I know rations have been low or you have been brave. The mind works in different ways sometimes in the back country.

One winter camping trip back in the French lake-Gillis area,Breakfast was served:

Breakfast was a combination of grape nuts and chicken noodle soup. We needed calories,nutrition and something warm.
Actually it tasted pretty darn good. Would have it again if needed.

I am sure some have made stews by throwing everything they had into it?

I experimented with pancakes years ago. Add spiced cider to the mix and they taste like Funnel cakes. Now I make them every trip. But, that one success led to many other experiments that were awful; hot chocolate mix and Crystal light are two notable failures, yuck!

My wife and I left camp for a paddle one morning and when we came back our nephews were whipping up a batch of pancakes with gorp in them. They handed us some to eat before we even got out of the canoe. I thought they were tasty.

Sometimes the last day of the trip can make for some odd meals. We've used that day to put together all the left overs from previous meals into a "soup" of sorts.

this one---
i made a solo from LaCroix to Loon in the wind and rain which let off while i was pitching camp.i needed a big hot filling dinner.
this is Knorr Spring veg soup with dry chicken,ground beef and Minute Rice.i woofed the whole thing down---

Most unexpected was grouse on a stick.

We had just got back to camp for lunch and started the fire when we pondered what's for lunch. Just then I hear something move 15 feet away and sure as heck it was a lost grouse on our island. I tell Josh to grab the shotgun and before he got back I reread the rules about shooting in camp. I then bird dogged the grouse out of camp as Josh flanked (and laughed at my bird dog sounds). Once far enough away I ask Josh if he could see me, he said yes. Then I asked can you see the bird, and he said BANG!

He cleaned it and with the fire already going we ate it less then 8 minutes after it was shot.

Walleye Waffles !

Taste just like they sound ....

Blueberry pancake batter and Northern, 1st trip we forgot oil, salt, pepper and fish mix.

Stovetop stuffing with Bacon bits.....

Nothing too far fetched here. Sometimes if our catch of fish is meager, I'll fillet the few that we have and mix them in with Top Ramen noodles. Thus elevating what would otherwise be a low budget meal, into something of fine back woods cuisine.

quote Chilly: a lost grouse on our island. "

funny...

Fried spam using shore lunch breading. Topped with grape Jelly.

Little greasy I might say.

Tiny black spiders ... live.

Did a survival training trip way back in the 1960's where we were taught to eat spiders as a source of protein. I tried one and then did not eat for the rest of the trip.

(Yes, they tickle going down.)

Not food but drink. I was on a trip 20 years ago when our water filter plugged and we had to use chlorine water tablets in the water. We had drinks mixed with warm lake water, chlorine tabs, vodka and koolaid. Tasted like a warm fruity swimming pool.

When I was an outward bound instructor, we got down to the last evening meal of a 21 day trip. Earlier in the trip one of the canoes had capsized and some of our food was ruined. So, I pulled my emergency meal of millet and chicken stock out of my pack. Can't say that birdseed cooked in overly salty chick stock was the best thing I have ever eaten

added beef jerky to soup...kinda chewy

Years back we had a 9 person trip. Every couple was responsible for breakfasts and lunches. (The kids didn't have to cook). All I asked was that the meals be differnet and that everyone would enjoy them.

My buddy Danny heard the part about being differe
nt but didn't catch the bit about enjoyable. One night it was brine shrimp on (unrinsed) quinoa and ear fungus (the kind that grows wild on the rocks up there, but is artfully bagged and sold in chinese grocery stores) Bah! Wah! Spit spit. Sea monkees on bat wings with bitter grain crap. Worst meal ever..

Not weird but I came out of the tent one day after an afternoon nap and my buddy was frying a chopped up apple in butter. He asked for a granola bar that he crumbled up and threw in and pretty soon we had a pretty good apple crisp. I need to figure out how to get some ice cream for next time.

Fish batter pancakes. Not intentional or delicious.

