Earlier this year, after offering to do all the cooking for our family’s annual May Bank holiday camping trip — six adults, six children and various visitors for two nights — I discovered that when outdoors people are hungry all the time. If it’s not a cup of tea for the adults, it’s a snack for the children.

And nothing is easy when you’re camping — water takes half an hour to boil, fires need tending, and children expect you to have brought the fridge. But despite the logistics we managed to feast on so much more than baked beans. Here’s what we learnt along the way.

Cooking kit Plan your dishes around the utensils that you’ll have with you. We had a large open fire with a metal grid fastened to four corner posts to rest the pans on, plus two small camping stoves and two barbecues. If you are using a small gas burner, stick it inside a sturdy (non-flammable) bucket first, then light it.

The flame will be guarded from the wind and water boils far quicker this way. Two kettles make boiling water for washing-up much easier. Tongs are good, as are those flipper things for turning burgers.

Long matches, cheap J cloths and antibacterial hand spray all came in handy. The best tip, however, is to take paper plates. We still took normal plastic plates, but lined them with cheap paper ones.

Thus we had both the support of the plastic (vital when you’re eating on your knees) but could just throw the paper ones away afterwards and save on washing-up, which, let’s face it, is probably the worst thing about camping. Apart, that is, from the weather. . .

Keeping cool Refrigerating food is difficult but not impossible. Take lots of ice blocks and several cool boxes. We froze all the meat (so make sure it’s not been pre-frozen) and some of the milk and ate things in the order they defrosted.

If you keep one icebox dedicated to frozen food and try to open it as little as possible you can keep things fresh for days. I also froze an entire wine box of rose for the grownups.

Treats Invariably, you need to take lots of these. If the inevitable happens and it starts to rain, at least there will be chocolate. Don’t, as I did, take toasty things such as crumpets and muffins, imagining the children angelically toasting them on the fire.

The truth is, the fire is only lit when you’re cooking supper, and nobody feels like toasted teacakes after a six-course barbeque! They do, however, always feel like marshmallows, and those mini chocolate bars you buy in “fun packs”.

Breakfast had to be the full fry-up at least one morning. For the second day I had pre-measured the dry mix for some pancakes, to which I added whisked eggs and milk on the morning. A bottle of maple syrup complimented them nicely.

Lunches were cold and picnicky, hummus and olives, and pork pies and picklewere both popular with our crowd.

Suppers were a more lengthy meal. We char-grilled English asparagus, marinated chicken, sausages, home-made burgers, and fresh sweet corn on the barbeque. Warm new potato salad was served with a balsamic vinaigrette, which doubled as a dressing for a leafy salad.

Garlic bread worked wonderfully wrapped in foil and left on the edge of the barbeque where the smouldering embers heated it through, as did bananas stuffed with chocolate. Inevitably, there were marshmallows on sticks for pudding, and a cup of hot chocolate before bed.

You can build a fire for two reasons, for fun, or to cook with. The hunter’s fire is useful for cooking because it catches rapidly and produces embers quickly. If you want to sit by the fire at night, keep feeding it with more sticks to keep it going.

Starting: a cook’s fire

1 First lay two thick logs parallel to each other so they can support a pan.

2 Build up to six layers of sticks between the logs, with each layer at right angles to the last.

3 Place tinder in the central space, and once stack is complete light tinder from the bottom. Once stack has burned down you can use embers to cook over.

The Camping Book by Ed and Kate Douglas, is published by Dorling Kindersley, £12.99