Elevated Mac and Cheese from Roberta H.

Here is my food story. Roberta

We’re a family of campers and have enjoyed a lot of campfire cooking, but one outstanding meal looms large in our memories. We were enjoying (at times) a poorly equipped backpack trip in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Southern Colorado. As I recall, it was about 20 years ago, we had three of our kids with us, the youngest about 7.
Another family, who had introduced us to car camping in that area, had 1 teenager with them.

The trek of 4 miles up to Comanche Lake was mostly very trying. It involved ankle-twisting rocks, a soggy marsh, trails worn to narrow trenches by horse feet, endless switchbacks which began to seem like an evil trick getting us nowhere, a field of shed sized boulders, and, incidentally, an altitude gain of 2,000 feet.

And we thought this was worth doing, why? Probably you have to be there to understand the draw of high mountain lakes, sub-Alpine tundra, and 40-mile vistas. Those of us helping the younger members of our group with their little packs took over 6 hours to get to the lake. Our legs and feet were like dead stumps. Our shoulders were numb. We couldn’t breathe in enough air, but we were there!

And it started to rain. Which means tents go up fast to get sleeping bags under cover… not much time to scout out nice level tent sites with a minimum of rocks. Into the tents to snack on whatever meal supplies we ended up with in our packs. Rain turned to sleet and then to hail. It rained for two hours. Finally with a little light left in the sky we came out of our tents to heat up some food.

At that time our only traveling camp stove was one little burner. We needed a fire to warm us up and to cook for 8 people. Finding wood was not easy… getting it to burn at that altitude was very difficult.
Took about an hour to get some cooking heat. Then, boiling water for macaroni? At that altitude it boils but it isn’t really hot. Took almost another hour. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Two shades softer than crunchy we declared it cooked and dumped in two cans of Hormel canned ham.

We served it up and everyone declared it the best meal they had ever eaten. Probably more superlatives than were ever heard at a smoldering, fizzling campfire! Back in Missouri in the not too distant future, the kids asked for that wonderful meal again. Alas, it wasn’t at all what we remembered. Don’t know what had happened to it, but the quality was definitely off.