WARNING: The views expressed on this page run belligerently contrary to many widely accepted family reunion, scout camp, and combined family vacation meal planning protocol.
Please forgive me for a moment as I climb aboard my anti-meal-planning soapbox (you may want to ask the children to look the other way for a minute, this could get ugly)...
Since joint meal planning ALWAYS ends up costing EVERYBODY twice as much money ... And since planned group meals ALWAYS seem to waste 3 to 5 hours to setup, prepare, eat, and cleanup (precious hours we might otherwise prefer to waste in funner ways) ... And since planning coordination ALWAYS quadruples the quantity and duration of grocery store visits ... We would really rather keep all meals and dining to the highly controversial "your on your own" system.
So please just plan your own meals! Please just bring your own food! Please bring your own cooking gear. Please bring your own dishes. Please bring your own money for dining out (there is fast food as close as 1 mile from the campground). Please be prepared to take care of your own trash (ESPECIALLY if you use paper and plastic dinnerware, I don't, so I never have a large enough garbage bag for all of YOUR disposable plates and cups and such).
That way, if your dinner takes too long to cook, or is too complicated to prepare without your kitchen appliances, or gets soggy because all the ice in your cooler melted, or gets burned because you decided to do a souffle over a campfire, or if you forget to pack a lunch that is appropriate for eating off the side of a hiking trail, or if you get frustrated because you're stuck cleaning up dinner when it's dark out, or if you end up not liking what you brought and end up going to town for McDonald's every day, or if you forget to bring milk for your baby, or if your kids don't like your snacks: you'll have nobody to blame but yourself. And then nobody else has to feel any guilt about your self-induced misery.
Oh, I'm not saying I won't eat next to you, or that I won't share my campstove and dishes at dinnertime, or that I won't ask if I can have one of your sodapops, or that your kids aren't welcome to graze on my food if they don't like what you planned, or that my kids won't beg for your food if they don't like what I brought, or that I won't eat some of your brownies when you're not looking, or that I won't share my beef jerky when we're hiking, or that I won't give your kid a juicebox if they ask nicely and say please. I'm just saying that none of us should feel like we're responsible for thinking all those things through on behalf of everybody else.
I can't afford the cost (or the stress) of feeling like I HAVE to pack enough of EVERYTHING to feed 20 - 30 people at each meal. So I won't. Nor should you.
So if your family-reunion/scout-camp instincts force you, go ahead and bring a one-month supply of unprepared, perishable food. BUT...PLEASE don't be offended if we decide to microwave some EasyMac, or boil a hot dog, or eat a prepackaged WalMart sandwich, or stop at McDonald's for $5 worth of $1 menu items. Then excuse ourselves to go get in one last Jeep run before dark, while you slave away for hours attempting to cook a frozen roast over a campfire.
... soapbox dismounted.
Our campsite and fire ring will be available to any of you motel stayers that might wish to experience an outdoor meal in a camp-like atmosphere, but we can't guarantee that we will be available to sit around and watch you prepare and eat it, especially not during daylight hours.
We will bring a cooler and an igloo full of ice water on all Jeep outings and any passengers are welcome to use it and/or bring along their own cooler.
If dining out is more your fancy, Moab has MANY excellent restaurants. A lot more than you would think for a small town of 5,000 people. Our current budget constraints will probably limit our personal dining out to 2, maybe 3 meals for the 4 days. Saturday will probably be the most likely evening for a full out night on the town, since some of us plan to be in town for the Priesthood session of General Conference anyway. See Moab Happenings' Menu Guide to download an excellent menu guide for nearly all of Moab's restaurants.
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