Unintentional mosquito pancakes one morning.

A tortilla with nothing but mayo for lunch one day. I don't remember if I was out of food or just lazy.

Not me but the better half on a summer bachelor party on Ensign.
Unintentional. He had made spaghetti for the group; he was last to dish up and it had gotten dark. (Also must add they had brought along a pony keg)As he took a big forkful he noticed something else. Was it moving?
A flashlight came out and low and behold, Mayfly spaghetti!

Last fall two of my partners had freeze dried chili with canned clams as we ate New York strips with baked potatoes. Oh well they wanted to bring their own food.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we have a winner. Think I'd rather eat a spider than breaded fried Spam with grape jelly.
#:)

Lots of meals while camping are amazing but would be disgusting at home.

But... our pizza was nasty even when camping. Boboli shell with pizza sauce, velveeta, and pepperoni. Burnt on the bottom and cheese not melted on top!

Never again. We still laugh about that meal.

Not so much a concoction or weird, but a really bad pre-packaged meal.

My wife and I were towards the end of our two-week BWCAW trip in 1983 and supplies were running low. We only had a few meals left to chose from. One of the remaining meals was Rice Pilaf Tarragon from maybe Backpacker's Pantry, or possibly a now defunct company who's name I can't recall.

The meal was in a clear plastic bag, which was not designed or intended to be used for reconstitution of the meal, like the more common foil bags/pouches. There also was some preparation required.

After properly preparing the meal, we both dug in. Our reaction was simultaneous. We both could not believe how incredibly bad this entree tasted. Actually, it didn't have much taste at all. Boiled packing peanuts would probably have been more savory.

We proceeded to put the Rice Pilaf Tarragon entree on a plate and attempted to serve it to our English Setter, who would eat anything. Even the dog would not touch the meal. We eventually dumped the remainder of the meal into the fire.

In all the years of eating dehydrated and freeze-dried meals, I've never had such an incredibly unpalatable meal before or since that trip.

Hans Solo

A Fritos and Skittles mix. The only food we had remaining.

quote Buster: "A Fritos and Skittles mix. The only food we had remaining."

A contender, maybe, but the guy I work with lunches out of the vending machines, and he sometimes has a similar combination, along with red licorice.

powdered eggs and diced up uncooked spam, in a skillet, cooked it and it was disgusting. the spam was the better part. left an after taste that reminded me of the fog from fog machines at concerts.
we didn't HAVE to eat this, we had other food but for some reason thought this sounded good. no amount of extra hot jolly ranchers could cut that after taste.

White rice, roasted jalepenos and peanut butter. It was excellent.
Also, spice gum drops with dry roasted peanuts (my mom and dad's card playing mix) very good.

I once ate an early breakfast of cold, left-over lentils, washed down with milk, made from powder. Not too good, but it provided the calories needed for a long day on a long trip.

quote HansSolo: "
Not so much a concoction or weird, but a really bad pre-packaged meal.
Hans Solo"

Spaghetti Marinara. Can't remember which company, but it was in a red foil package. We bought two 4 person meals of it. It had "Flavor," all of it BAD. First was a "Guys" trip and we all agreed it was the worst freeze dried meal ever. The second we kept for years as an extra "Just-in-case-we-get-stranded" meal. Finally pitched it. We would have to have been VERY hungry to get me to open that one!

On our first trip we brought fresh meat for a few days and then planned on having fish for some of the meals. Unfortunately we didn't do very well fishing the entire trip and this particular day it was snowing/sleeting on us all day. We wanted something warm to eat so we fried up mixed nuts in the leftover grease from some jalapeño bacon from the morning.

On our trip last spring my buddy insisted on bringing the ingredients for Colorado bulldogs. I said that's fine if you're going to carry all that stuff. When he got around to making them at our second campsite he asked "who brought the kahlua?" Nobody did. He thought he could substitute Irish Cream for the kahlua and this was the result:



Sort of like a cement mixer shot, didn't look pretty, tasted o.k.

