For weekend trips, special menu or recipes are not necessary since kayakers have enough room and weight capacity to carry fresh foods. If you're willing to do the food prep in the field, you can cook most anything you cook at home on your stove top. Hungry campers will usually appreciate meals that are quickly prepared in a minimum number of pots, however.

Lake Superior will even keep fruits, veggies and cheeses refrigerated for you! During hot weather, a soft-sided cooler with reusuable blue ice packs will help keep things from fermenting.

For longer trips, such as our excursions along the Canadian Shore, Georgian Bay, or Lake Nipigon, fresh food will only be good for the first few days. What then? Below are some suggestions for the longer haul. Using dehydrated foods is an excellent strategy for long trips, but I also use a lot of dehydrated fruits, veggies and grains on shorter trips because I can do the prep at home, and all that needs to be done in camp is usually throwing the ingredients into a pot of boiling water for 5-10 minutes.

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Cooking and Menu Planning Books

Trail Food by Alan Kesselheim
A personal favorite of mine. Includes drying times and instructions as well as instructions for making your own dehydrater or using your oven. A lot of hearty, nutritious grain-based meals. Drawbacks: I found the recipes bland and had to double the spices in the recipes, but once I did that they were quite tasty. The meals are sized for people who are very, very hungry: unless you are doing a high calorie trip you may want to halve the portions. Also, take it from me and don't try dehydrating cheese as suggested in the book...

NOLS Cookery
Another source for lots of grain-based recipes, as well as basic batters and breads. It has good information on planning amounts of food for long trips, including the NOLS bulk rationing method and info on calorie consumption and stove fuel usage for different seasons/conditions. If nothing else, a real keeper from this book is the recipe for "Gado-gado" otherwise known as peanut butter spaghetti. Really. Drawbacks:
The recipes are sound nutritionally, but need a lot of help when it comes to flavor and texture. Be prepared to play around with the recipes until they meet your standards of edibility.

Lipsmackin' Backpackin': Lightweight, Trail-Tested Recipes for Backcountry Trips
by Tim Conners, Christine Conners

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Campfood Supplies

http://www.justtomatoes.com
Just Tomatoes sells high quality-nothing-added dried veggies and fruits. If you want to try dehydrated foods but don't want to do it yourself, this is the place to go. The Wedge Coop and Whole Foods carry a lot of their stuff here in the Twin Cities, and the Bloomington REI carries a smaller selection.

http://www.nesco.com
Nesco (formerly American Harvest) Dehydrators are relatively inexpensive and available direct from the web site above. They can also be found locally at Fleet Farm (cheapest here if in stock) and the Kitchen Window. The dehydrators come with a booklet giving preparation info, dehydrating times and temperatures for all sorts of foods. They also sell jerky making accessories and supplies.

http://www.aaoobfoods.com
Alpine Aire freeze dried meals can be found locally at camping stores. I personally don't recommend prepackaged, freeze-dried meals - the portions are small, the taste poor and the price sky-high. However, these guys also sell buckets of freeze-dried beans and veggies at a good price direct from the company at the address above. Be warned that it is one of the most annoying web sites I've ever visited - I recommend turning your sound off...

http://mattfischer.com/ramen/
ok, here it is by request: for those of you who didn't eat enough ramen during your school years, here are hundreds of ramen recipes to delight the undiscriminating palate.

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• Some Cub Foods stores in the Twin Cities area have an "institutional size" food section (such as the Fridley branch just north of 694 on University). You can find super-sized boxes of dried hashbrowns, potato pearls, dried onions and dried minced garlic there for a lot less than anywhere else. The hashbrowns make an excellent breakfast when topped with cheese and/or ketchup.

• The Wedge Coop and Whole Foods both sell heat-and-eat indian meals. They are surprisingly good, although not lightweight or cheap. They also sell ghee, indian clarified butter that doesn't need to be refrigerated. These stores also sell a lot of interesting alternatives to mac n' cheese and noodles and sauce, and carry some bulk soup mixes, dried beans and dried refried beans.

• Penzey's Spices sells spice mixtures that are good for bland meals that need a quick fix: http://www.penzeys.com

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Tips from campers

• Cleaning up:
  
  • Chris W. recommends bringing along some paper towels in a baggie to help with cleaning and drying the dishes - packtowels, sponges, and scrubbies get disgusting quickly.
  • Sarah O. uses sand to scrub out any stubborn goo.

• Rehydrating:
  
  • cover dehydrated veggies with hot water for about 15 minutes
  • add cold water to freeze-dried foods in a jar and let rehydrate during the day while you paddle.

• Beans:
  
  • If cooking beans, pre-soak during the day by adding beans to a jar or bottle and soaking in cold water.
  • Avoid long-cooking beans like pinto or black beans, since they will take over an hour to cook even if pre-soaked.

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