Just wanted to see some thoughts on brek, lunch, & dinners for BWCA, besides fish. What do ya'll eat ? pasta, haul meat w/ dry ice. Dont tell me you actually pay for those high priced freeze dried meals..... Do you really?

Breakfast: Eggs,cheese and spam, precooked bacon, Hostess mini muffins, Quaker instant oatmeal, fresh ground coffee.
Lunch: Bagels, cream cheese, smoked fish, apple, gorp, crackers, cheese, salaami.
Dinner: Steak, mushrooms, shrimp scampii, spaghetti, garlic bread, fish, mac and cheese,

Joboo, I saw that your a chef on another link. Well, lets have it. We'll see if your cooking is Major League or not... All I've got really is shore lunch, crystal light, and gorp. I need help.

"Never drink anything you can't see through."- Edward Van Halen

Yes, I use freeze dried pre-done meals as well as stuff I bring in myself. I always bring in a group of High School students who have nothing. I don't have the equipment to outfit them all. For this reason I use a outfitter that supplies it all. By taking in 8 people I get a discount so it is not so bad. The food is not great, but it's not that bad. I do supplement though. I let the kids pick the menu they want.

Oh Boy! Your question would require a book-long answer! I don't take ice and I don't take freeze dried meals. Probably 95% of what I take is bought at my supermarket or Food CoOp with just some repackaging and perhaps mixing of other dry ingredients (like powered milk and dried eggs).

The other 5% is stuff I dehydrate, most notably ground beef, tomato paste, and perhaps chili beans if chili is on the menu.

With the addition of foil pack chicken or dehydrated hamburger there are dozens of one-pot meals using Chicken or Hamburger Helper, Suzie Wans, Lipton Side Dishes, etc. There are instant mashed potatoes, dried potato side dishes (hash browns, au gratin, scalloped, etc.), gravy packets, pancake mixes, muffin mixes, instant oatmeal, granola bars, dried fruit, GORP, nuts, coffee & tea, candies, no-bake cheesecake, hot cocoa mix, cup-o-soup, Slim Jims & jerky, salami and summer sausage, cheese, bagels & pita bread & tortilias, PB&J, .... I'm tired, so I'll quit now.

Good answers. You can cook almost everything you do at home. You just have to be creative and dehydrate. My most recent fun has been with baking. We are using a "steam jacket" approach. One pot (with lid) with the batter inside another slightly larger pot and lid. Set the inside pot on small spacers (Stainless nuts) and put about 1" of water in the bottom. Then put the "batter pot" in and put on the lids. When the water boiles it will make steam to surround the "batter pot" and it cooks. We have been doing biscuits, brownies, cobblers and cakes. It takes a little more time than a real oven with a little less liquid in the batter. You don't need a high fire, just enough to keep the water boiling around the pot. Our regular set of nesting pots works well. By the time the fish are cleaned, the biscuits are ready.

snoopdug

"never drink anything you can't see through?!"

No Guinness? I don't think Ed thought that one through.

I think we're having Guinness for dinner tonight.

Bannock and the rest have nailed it but I will add that with an oven (reflector, steamer, jello-mold, or whatever) you can add greater variety to menus. Check out the vast variety of crackers at your grocery store to add something different to lunches and snacks. Instant chocolate pudding and Jiffy-pop popcorn are also big hits. We like making quesadilla's for lunch and breakfast burritos in the morning too.

Queso's are great. Cumin and chili powder mixed together, Cheddar cheese, green peppers, onions fried up. You can add pre packaged chicken to this as well, the no need fridge kind. Or black beans, rehydrated, if you want to warm sleeping bag later!

Pizza same basic deal as above. Bring in Boboli's, or tortillas, squeeze pizza sauce, any spices and toppings you want, parm or romano cheese. Put in fry pan, toast, turn over, top, put alum foil over pan, be patient, or reflector oven, doesn't get much better.

Mini carrots stay a week no problem. And the only thing I have bought dehydrated as I don't have my own, is bulk veggies, like corn and peas, etc. They are really pretty good.

No need for anything other than good grocery store to stock your pack for a week. Lots of planning on repacking and portion size will result in a compact fine tasting economical. pack full of goodies. Oh yeah, bring fish eating toppings of your choice too!

We take in a mixture of fresh and dehydrated foods. Here is what we are planning on for our 12 day trip this year :
Dinners : Tenderloin breaded in Italian breads crumbs pan fried with a baked potato , steak fajitas with rice , pork tenderloin with instant mashed potaoes and gravy , chili with dehydrated hamburger(thanks for the recipe Bannock) and crackers , tacos with the dehydrated hamburger , fish with hasbrowns , spaghetti ( dehydrated sauce and hamburger meat ) with Cache Lake bread
Lunches : Soup ( Bear Creek makes a good one ) with crackers , sausage, cheese and crackers , mac and cheese , P&J on tortillas Breakfast : eggs and sausage , pancakes with the store bought precooked bacon , Nutragrain bars, Poptarts , Tang , coffe , hot chocolate In addition there are noodle dishes , rice dishes and foil packed products avavilable. Spend some time in the grocery store and you can find many things that were not available years ago. Just make sure that all in the group agree to the same stuff. Good luck and enjoy your trip. Izzy

That pre-cooked bacon, what an idea, eh? Wish I would have thought of it. I used to par-cook bacon (ie cook regular bacon in the microwave half the time called for); blot away the grease; bag it; and freeze till trip time. At meal time, plop it into a covered fry pan and stir occasionally. Very tasty without the excess grease to deal with.

Then this precooked stuff came out. It isn't as good as the par-cooked bacon, but boy is it fast and easy!! No prep time. Hardly any cook time ... in fact you can eat it cold. And it lasts forever. Great trip food.

I like the grease for the hashbrowns