Perhaps you have spent too many evenings at Dagorhir events with an overcooked bowl of prepackaged soup from the Orient, gulping it down just to ignore the lack of flavor. The truth is that a good meal from a campfire can be rather simple if you realize enjoyable food is made of 75% knowing what do to and 25% actually doing it. And while I had intended to walk you through some different recipes, I will instead give tips from all stages of cooking, and your newly acquired knowledge should inspire your own ideas for campfire meals.
Prep
Marinades
Prepare your marinade and make sure the meat, veggies, etc. are soaked for at least a few hours, maybe even a day. If you're pressed for space, you can pour it into a Ziploc baggie, and put that in another Ziploc bag, aligning the openings at opposite ends. Triple bagging it would be even safer. Marinades are a simple way to add fantastic flavor.
Chopping/Cutting
If your recipe requires toppings or chopped ingredients, know beforehand what stays fresh after being chopped. Vegetables tend to stay fresher if they are cut just before added, but realize that that time spent chopping may mean your nice warm meal is cooling and congealing. You should also plan out how much room to have around the campfire to keep your ingredients in order.
Know your knives. Slightly serrated blades will cut the smooth skin of tomatoes easily, while cucumbers or dried herbs can get by with an unserrated edge just fine.
Utensils and Equipment
Will you need a ladel or a slotted spoon? Can you get by with cutting everything on a clean, flat rock? What if you need to wash your hands before handling another part of the meal? Take five minutes to think and check that you have everything nearby that is necessary to keep the fire going and cook.
Cooking
Fire
Tinder (sticks around the thickness of your wrist) and kindling (anything that can catch from one lit match) will give you lots of flames, but little heat. You can use this for hot dogs, shish-ka-bobs, and marshmallows. These fires are sometimes hard to ventilate, as the tendency is just to pile on sticks to keep up the height. Make sure you do not smother it.
Burning logs will give you coals and more heat. You can bake poatoes, biscuits, cobbler, or get a nice even coating on your marshmallows with these fires. You'll need to start the fire off with smaller stuff, and you'll get your coals once the logs catch and the thinner fuel burns off.
Safety
NEVER start a fire without a bucket of water nearby, two just to be safe. You never know when a random zombie will stumble through your campsite while you're not looking and fall asleep in your firepit. Tie back your hair, roll up loose clothing, change out of open-toed shoes, and use fire gloves whenever possible. Clear the area of dried grass, open alcohol or lamp fuel, and young disobedient humans.
Using your environment
If you don't have a skewer, find a green twig (don't tear one off a tree) and whittle it down so no bark is showing. Use rocks and thick logs to help suspend a grill over the flames, or dig the hole deeper and set the grill at ground level. Maybe you can use that flat rock for a cutting surface or a warming plate.
Warm Food
Most campers think that eating follows cooking directly. If you're cooking in portions, keep a deep pot with a lid nearby where you can cover the food and trap the heat until you're ready to eat.
Tastier Meat
Meat keeps in more flavor the fewer times it is flipped/turned. Once is ideal. This can be helped by tilting up one edge of the meat to check the cooking side instead of flipping it without consideration.
Herbs & Spices
Use oregano with vegetables, tarragon with fish, paprika with potatoes, rosemary with chicken. Herbs and spices take up less room, less weight, and still bring flavor to a dish.
Experiment
Don't try cooking something you want to try at Rag over your Kenmore at home. Use whatever you'll be using at the campsite to cook-from space to utensils to divine sacrifice-and see how feasible your favorite recipes are.
Clean-up
Night Critters
No matter how you bag it, raccoons and their buddies can smell garbage miles away. Bag up all food smelling stuff and take it to a dumpster. If no such thing, bag it again and keep it in your car. I would rather leave windows open to air out my car rather than spend an hour picking up strewn litter.
Less Effort
If you hate scrubbing the black off the bottom of camp pans, coat the bottom with dish soap before you put it over the fire. The flames won't burn the pot, but the soap instead, which is much easier to scour.
Cover a grill in aluminum foil before cooking on it, which is easily thrown away after a meal. You'll spend less time afterwards scraping off chunks of burnt on food between the bars.
Before you dig in, put water on to heat. It will boil as you enjoy your meal, and will hopefully be ready for wash water when the last bite disappears.
Use one of your cooking pots as the washbasin. While you're busy cleaning utensils and dishes, the biggest one will be soaking, maybe even done by the time you finish cleaning everything else.
Skewers don't necessarily need scrubbing to remove residue and marshmallow traces. Stick them in the fire until the food bits burn off.
Wooden Surfaces
Over time, the finish will wear off on your woodenware, and you will be able to see the grain show through. Bits of food can get trapped there, spoil, and affect anything eaten off that surface. Be sure to treat your wood in the recommended intervals, and inspect the surface before using.
Ziploc Bag Meals
A simple breakfast is scrambling an egg, ham, shredded cheese, and other toppings into a Ziploc bag and placing in boiling water for 10 minutes. Eat right from the bag, and throw away when done. Do some digging and you can find a wide range of meals prepared this way.
And finally, links to some simple recipes that can fit any campsite and Dagorhirrim budget:
Shish-ka-bobs http://www.recipezaar.com/182976
Campfire potatoes http://www.recipezaar.com/30694
Pigs in a blanket http://www.koa.com/recipes/files/0306.htm
Streamtail's Specialty
from Sirilay
1 roll of biscuits Toppings: cinnamon, sugar, cocoa powder, etc.
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
Melt butter in a pan. Roll biscuits into balls and brown them as you would marshmallows. While still warm, roll lightly in butter and sprinkle with chosen toppings.
Option 1: Use honey instead of butter.
Option 2: Instead of sprinkling on toppings, separate into bowls and roll cooked biscuits in bowls to coat them.