Camping Grub
I camp a few times a year, either car camping or backpacking, and I've never been completely satisfied with the food. Either the food is tasty yet too heavy to pack, or it's light but tastes like crap, or the cleanup is messy, or the meal gives you gas and torments your tentmate.
You might think that the internet would provide some good solutions, but most of the recipes are fundamentally flawed. Camping recipes on the web seem to fall in one of two categories: the Boy Scout Troop category ("slice up potatoes, dice onions, add ground beef, then cook in Dutch Oven for 3 hours"), or the ultralight backpacker category ("boil spaghetti, then melt powerbar into noodles while still hot. enjoy!").
My initial conclusion is that in order to eat well while camping, you must either bring along a Boy Scout troop (or have a pack mule to lug your cast-iron dutch oven and fresh spuds) or...or don't camp at all! Real backpackers don't care how their food tastes.
sigh
Spaghetti
Default camping food seems to be pasta and spaghetti sauce. While admittedly easy, tasty, and filling, cleaning up a pan of spaghetti sauce is a real chore (especially if water is in short supply), and spaghetti sauce gives you gas. Yes, y ou.
There are those who advocate corn pasta, supposedly because it packs in more calories per gram. Corn pasta is rather nasty. It has a mealy texture, and quickly disintegrates in water. I understand that some folks choose to eat this stuff because of their gluten allergies, and I feel for them.
Couscous & Tasty Bites
For a while, I was enamored with the combination of couscous and Tasty Bite Indian entrees-in-a-bag, which is precooked Indian food in a vacuum-sealed foil bag. This combination has several appealing features:
You can boil water for the couscous and heat the food simultaneously
- Both couscous and Tasty Bites are available from Trader Joe's, along with other good food for camping (oatmeal, nuts, granola)
The Tasty Bite dishes are pretty good! I especially like the Jaipur Vegetables.
On the other hand, the Tasty Bite bags are quite heavy and really not suitable for backpacking trips. Also, you get sick of them after a few years.
Moose Goo
On one camping trip, Adam mixed up a batch of Moose Goo from Joe's Ultralight Backpacking website. This is a thick paste of honey, corn flour, and peanut butter. Adam crammed this concoction into a toothpaste tube and for lunch, we were directed to squeeze it onto pita bread. It really wasn't too bad; Adam also baked a batch into cookies (moose droppings?), which was even better. I couldn't eat this stuff for more than two meals in a row, however; it's too sweet.
On the very same camping trip, I saw the BlackContrail. Whether or not the BlackContrail was a visual side-effect of the Moose Goo has yet to be determined.
Prepackaged Freeze Dried Food
Freeze dried meals are expensive, but now that I've creatively financed my starter home with negative amortization, I can certainly afford to try them.
We recently dined on a bunch of the AlpineAire offerings from REI. You boil some water, measure an amount into the foil bag, and close the bag for 10 minutes. Presto! Food!
The primary disadvantage of these meals, besides the cost, is the foil bag. You can't throw the trash on the fire, so you must pack it out.
AlpineAire Beef Stroganoff: the resulting concoction is a beef stew, heavy on the cream (presumably to emulate the traditional sour cream garnish). I tried a bit. Not bad.
AlpineAire Lasagna: not really lasagna. More like rotini. Not bad. Actually, pretty good.
AlpineAire Jamaican Chicken: chalk-like cubes reconstituted themselves into chicken. However, the rice remained undercooked. Undercooked, crunchy rice is nasty stuff under the best of conditions, but more so when you carried it in your own pack.
AlpineAire Gumbo: lots of okra, and quite tasty. Of all the meals we tried, this was my favorite.
We also tried dessert:
- Bananas Foster - Dehydrated bananas never quite rehydrated. Blech!
- Peach Deep Dish Crumble - Yummy
- Mountain House Raspberry Crumble - addition of water formed a solid, enticingly raspberry-smelling slab of gelatinous goo. I wonder if they achieved this effect with ultra-cornstarch or mega-arrowroot. Sprinkle choco-crumbs on top. Yummy!