The weirdest 5 days of meals was a week long trip with a Chinese tripping partner. it was a river trip that included a 2 day side hiking trip off the river flyfishing.
During the planning stage he told me he was bringing a asian flair to this trip as revenge from me feeding him MRE's on a weekend trip we had done.
I swear he either sent home for some of the stuff or spent weeks combing the asian stores to gather everything as we had decided to spilt the food packs between the two of us.

That week we dined on mixes of dried squid, shrimp paste, dried scallops, a flattened dried duck, dried sea cucumbers, kelp, dried tofu, dried fungus and assorted dried veggies.

Not necessarily 'weird,' but a favorite recollection of backwoods culinary ingenuity: blueberry syrup for our pancakes made by boiling up some of our very abundant berry harvest with some powdered lemonade. (SOMEONE forgot the maple syrup at home...)

wasn't catching a lot of walleyes on a trip in '99 so we tried white suckers which we were catching easily ...very good

quote fraxinus: "I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we have a winner. Think I'd rather eat a spider than breaded fried Spam with grape jelly.
#:)"

"Will you please pass the grape jelly for my spiders?"

Nothing weirder (or worse) than meals out of the BSA canoe base. Cheap pasta mixed with with MRE "meat" and gravy mix.even worse than freeze dried.

quote Savage Voyageur: "Not food but drink. I was on a trip 20 years ago when our water filter plugged and we had to use chlorine water tablets in the water. We had drinks mixed with warm lake water, chlorine tabs, vodka and koolaid. Tasted like a warm fruity swimming pool. "

That was your excuse to pour another vodka Savage

LOL
Pikehunter

We tried "homeade" dehydrated chicken on one trip and it was not good. It was like eating chicken jerky! Everyone's jaw hurt for two days as we were all too hungry to pass up the meal but it took a lot of chewing to get the chicken to the point where you could swallow it.

quote Ragged: "Stovetop stuffing with Bacon bits..... "

this sounds like it would seriously challenge the idea that everything is better with bacon

I thought I bought oil last week, but I must have left it, but to fry my walleyes I threw in a piece of bacon per guy, got a good grease base going, then used that for my oil. It was awesome, plus each guy gets a piece of bacon with their fillets. I just finished a pack at home cooked in regular oil, and I must say, I'm dying to cook the next pack in bacon again to compare. I may just leave the oil at home next trip. It was good. Not as weird as some others, but more like worthy of further research.

I don't remember anymore what brand it was, but quite a few years ago we had some sort of freeze-dried entree that was a vegetable and meat dish with orzo pasta. It sounded good enough on the labeling and I fixed it according to the directions. I took one taste and made a face; my husband, who will eat anything (seriously--he is "like Mikey", he will eat ANYTHING on a canoe trip!!) took a few bites and sort of slowed down. He looked at me and made a face, too.

We choked down a bit more of it, and finally he went out and dug a hole and we buried the rest of it. We have never done that before or since on a canoe trip in more than 40 years! To this day, when I am in the pasta aisle, I cannot purchase Orzo, and that is silly, because it is just a simple pasta shape like any other. But it brings back bad gastronomic memories.

Other than that, I don't think we make many "weird concoctions" on our trips. We are pretty traditional. We eat well, too well now that we don't go far enough and work hard enough to burn lots of calories.

quote Spartan2: "I don't remember anymore what brand it was, but quite a few years ago we had some sort of freeze-dried entree that was a vegetable and meat dish with orzo pasta. It sounded good enough on the labeling and I fixed it according to the directions. I took one taste and made a face; my husband, who will eat anything (seriously--he is "like Mikey", he will eat ANYTHING on a canoe trip!!) took a few bites and sort of slowed down. He looked at me and made a face, too.
We choked down a bit more of it, and finally he went out and dug a hole and we buried the rest of it. We have never done that before or since on a canoe trip in more than 40 years! To this day, when I am in the pasta aisle, I cannot purchase Orzo, and that is silly, because it is just a simple pasta shape like any other. But it brings back bad gastronomic memories.
Other than that, I don't think we make many "weird concoctions" on our trips. We are pretty traditional. We eat well, too well now that we don't go far enough and work hard enough to burn lots of calories.
"

