How Do You Do Your Dishes?

[deerfly]

am i the only one that reads the posts before commenting?

"As fer cleaning I rinse everything in the water and use a small piece of soft scrub if need be to get the crusty stuff. If I happen to have a little camp soap I'll use that, but generally just water and some sand from the shoreline and rinse will do it...."

 

[alsg]

What do the sands scrubbers do with the food/grease contaminated sand?

 

[deerfly]

What do the sands scrubbers do with the food/grease contaminated sand?

That's why I carry titanium plates and utensils, heat them up in the fire for a few minutes. Not glowing red, but hot enough to kill anything I need to be concerned with. Discolors them a bit but otherwise no worse for wear. You'll never get sterile out in the wild, but a rinse and heat treatment has worked for me so far.

 

[Rob H]

Another one who eats mainly 1 pot meals. Boil water. add dehydrated dinner and eat straight from the pot. When done wipe spoon and pot with a paper towel and rinse. The paper towel and grey water normally gets added to the fire but if there is something stuck to the pot, it gets a scrub with whatever is along shore and wiped with a second paper towel. A rinse and everything is good to go. The coffee cup/bailer gets an evening rinse and goes straight to the dishwasher when I get home
Now when Bev is with me meals take on a little more but the understanding is if there is more than one pot or gasp, plates then she is doing the dishes. Again everything wiped with paper towels and water heated in the bigger pot and things washed in it. I do tend to do the final rinse and on the odd occasion there is any food stuff left over the local bait fish or the local Seagull takes care of things rather quickly.
there may be better ways but this works for me.

 

[Guest]

I too just switched to metal cup, bowl and spoon so I can heat and dry them over the fire or stove. it saves boiling more water to scald with and dries them too.

 

[Iskweo]

I like to fish and hunt as well so that is part of the diet where possible. Other than that frozen or fresh with dehydrated backup meals in the "Aww crap" reserve. My process is quite simple...I cook like normal. It is much closer regulated though for no leftovers. Once we have our plates filled, I take the dirty pot ( I only have one ) and put it back on the stove on simmer so that it gives me hot water to use for cleaning. This is right after we finish. I use Coghlans camp soap and a foam scrubby. Hot water is the key here.

I take the pot of water and the dishes and go sit by the water and clean them up,rinse them in the lake/river. No grey water or particles left in the campsite to attract critters. No residue on the dishes to attract critters. There is not a pile of food going into the water remember...especially not off my plate...lol.

You have to be civilised about this camping thing.

 

[Odyssey]

I suppose the wild card in all of this is just how dirty do our dishes get? In our family glamping days we tried to employ LNT principles with some success, some failure. It was a learning curve we thought important to undertake. Now for various reasons we lean more towards minimalism with creature comforts. As far as food and its prep goes we (re)package most of our meals in rinseable, reusable, sealable pouches, and meals are made up into proportional sizes. After a week there's very little trash to burn and pack out. Usually just a collection of Ziplock baggies. Our lives are simpler this way. Part of this reasoning for me is satisfying my conscience, but also reducing any camp chores. Anyway you put it, for us it involves learning to leave no trace as much as possible. Where once we had to deal with the detritus of family meals, now I'm happy to see nary a sign there ever was a meal. Ashes in a firepit is the most I'd like to leave behind.
I don't hold our ways up as an example for anyone to follow. I've just been trying over the years to adapt our home cooking to camp cooking, and reducing any camp chores wherever possible. In the old days I hated to see our burnt tea bags in the firepit, porridge crumbs in the lake. Those days are gone. My wife used to set up a laundry line at the edge of camp, hanging the kitchen cotton tea towels there after every round of dishes duty. One towel for each child to use. Nowadays there's one solitary drying cloth hanging up looking rather forlorn and lonely. Our camp chores are fewer and easier these days, the kitchen commotion having died down and swept away with time. Doing dishes is so much simpler now, but so much quieter too. I don't miss the work but I do miss the family.

 

[Guest]

Somewhat relatedly, just say no to hot leftovers. Eat it all or don't cook it. What is it about the outdoors that causes people to want to produce a cubic yard of pasta?

That is worth repeating and is one reason I rehydrate and eat only half a Mt. House meal at a time. A full one is more of a two-person meal, more than I want even with the ones I really like, so I rehydrate half with some no-cook side dish and eat the rest the next night.

On family trips we have years of experience about how much grub we will consume at any given meal, and there are no leftovers. Breakfast and lunch are no waste make-your-own and at dinner someone can be counted on to shovel in the last few mouthfuls.

