Memorial Day seems to be the unofficial kick off to the summer camping season. Families seem to leave in droves to set up temporary residency in the nearby wilderness. Filling their weekend with hiking, fishing, campfires and smores.

Family camping as popular as it is requires a bit of planning to pull off a successful trip. Packing for a family campout is no small feat. The food, supplies and making sure you’ve packed all the children is quite a bit of work in itself.

What to do for breakfast is always a question that comes up. Planning the menu and making sure that there is enough food to feed four growing and energetic boys is always a concern. To keep them going through the weekend we try to keep the menus filling with out making them extravagant.

Keeping things simple and packing as few items as necessary makes me a happy momma. Pancakes are always on the menu but to save a bit of time and lessen the mess I have to clean up while staying in the great out doors, I’ll share with you one of my favorite ways to prepare and store pancake batter.

Tip:
SImply premix your batter and store it in a cleaned plastic ketchup bottle.

This is a mess free way to store pancake batter for a couple of days. It makes it easy to dispense the batter and save any of the left overs. Pancake batter will keep this way for a couple of days before it has to be discarded. It eliminates the need to haul the entire kitchen with you and you can toss the bottle into the garbage when your through.

My Hop Pancakes:
(this is one of my favorite pancake recipes)
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 dash salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter, or as needed

Directions:

Mix the buttermilk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract in a bowl; stir in the sugar. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, combining the batter with just a few strokes to moisten. Leave the lumps.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and lemon juice together; gently stir into the batter. Refrigerate the batter for at least 30 minutes, up to 1 hour.
Heat a large skillet over medium heat and grease with the butter.