Heheheh, I don't remember the "Brand," but it was called "Spaghetti Marinara." It was AWFUL! We had two packages and for about 5 years package number two was in the food pack as "Emergency rations" (I always take one extra day's meals). Thankfully, we never needed it and I finally decided to pitch it as I'd rather starve (LOL)!

Middle of January; about 15 degrees with a minus 10 or lower wind chill. Last day of a 7 day river trip. We huddled around a small fire we built in a pit, left by a huge sycamore tree root ball, after the tree fell into river. We were trying to get out of the wind.

We took everything we had left; heated it, cooked it, and ate every bite of it. Cream of wheat, a handful of gorp, and a package of strawberry kool aid. Actually it wasn't that bad.

BOB

Last night before coming out my first trip... Red Beans and Rice with walleye in it. Prior to that one morning for breakfast it was powdered eggs and walleye fresh caught that morning. People we tripped with would put walleye in anything. I do have to say though I ate it and enjoyed it.


Bruce

Last spring with my dad, who HAS to have dessert while camping, and we tried to make chocolate pudding. It wasn't "instant just add water" but I didn't see that when I bought it. We needed milk to help it set up, and my dad was DETERMINED to have chocolate pudding. So decided to add log cabin syrup and try that....nope. then he dumped in one or two hot chocolate packs, that helped a little but the syrup was already in there. It tasted bad, really bad. The texture might have been worse. It ended up getting buried.

A experiment: Asian fish stirfry, it was supposed to have rehydrated chicken but that got left behind so we caught a trout and fried it up with a little soy sauce and in it went. That meal is now a staple for trips.

Last night of the trip, boys were very hungry. Items left in the dining bag included large whole wheat tortilla shells, several pouches of Mountain House Rice Pilaf, Tabasco and a stringer of fresh walleye in the lake. Naturally we fried up the walleye and created walleye rice pilaf burritos. It nearly came to fist-a-cuffs when I pointed out that after everyone had at least 2 (these were GIANT burritos) that I could only make one more. The 3 college boys offered to wrestle each other for the last one but the Dad's unamiously suggested a best of 7 game of rock-paper-scissors was a better solution. The victor ate his spoils with pride and happiness. The fire ring gathering later that night was, well shall we say, fragrant.

quote thebob.com: "Middle of January; about 15 degrees with a minus 10 or lower wind chill. Last day of a 7 day river trip. We huddled around a small fire we built in a pit, left by a huge sycamore tree root ball, after the tree fell into river. We were trying to get out of the wind.
We took everything we had left; heated it, cooked it, and ate every bite of it. Cream of wheat, a handful of gorp, and a package of strawberry kool aid. Actually it wasn't that bad.
BOB"

Heheheheh, I bet even the Spaghetti Marinara would have been passable in those conditions (LOL)?

Found out too late that I had added copious amounts of Arnold Palmer mix to my oatmeal instead of the brown sugar.

A strange but delicious concoction was macaroni noodles, peanut butter, and curry powder.

Two different trips:
1) We forgot oil for fish... boiled them with Tobassco sauce... not too bad and did it again the following year. Not as good as we remembered:)

2) Forgot seasoning for our potatoes over the grill. We used Shore Lunch batter and that was okay too:) Dont think we will try it again though.

A raw onion and the last few swallows of whiskey. All that was left. Delicious!

