Camp and Trekking Food Favorites.

[omarick1948]

Let's get some of your favorite camp meals and trekking type foods and/or snacks to keep you going!

Time to get our mouths watering!

 

[Cruzatte]

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I haven't been able to find Barbados molasses in my area, so I've substituted maple sugar. I also like to add chunks of dried apple, or raisins.

 

[satx78247]

A generous slice of fried/pork patty sausage on a drop/buttermilk biscuit is my FAVORITE snack on the trail to stave off starvation until nightfall/supper.

Otoh, a BIG/hearty stew of venison or other game with potatoes/carrots/onions with some sort of hot bread is my favorite "in camp" supper.

yours, satx

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Not sure about "Barbados molasses" we use several types of molasses. There is light molasses which folks use like syrup on pancakes, scrapple etc. Then there is "full flavored" molasses which has a very strong taste and is used mostly for flavoring in cooking and baking. Then we have partially refined molasses, which is so dark brown it is almost black. It is very very strong flavored and many people can't stand the stuff except as an ingredient in baking and cooking. Then there is the bitter aftertaste black strap livestock molasses. Used by feed mills in livestock feeds. Lastly, there is even dried molasses. A slightly sticky powder the consistency of fine brown sand.

We use the dark brown stuff for things like teriaki sauce, BBQ sauce and especially for making Shoo Fly Pies. When I make a Shoo fly pie it is darker than baker's chocolate, almost black when done. Mrs. is a southern gal and loves it because it is not sickening sweet like some pastries. (most bakery pecan pies are far too sweet) .

 

[Nativearizonan]

Pan fried bannock is my favorite wilderness camp bread. It can be made plain with just all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, and water; made with oatmeal, raisins, and cinnamon for breakfast, or even made with cocoa and sugar for a cake like desert. Any good mixture of nuts, dried fruit or varied grains makes for good eating, when added to a pan fried bannock, as long as you still have enough white flour to stick the thing together when you flip it. Cook it in plenty of shortening so it doesn't stick and absorbs enough that it doesn't need to be buttered to be good. They tend to be a bit greasy for eating at home, but just right for on the trail. A sheet metal skillet is about all the utensil needed to make one.

Add some catfish, trout, or other fish rolled in cornmeal and cooked in the same skillet with same shortening, or maybe a rabbit, hare, squirrel, or other game if you are so lucky, cooked on a spit over the fire to go with the bread. Add a pot of lentils, split peas, and brown rice if there isn't enough fish or game to make the meal. Pinto beans, if you have the time to soak them. Don't forget the coffee

Liver and onions, if you are on a successful big game hunt.

All the above is light food for backpacking. Add pack animals and you get into a whole 'nuther realm of cooking and eating pleasure possibilities.

 

[tenngun]

Dried potatoes, dried mushrooms, and dried onion, boil in a little water. Chop some dried sausage brown in frying pan enjoy. Breakfast hasty pudding and maple sugar a little butter. A dried apple boiled,some raisins nutmeg ( :hatsoff: to John Townsend) a little butter and browned. A nice little sweet or a breakfast.
A hunters pudding sliced and fried on the trail is pretty good.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I like to take stuff that doesn't require ice to keep it cold, that way if I use a cooler it's for beverages.

When hiking I like a dry sausage like a dry salami, or Sujuk , or even a summer sausage. Sometimes venison jerky. Some ship's biscuit and some raisins*. I also carry a pound of rock-a-hominy, and some chocolate. I find tea better than coffee when on the trail and I have time to heat water.

If you don't have a cooler to store butter or milk, you can make mashed potatoes without "cheating" with dry or canned milk, if you've got a good camp at night and don't mind some of the extra weight.

No Cheat Mashed Potatoes (serves 1)
1 large spud
1 small, yellow onion
4 oz. of extra virgin olive oil
salt & cayenne pepper
water for boiling and a pot to boil it in
a knife and a wooden spoon

So cut up the spud pretty fine and cover with water, about 1/2" over the top. The smaller the pieces of 'tater the faster it will cook. Dice up the onion and put that into the water too. Set it on the fire to boil.

The key to mashed potato is the fat normally provided by whole milk, and/or butter, used to emulsify the starch. So when the tater is boiled, pour off the water, and begin to mash it with the spoon. Add the olive oil slowly as you mash, being sure to get a good, over all mix. So mash, add a bit of oil, then mash some more, and repeat until fully mixed. Salt and pepper to taste.

If you have a small skillet, then fry up the onion in the olive oil and add the onion and oil to the boiled potato pieces, and then mash. :wink:

Trail Porridge
1/4 cup rock-a-hominy
1/4 cup dried peas or dried lentils
A square inch of pocket soup (or a teaspoon of low salt bouillon)
Water for boiling

Boil this in your copper pot, until the lentils and/or peas are soft, then add the rock-a-hominy, and if you have the means to be fancy, also add to the boil at the same time as the peas/lentils:

a couple ounces of summer sausage,
or dry ham (mind the salt)
or a couple of ounces of diced dry bacon,
or crumbled up jerky (whatever protein you have).
If it's cold weather use the bacon version; choose bacon a good ratio of fat and lean,
OR if you have it, 2 oz. of pemmican, or potted beef. (The fat adds the calories you need in the frigid temperatures :wink: )

This makes a soup, and when you add rock-a-hominy it thickens the soup into porridge, sorta sticks-to-the-ribs as the saying goes. Too thick add some water; too thin add more rock-a-hominy.