Group trip dinners, especially with folks taking turns cooking, is another story. Folks are more likely to misjudge the quantity needed, or make extra to ensure no one goes hungry, or just use all the noodles at once when less would be better. Or folks don’t want to over-serve and look greedy, and by the time it is apparent that there are leftovers for the taking no one is hungry enough for the cold congealed pasta.

I don’t know how that is group-meal preventable, especially with less experienced cooks, and what to do with a pile of leftover pasta becomes an issue beyond grey water disposal.

 

[Guest]

I believe it's illegal to put soapy water into a river or lake in the ADKs. It must be dumped uphill far away from the water. That's one of the reasons I don't use soap.

 

[Zac]

Someone on this site or another, responded to a similar question earlier this year with (paraphrasing here)


"You people wash dishes while camping?"


One more vote here for the the eat-it-clean then wipe it with PT/TP method. I really like my Morsel sporks for getting every last scrap https://morselspork.com/ The XL is specifically made for commercial freeze dried meals.

I will burn the paper in a large fire. I think fire size is important as it ensures proper, complete incineration. This isn't as important with lone plys of TP as it is with other combustible trash. Often I'll make a smaller fire for cooking and when I do I'll save the combustible trash for another day with a larger fire. Sometimes that next large fire is at home.

When solo I'll skip the paper towels most of the time. I cook, the canine does the dishes. I'll do the dishes when he cooks.

When the jetboil or cast iron gets dirty I will boil it clean with a small amount of water (after EIC and wiping with paper) I will dump a small amount of grey water into a large fire, otherwise it gets the exact same treatment as my dinner will the next morning be that a cat hole, wag bag, or latrine. I do not like to put anything into the water whether it's a lake, ocean, or river and regardless of elevation.

I travel with one group most summers that washes dishes far from the water's edge and dumps the grey water only after filtering it with the morning's coffee filter. The coffee filter will then be packed out with similar refuse. Food scraps are inevitable with a larger group.

I do believe it ironic how most of the trash we painstakingly pack out ends inevitably ends up in a landfill which was once a piece of pristine wilderness itself. Think about that next time you are re-packaging into ziploc bags. Heck, think about it next time you're carrying the trash to the curb. Parchment paper, freezer paper, coffee filters and reusable containers perform many of the tasks that I once used plastic bags for. It sure makes pancakes more complicated though...

I think it's easy to be lax on these rules when you're traveling in truly remote places but we must remember that there are over 6,000,000,000 of us on this planet these days. Imagine if just 10 of them showed up tomorrow and did the same thing you just did.

 

[alsg]

That morsel spork looks neat!

 

[goonstroke]

...
On family trips we have years of experience about how much grub we will consume at any given meal, and there are no leftovers. Breakfast and lunch are no waste make-your-own and at dinner someone can be counted on to shovel in the last few mouthfuls.

Group trip dinners, especially with folks taking turns cooking, is another story. Folks are more likely to misjudge the quantity needed, or make extra to ensure no one goes hungry, or just use all the noodles at once when less would be better. Or folks don’t want to over-serve and look greedy, and by the time it is apparent that there are leftovers for the taking no one is hungry enough for the cold congealed pasta.

I don’t know how that is group-meal preventable, especially with less experienced cooks, and what to do with a pile of leftover pasta becomes an issue beyond grey water disposal.

Yeah, the heterogeneous group trips are tough. Traditional hospitality requires that you be safely overcatered, even though in the end some folks will be not hungry or not excited about the dish or doing keto this week or worse, and you might have twice what you need. If possible, I try to round out a meal with some dry carbs that won't cause problems if not eaten (like garlic bread with that pasta, or heck, cookies with that pasta), but that tends to be at odds with both simplicity and packing light. The price we pay for a quorum around the campfire.

 

[Odyssey]

Are we the only people left in this world who knows what a potluck is anymore? Our family finds this method so much easier than one couple/household catering to the entire crowd. The past few years it's been "one hot one cold", meaning each attending couple bring just that, one hot dish and one cold dish. Amazingly we've yet to see any duplication occur at our gatherings at Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Many family members now have their very own "signature dishes" that they alone make every time; a d-i-l brings her cheesy bake, a son his scalloped potatoes, a brother his BBQed salmon, a s-i-l her crunchy Asian noodle salad (every friggin time blech) etc. Long story short, I can't see why a group trip potluck couldn't work with each participant responsible for their "signature dishes" from start to finish, including any leftovers (storing them to take home). Can't you imagine it? Sitting around the campfire with all the camp kitchen duties having been divided and conquered, passing round the coffee pot (tipping the leftover crunchy Asian noodle salad into the fire). Any cheesy bake left?