A few years ago we ran short on shore lunch. The first concoction was perch battered with Red Lobster biscuit bannock mix. The second was baked walleye basted with Taco Bell fire sauce and covered with onion slices.

quote Wables: "A few years ago we ran short on shore lunch. The first concoction was perch battered with Red Lobster biscuit bannock mix. The second was baked walleye basted with Taco Bell fire sauce and covered with onion slices. "

This and hwdhusky's account reminded me of once when I forgot my "Fish packet" of lemon pepper, oil, Martha White Hushpuppy mix. Grilled Northern and smallies, coated liberally with butter and salt, was pretty darn good. Never tried it again, though

Two things come to mind. The first time I ever had chicken of the woods was in the BWCA, my cousin brought some and I had to guess what it was...took me a while, but is delicious.

Another "weird" meal I recall was years ago...my girlfriend and I decided to make a last minute weekend trip and we wanted to go light so all we brought to eat was a couple packs of ramen noodles and a bag of Pecan Sandies. I put everything in a small cooler along with my single burner dual fuel Coleman stove which had just the right amount of gas to cook two packs of ramen noodles.........and soak into the Pecan Sandies like a sponge. Yuck, took about a week to get rid of that taste, but was a good lesson not to pack the stove with the food.

quote ozarkpaddler: " Grilled Northern and smallies, coated liberally with butter and salt, was pretty darn good. Never tried it again, though"

We've done SMB fillets sauteed with squeeze parkay and salt & pepper. Thought they turned out quite fine.

Mac and Cheese mixed with hashbrowns with cut up bacon chunks stirred in. Turned out so good we've made it an entree.

Had an onion and a bottle of parkay squeeze left on the last night so made fresh caught crawdads in a boil/sautéed thingy. Wasn't too bad.

Tang mix and milk--we call it MING!

quote Ozarker: "Sometimes the last day of the trip can make for some odd meals. We've used that day to put together all the left overs from previous meals into a "soup" of sorts."

That's why I have gumbo as the final evening meal of our upcoming trip. Leftovers aren't left over anymore when they are in a steaming bowl of gumbo!

quote Wallidave: "wasn't catching a lot of walleyes on a trip in '99 so we tried white suckers which we were catching easily ...very good"

Most "rough fish" are pretty good. Carp are good. You just have to prepare them properly: once filleted, v-cut on both sides of the lateral "mud vein" and remove it. You are left with some fine fish.

In the clean waters of the BWCA, I'd have no concerns about eating carp. A carp caught in the Mississippi in the southern portion of the state?--not a chance! Then again, I wouldn't eat a large walleye from those waters, either.

quote Ozarker: "Sometimes the last day of the trip can make for some odd meals. We've used that day to put together all the left overs from previous meals into a "soup" of sorts."

Yeah...we call it slumgullion.

yes our last meal before we head out from a 6 day base camp trip. everything gets mixed together. some were better than others ;)

quote shock: "yes our last meal before we head out from a 6 day base camp trip. everything gets mixed together. some were better than others ;)"

I think a lot of people do that. Call it paddlers delight or some other name.

I planned a breakfast of grape nuts/ dehydrated powdered banannas, and peanut butter spread on English muffins toasted over the fire. It was okay, but not good enough to make again.

Bumpity-bump-bump

Along the lines of Pinetrees recent thread

brantlars: "A raw onion and the last few swallows of whiskey. All that was left. Delicious!"

Stomach on fire! yikes!

spottedowl: "I thought I bought oil last week, but I must have left it, but to fry my walleyes I threw in a piece of bacon per guy, got a good grease base going, then used that for my oil. It was awesome, plus each guy gets a piece of bacon with their fillets. I just finished a pack at home cooked in regular oil, and I must say, I'm dying to cook the next pack in bacon again to compare. I may just leave the oil at home next trip. It was good. Not as weird as some others, but more like worthy of further research."

I had a similar situation. It evolved into bacon wrapped walleye! It gets made twice per trip now.

Popcorn with the pancake syrup.

campnfish: "Popcorn with the pancake syrup."

that would be awful sticky?


Any new recipes tried in this category?