After a day of hiking, canoeing and nature hunts, my family can really work up a hearty appetite at dinner time.  “Mom, I’m so hungry I could eat the bark off a tree,” exclaims my youngest son while the oldest laments, “Bark, that reminds me of hotdogs. Yuck, I hope we’re NOT having hotdogs.” Of course, my middle son, the always-diplomatic mother’s helper, lets me know he’ll be grateful to gobble up anything I care to prepare and he’ll do the dishes, too. Thank goodness during my preparations for this particular camping trip, I created a new recipe that didn’t involve hotdogs, didn’t dirty a lot of dishes, and could be prepped at home so that, come meal time, the only thing left to be done was toss it right on the grill or over the campfire.  Plus, I knew my kids would love the name -- Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Onion Bombs!

Preparing Onions

So, are you ready to be well-fed in the woods? The basic idea is to take a halved onion, peel it into layers, create homemade meatballs and then enclose each with two halves of the onion layers.  After you wrap the onion-covered meatballs separately in aluminum foil, they can be stored for a couple days in a cooled ice-chest.  With no time-wasted slicing and dicing at the campsite means you’ll have a wide open schedule for whittling, fishing, and other outdoor fun.

Mixing into Meatballs!

After pulled off the fire, these little foil-wrapped bombs explode with loads of flavor at the first bite. Lean ground chicken breast is kicked up with the feisty combination of hot pepper sauce and tangy blue cheese.  Of course, serving anything Buffalo chicken-style wouldn’t be the same without a side of celery sticks to cool things down. And, while I had the fire going, I tossed some canned biscuit dough into a cast iron skillet, drizzled on a bit of melted butter and sprinkled with freeze-dried parsley from Litehouse Food’s product line of Instantly Fresh Herbs. Not a leftover in sight after this meal, so no worries about hungry bears visiting for a midnight snack!

Camping Biscuits Ready!

Ready to Eat - Delicious!