The rock-a-hominy that I use is whole, dried dent corn, that is then parched on a dry skillet. Then it is ground up (I use a clean coffee mill). It's also an excellent emergency ration.

*Raisins. (Imho) Raisins should be in everybody's ration. The sugar content is good for quick energy, the fiber content keeps the bowels happy after all that dried protein some of us eat, and the potassium content keeps those cramps, especially the ones that creep up on the legs while sleeping, away.

LD

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I haven't been treking. Have been on day trip hunting or hiking and taking time to start a fire and boil up anything seems to take too much time. There was an energy loaf sold at Costco years ago. It was sort of like a small loaf of bread with dried fruit, molasses and soy protein in it. Each loaf was about the size of a computer mouse. I found a recipe for an energy bread that was very similar and made them every fall for years. Two of those was very filling and Sometimes I had trouble finishing both. I don't remember much of the recipe. Whole wheat four, raisins, apple sauce, chopped dried apricots, egg, salt, baking soda, a little cinnamon, browned loose hamburger. As I recall, there was just a spoon full of molasses for sweetener. I lost the recipe in a fire and never went looking for it again.

 

[nessmuk]

That sounds like "fruit cake" and I love it. Makes the best trail food and people usually will give it to you when they find out you like it.

 

[satx78247]

Bannock, fixed most any way, is YUMMY on a cold & frosty morning.

yours, satx

 

[coloradoclyde]

Looking back over all these years on my many excursions, both modern and primitive.....The list of edibles is endless...Always taking something new. I've been on outings where we took no food, and lived off the land.....And I've been on gourmet trips. Good food can make the most miserable trip enjoyable...Regardless of what kind of camping I am doing....Soup or stew always seems to be a staple, both practical and comforting.

A good side topic might be, "What is the most bizarre, over the top, unusual, abnormal thing you ever took to eat, or made camping, Trekking...etc...."?

 

[tenngun]

At an event I’ve made some experimental meals in that I read the recipe but had not tried it. Then I have cooked ground hog and beaver at events. As you say good meals can save an otherwise miscible trip. So I make sure I have things I like in my haversack.

 

[crockett]

Since I moved south I have sort of wandered from bannock to corn meal. Grits leaves a glue residue in the pot but plain old corn meal boils up in a couple of minutes and you can easily rinse out the pot. You can toss in a chopped up jalapeno pepper. The corn meal also gives you options, like hoe cake, fish batter, etc.
Beside...I always ended up burning the bannock. Bannock challenged. :grin:
Rice is a good trail food- David Thompson had it on his exploration along Lake Superior- so PC.

 

[George]

Rice is a good trail food- David Thompson had it on his exploration along Lake Superior- so PC.

Thompson's rice was wild rice, not the Asian or African white rice we think of as rice.

White rice was being grown in the colonies from early 17th century along the Atlantic coast, though, so it is also PC for certain areas. I've collected many 18th-century references to it, rice for sale, rice being grown, rice being imported, and one of rice broth being eaten by some of the first explorers on the Kentucky frontier in 1775.

Spence

 

[Nativearizonan]

I think one of the most underrated grains is Barley. I recently got some hulled barley, not pearled, but just hulled. It makes a great tasting cereal grain all by itself, cracked or whole.

 

[coloradoclyde]

I think one of the most underrated grains is Barley.

Steep it, boil it with hops and ferment for a couple weeks, and you elevate that lowly grain into "heaven in a glass"... :haha:

 

[tenngun]

”˜This is barley, from which any fool can make bread, but for which God has reserved a much higher purpose. Let us give thanks to God and learn about beer’ ... Frier Tuck

 

[Wes/Tex]

Here's one I used to make for my late wife. Finding hulled barley was a bit tricky till whole foods came to Austin. She was from Iowa and taught me all about using the asparagus...like rhubarb, pick it small and tender! :wink:

http://www.doctoroz.com/recipe/hulled-barley-shrimp-salad

 

[tenngun]

Sounds good :thumbsup:

 

[Nativearizonan]

Steep it, boil it with hops and ferment for a couple weeks, and you elevate that lowly grain into "heaven in a glass"... :haha:

You don't sprout yours first? Or is that what you refer to as steeping?

I did the whole thing one time, just to see if I could do it. I bought a 50 lb. sack of whole feed/seed barley with the hulls. It only cost about $10 at the time. Then sprouted the some of the barley and stopped the sprouting process by roasting it to make the malt. Next was the steeping process and then the extract from the malt was removed and fermented. I made 6 gallons with that brew, and did another run as well, but ended up giving the rest of the 50 lb. bag of barley to the chickens. I enjoyed doing the whole routine to find out how it was done, but truth be known, it is so much easier to just buy the malt extract from the brewery supply store and start there, adding hot water and yeast to it.