Hello~
I am planning a trip to the BWCA for early August. I have not been up there for several years, so am somewhat unsure about what to bring for meals. The things I remember best for meals in the past include:

For Breakfast: Pancakes, breakfast burritos, OATMEAL...

Lunch: Wasa, Cheese and Salami, Bagels and cream cheese, rye bread and cheese spread, you get the idea

Supper: Typically, variations of pasta and rice.

We have 6 guys going on our trip, and most of us are pretty big eaters, so I thought that I might do best to begin planning meals already. We also plan on having either steak or bratwurst for the first night in. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to comment.

Note: We aren't necesarily concerned with traveling light.

Also, I recall some success in previous years with dehydrating spaghetti and meat sauces. I would like to attempt this again, and also with other sauces (perhaps chicken and gravy for over rice?) but I don't even know what can be done. Any suggestions in that area will also be appreciated.

Sounds like you have a fairly good start. As far as chicken goes, the pouched chicken available is good, not too expensive, and far superior in quality to dehydrated chicken.

I've had very good success with the many soups you can find in the grocery store- the Bear Creek brand in particular. A package of chicken/wild rice soup, a pouch of chicken, and a package of some sort of rice makes a nice thick "stew" that tastes great and sticks to your ribs. Make biscuits or corn bread on the side.

The dehydrated scalloped potatoes are good too- you can add all sorts of things to them. Summer sausage, onions, bacon...if you hunt around a fairly large grocery store there are loads of things that don't need refrigeration and just need water.

If you want an example of what my group did on a 4 day trip last year, check out the trip reports for "A jaunt around the numbered lakes with Julia Child".

You can take bacon and eggs (the plastic cartons to protect the eggs I get from Campmor). Broadbent hams (www.broadbenthams.com) out of Kentucky sells a "campers special" that includes bacon and country ham that doesn't need to be refrigerated.
We use the ham with beans for supper.
I also just posted a recipe you might want to consider (penne and pepperoni)
There have been some great recipes on this board. Go back and see what other people suggest.

Get yourself a poly food box, a frozen milk jug of water and you can bring in fresh food (whatever you want) that will last for 5 days minimum in 90 degree summer heat, kept in the shade of course. We ate like kings and queens.

DG is right on with the pouch chicken. What I would do is buy Chicken Helper and pair it with the pouch chicken (rather than fresh chicken). Since you guys are big eaters, figure one box feeding two guys.

If you like tuna, you can do the samething with Tuna Helper and the foil packaged tuna.

You can also get New Orleans type rice (I don't remember the name ... begins with a Z) and couple that with plain, ol' summer sausage. Just cut it up and toss it in the pot.

If you can dehydrated hamburger, then you can do the whole Hamburger Helper thing. If you can find Hamburger Helper Spaghetti, scoop it up! That is hard to find. That is what I always used for spaghetti, but it disapeared from the stores a couple of years ago.

There are also Lipton side dishes, Some are rice based and some are noodle based. Make those up with either dehydrated hamburger or pouch chicken.

All of the above are one pot meals, too.

If you can find dried (chipped) beef package in plastic (to be BWCA legal), get that and some white, country gravy mix. Pair those up and then make a pot of instant mashed potatoes.

Look around your supermarket shelves. You'll find lots of stuff.

The name is Zatarains I believe... and with fresh smoked sausage is a great first night meal... nice and spicy... served with a little pita bread!

Barella three cheese tortillini with a little of the foil pouch chicken is a favorite of mine...

Also strawberry jam from a squeeze bottle on pancakes or bannock or bagels! nothing like a grilled bagel with butter and strawberry jam with that first cup of coffee with Irish Cream flavoring...

Last year I packaged summer sausage with cheddar cheese in small individually sealed (air tight) packages for lunch... I used one of the vacumn seal machines.

You can dehydrate hamburger and use it in hamburger helper real easy!

Tons of ideas in this category... Good luck
Bruce

Depending on your amount of travel, I agree with trailrider. Bring in a small cooler. We do everytime and are eating like kings. Figure out exactly what you are making, freeze the portions that need it, add some frozen water jug sized appropriately, good for 3-4 days easy. We bring in fajitas, burgers, two meals of steaks, etc. Very easy to do.

The pouch meats/fish are certainly the other choice. Combined with things as mentioned above, they are good also. There should be absolutely no need to bring in the freeze dried mountain house type meals. They are expensive, lacking in flavor, and you can do better by preparing really well and shopping at your local grocery store. They should have all you need.

I know this may sound a bit wierd, but I have prepared food like Chili, Taco's, and Sloppy Joes ahead of time. Frozen them in ziplock bags and then wrapped them in foil. I was able to keep these frozen for over 72 hours in the first week of August. First I packed them in the order that I would be using them and then I didn't have to dig through the bag, just reach in and the top package was the next meal. I kept my food bag in the shade and made sure it was double bagged in two stuff sacks which I wrapped with a towel. No Ice Packs, just being really careful about where the bag was at all times. Even in the canoe I kept it covered to eliminate the sun.

I wasn't too sure about this one, but I tried it at home and it worked well. Just to preface this, I like good food, I will make many sacrifices for good food and won't eat stuff that tastes bad unless I am in an emergency or really really hungry. I wanted eggs for a couple of breakfasts, but didn't want to deal with the hassle of raw whole eggs. I simply scrambled the eggs, added some milk, some shredded chees, some seasoning, some onions, red pepper, even some raw pork sausage and bacon. (I didn't put everything in each batch I mixed it up) Then I froze these concoctions in the ziplock bags as described above and wrapped them with foil and labled. These stayed nice and cold until the 3rd wakeup. again this was in August.

My brother in law and myself ate these and thought they were great, very easy and the ziplocks seal up when done so they don't stink too much while carrying around the trash bag.

Just an idea. Shoot me an email if you have any questions.

Happy eating!

Thanks for all of the replies, I appreciate it. I'm glad I still have plenty of time to plan the meals.

Hey Autio....Check out my post in the Gear Forum on page 6 under "food packs"
food packs
......It gives you an alternative for freeze-dried.....where you can take fresh food and keep it cold for up to 5-6 days.... just an idea but it worked for us and we had some fresh and some dehydrated meals...
Woodpecker

Hey, that sounds pretty neat. I checked out the BWJ website...how much did you end up paying for it?

Autio....
It was right at $100. but I figured it was worth that if we could bring along some "good" fresh stuff....
Not that the dehydrated stuff you can buy is "bad" but, this way we can bring some things we couldn't if we didn't have this poly food box and the ice....
You might as well live it up if you've got to do all the cooking....HA

Woodpecker

I would like to try some beer this year....the weight might be worth the cool brew after a day of paddling and fishing....

My group likes to do the "base camp" thing. That gives us a little more freedom with food but we still do about five portages to get to our favorite spot. We do bring in some fresh meat. I generally fix the first nights meal which is usually a stew of some kind with NY strips, potatos, carrots, and onions. I par-cook the beef at home and then freeze it. The last trip we caught enough fish on the first full day to forgoe the freeze dried dinners for three nights!!