 

[Guest]

We used to tell the scouts " you bowl needs to look like the dog licked it out". A shallow bowl helps with this. Several of my camping friends have copied this system and like it.

 

[Canotrouge]

We like real food, we like to cook, we like fires... We cook on fire 99 percent of the time, we cary a good size wanigan as a kitchen box that work great fro our family of 3 and up to six if people are coming along. we cary full size everything from the frying pans to large SS pots to boil water, plates and bowls etc etc etc. We also have in there 2 round wash basins, why 2? cause one is used to mixed stuff, from large group salads, to bread, pizza dough, bannik etc etc etc.. And the other s used for dishes, the full is usually the one that do the cooking ain't doing the dishes!!

We rarely do portages and if we do they are really short and we are never in a hurry, so having to carry heavier stuff is not an issue cause we have time to do multiple carry!

Campsuds is our favourite soap for dishes, laundry and bath!!!

We cary a something really similar to this http://www.leevalley.com/en/Garden/page.aspx?p=75962&cat=2,75357,75406&ap=1 and that thing work fantastic, doesn't get all gross, is tough as nails and dry quickly!

 

[Cptsandt]

The Boy Scout method. Hot soap wash, Hot Rinse, cold sanitation with a capful of bleach using Sea to Summit foldable buckets. It always works! Some of you are asking to get sick on here lol.

 

[Grandpa Paddler]

We used to tell the scouts " you bowl needs to look like the dog licked it out". A shallow bowl helps with this. Several of my camping friends have copied this system and like it.

Was Joel your scoutmaster>

 

[Cptsandt]

The scouts call it “ sumping the pot” because they have to eat the rest of the food and get it cleaned out in it before washing it

 

[lowangle al]

Like others I try to keep dish washing to a minimum. I bring paper plates to minimize it even more. They are also good to use as cutting board or for an extra dish for food prep or a place to set utensils on while cooking. They are good to fan the fire and are easily burned.

For disposing of grey water I pour mine in the fire pit at the edge of the coals.

 

[mwaalen]

For our trips (just 2 people) we spend very little time doing, or concerning ourselves, with dishes and seldom use any soap however do bring a couple squirts of camp soap just in case one of the meals has more oil than expected as cooking oil seems to be the only dishwashing concern.

Dishes (from either breakfast oatmeal or supper parboiled eastern indian dishes) are quickly swabbed out with lake water and any gray water is broadcast into the brush as someone mentioned earlier. Then everything is swabbed with a sponge to dry and pick up any remaining oil...Done & done with no visible trace of our presence. I can't ever remember having extra food to deal with. Definitely frustrating to find noodles peering back at you from the lake bottom when having your evening bath. My brother un-lovingly refers to people that would do such a thing as "Macaroni Eaters". Lunches are often eaten in the boat and consist of Wasa crackers with either peanut butter or cheese. If my pocket knife is used, whoever "cuts the cheese" licks it clean, as a punishment for being disgusting, and it goes back in my pocket.

We check with the rangers each time we go into Quetico as to bear activity and each time get the same answer that there is none. However some unfortunate individual just this past week got killed by a black bear north of Rainy Lake. Super unfortunate. Mice are more of a problem so each night I cover the food pack with a garbage bag and tuck it underneath to minimize odor and act as a deterrent. Have no idea if this works but keeps the rain out as well.

We never have camp fires so never burn anything. All trash is packed out in zip-locks. This year's trip (11 days) we filled 2 quart-sized bags with tea bags, meal bags, and of course...chocolate bar wrappers.

MY LAST YEAR'S MISTAKE: Brought Crisco/lard for frying fish. OMG the mess! Hard water coupled with semi-worthless camp suds makes it impossible to clean. Bowls and mess kit still have residue. I will never fry fish again in the woods but instead chunk it up and add it to parboiled meals which was just as satisfying. Much easier and much less fuel needed. Also can forego the fish batter/breading which saves a few ounces.

CAMP KITCHEN:
Planned to put together a post within the "Cooking" section of this forum however will piggy-back on this string. Photos show the kitchen I use which is based off a concept my brother has used for a number of years. Credit goes to him. The milk crate and its contents weigh a total of ~10 lbs with 2 bottles of fuel & room to shove in flatbread, carrots, cheese, etc. that we would rather not have squashed. The entire contraption slides nicely into a CCS food pack with room left over for 10+ days of meals (35-40 lbs) worth.

In getting back to the initial question...The sponge is our weapon of choice.