this attitude. There was a letter in the Caravan Club Magazine a year or so ago which questioned the need for an oven in a caravan, arguing that such an appliance was a waste of storage space because "surely nobody uses it".

Regular readers might well remember that I had a conversation along these lines with Mick, co-proprietor of the Peak Weavers, a fabulous restaurant and guest house in the fine Staffordshire town of Leek.  I said then that I'd be coming back to the issue of caravan food, and now seems to be as good a time as any. Because I can tell you that some people use the oven in the 'van because we hardly ever turn the damn thing off!

As a kid I went on caravan holidays with my parents and my big sister in a caravan initially designed as a terribly, terribly small three berth which my dad gutted and turned into a four berth. There wasn't room to swing a microbe, let alone a cat. But my mother - who I think will forgive me if I describe her as "not really a foodie" turned out meals made with real food that hardly ever came out of a tin. And this was in the seventies and early eighties, when the range of fresh vegetables currently available in even the smallest supermarkets was basically unheard of.

When I was eventually persuaded to become a tow jockey I was determined that tins would also be a last resort in our 'van too. Canned food is useful as a standby, but let's be honest, it's not as good as real food.  It's only advantage is its shelf life, and unless you're planning a very long trip in Outer Mongolia, that's hardly going to be an issue. For a start, gammon joints have outrageously long shelf lives - a handy trait when you're planning to be a long way from a shop for a couple of weeks. There's something very comforting about a steaming plate of roast gammon and cauliflower cheese on a cold evening. Chuck in some dauphinoise potatoes and you've got what amounts to a big hug on a plate.

It's not a difficult thing to do in a caravan, it really isn't. Most of the prep is just chopping things and putting them in an oven proof dish - with maybe a bit of par-boiling to speed things up. Then it just goes into the oven while you're doing something else.

It's not just comfort food mind you. Cut some chicken breasts into more or less bite-sized chunks and fry them until they're cooked through. Splash on a good glug of balsamic vinegar (we always used to carefully measure out a table spoon, but who wants to faff about measuring stuff on holiday?) then the juice of an orange, about half a chicken stock cube and some fresh rosemary. (Dried might well do as well, although we've never tried it.) Reduce that down until the sauce has thickened up a bit and gone slightly sticky, and you're done. We tend to serve it with fried potatoes and whatever green vegetable we've managed to get our hands on.

Or, place some fresh sage leaves onto whole chicken breasts, wrap the chicken and sage up in either bacon or Parma Ham and fry - preferably in butter. A minute or two before they're ready glug in a couple of tablespoons of white wine and let it deglaze the pan and evaporate down into a bit of a sauce.

All in all, food like that isn't really a lot more hassle than making sausages and beans - it just takes more forward planning. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere you shouldn't be too far from a shop that can furnish you with basics like chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Fresh herbs can be more of an issue, so we always take some rosemary and sage with us - remembering to cut some from the garden is generally one of Mrs Snail's final jobs before setting off, because there's no way I'd remember. Whack it in the fridge and it's usable for about a week.

You also need to be canny about your cooking kit. We travel with two saucepans (one large one small), two frying pans (one large one small), a small casserole dish and two baking trays. Given that, in spite of having three rings on the hob you can only really fit one pan at a time on there it doesn't seem sensible to carry more, and it seems to serve our needs well.

We do also carry a selection of enamelled metal bowls, of the white and blue type so favoured by the campers of yesteryear, because they're so massively useful. They're light, pretty much unbreakable and oven-proof, which means that they can be used to roast potatoes in the oven and then take them to the table without dirtying another dish. Because the last thing you want to do in a caravan is create extra washing up. It takes up space, for a start, and besides - you're on holiday, washing up needs to be kept to a minimum!

That's not hard either though. If we've used a saucepan to parboil potatoes prior to roasting, then that's the pan that's going to be used to boil any of the other vegetables we're having with the meal. If we're planning a picnic for the following day, then that same pan is going to hard boil some eggs too before it gets a proper wash. If I've* fried bacon for breakfast**then that pan is getting covered up and saved for frying something else later, because everything tastes better when fried in bacon fat.

Except probably ice-cream. I've never been able to make that work...

So. What was my point?

Ah yes.

Cooking in the caravan is not limited by the facilities. I can't think of anything that I cook in my kitchen at home that I can't cook in the caravan. Sure, there's less space in the caravan so you need to be tidier, and you need to plan ahead a little bit more. But to be honest that planning ahead is part of the anticipation for me. In the end there is no place I want to go to if I can't eat a really good meal when I get there. For me a holiday eating nothing but sausages and beans is more of a chore than a joy - and where is the fun in chores?

*Notice most of the time in this post I've said "we". Me and Mrs Snail share cooking duties most of the time. But what we've come to call the "Caravan Breakfast" of bacon, egg, fried bread, tomatoes and (occasionally) mushrooms is my domain.

**And of course I've fried bacon for breakfast. We're on holiday! If you can't at least have a bacon sarnie for breakfast, what on Earth are Holidays for?!