On my late fall solo, I took along some gravy mix in a ziplock bag to have over fry bread for breakfast. I rehydrated the hamburger, boiled 1 1/4 cup of water (according to my directions on the ziplock bag) poured the water, hamburger, and "gravy" together and let them heat by the fire while I fried the bread.

When I got done with the bread, I noticed the "gravy" was, well... STIFF. Should have been at least pourable. I added some more water, stirred it, then added more water till it would pour, took a bunch more. I broke up the bread into my metal cup, poured the "gravy" on and then found out it was instant potatoes.

Not exactly what I expected, but since I hadn't had anything hot to eat for two days, I dug right in. It wasn't bad. FRED

I can see that labeling your Ziploc bags could be a factor.

In the end you "dug right in, it wasn't bad". I do most to all the cooking for our group. I swear, they will eat almost anything and call it good. Something about the wilderness setting.

The "gone wrong" is something I'll readily admit, but tend to forget the specifics fast, such as "Spring Wing Turkey".

"Bent recipes", is a term I like better. Such as a pancake meal at Road America. I normally carry Bisquick Complete packaged mixes for general baking. Grabbed a pack from my supplies to accompany the eggs and bacon, mixed with some milk and proceeded to produce a stack of cakes for breakfast. My son mentioned something did not smell right, and looked at what I made.
Bisquick Complete Cheese Garlic Biscuits, produced odd flavored pancakes with maple syrup. Very different!

butthead

Label the ziplock bag??? I did sort-of-kind-of label the bag. Writing how much water to add is labeling, right?? This year I will try to remember to write what is in the bag along with how much water to add. A person can make these "bent recipes" when your soloing but it could get you fired with a group, yeah right. Ken I love that term "Bent recipes". FRED

Camp Cook is like Judge... it is a lifelong appointment, and you can't be fired.

I was preparing some freeze dried meals on my most recent trip. I grabbed two large water bottles of filtered water, one that I mixed peach lemonade in and one for the freeze dried meals. I grabbed a pot and added 5 cups of water, brought it to a boil, split it between the two freeze dried meals, stirred them up good, sealed them and put them in cozies to "cook". I grabbed my peach lemonade and went and sat down and took a nice big sip. Plain filtered water.

I enjoy cooking at home but don't care what I eat when I'm in the woods (where, to me, everything tastes good). Once, in an effort to add some variety, I tried to make a tuna dish with foil tuna, some noodles, some powdered milk, a little hot sauce, a dash of lemon juice, etc. It wasn't good.

In fact, it turned out so bad the consistent reminders of its failings many years after the attempt have forced me in recent trips to relegate myself to dishwashing duty, in effect forcing my tripmate (who will most certainly read this post, and who couldn't cook Hamburger Helper on a Thermador range if Peter himself required him to do so in the hope of passing through the pearly gates) to do the cooking. As I said, I don't care what I eat in the woods.

But I do hope he stops complaining about that lumpy, overly spicy, oddly citrusy burnt tuna noodle dish I once made. Sound like a deal, Brent?

On a backpacking trip on the Olympic Peninsula once, I brought "manifold burritos" for lunch:

Ham, mustard, diced onions, and swiss cheese rolled in tortias and then in foil. I made them the day before. When we stopped the car for lunch, the plan was to set them on the hot exhaust manifold on the motor to heat up into melty goodness.

The car we were in, however, had a much more compact engine bay and didn't have a suitable place to heat up the burritos. They few bites that were eaten were mostly cold: and had been saturated overnight with an amazingly strong flavor of raw onions.

Philmont 2016, after a long hard day on the trail we were all looking forward to the evening's dinner - Jambalaya. Unfortunately we tossed the packaging with the directions a couple days earlier to try to cut down on bulk and weight. Turns out, the jambalaya was a traditional preparation... boil then simmer for a half hour or so. We tried to prepare ours "the Philmont way" and ended up with partially rehydrated beans and crunchy uncooked rice. To say it was nasty would be a compliment to the chef. That was probably the lowest point of the trek, which also happened to be just after the midpoint.

Thankfully I don't believe we've had any disasters in canoe country. There was a homestyle chicken rehydrated meal we made on Ensign that was tasty, but a real mess to prepare.

I just cam across this post and have a mistake to contribute. 12 years ago my son, BIL and nephew had a six day trip. Somehow the food bag did not get packed. 100% my mistake. Oddly in a last minute haste I tossed a box of cream of wheat in my pack. My then nine year old son loves to fish. The others were less experienced with fishing. We ate fish and/or cream of wheat for each meal for six days. It also rained four of the six days. All the fish was cooked without oil, seasonings or breeding. The cream of wheat was eaten plain.

Steve...That is not a bent recipe that is a real screwup. If that would have been my crew [my sons] I would have had to sleep with both eyes open and a knife in my hand. I admit I have forgotten some things on trips but the worst is the jerky, yours was way worse and then to get rained on nearly everyday, very sad, very sad indeed. Sounds like the fishing was pretty good though. Thanks for sharing, welcome to the board if someone else didn't beat me to it. FRED

I do a bit of baking in the backcountry and have fouled up a few bathes of things over the years. With uneven heat it is easy to burn or under cook baked goods. But they still taste good when you are hungry.

FOG51: "Steve...That is not a bent recipe that is a real screwup. If that would have been my crew [my sons] I would have had to sleep with both eyes open and a knife in my hand. I admit I have forgotten some things on trips but the worst is the jerky, yours was way worse and then to get rained on nearly everyday, very sad, very sad indeed. Sounds like the fishing was pretty good though. Thanks for sharing, welcome to the board if someone else didn't beat me to it. FRED"

My son still asks if the food got packed. On occasion he will ask to see it.

Fortunate1: "I just cam across this post and have a mistake to contribute. 12 years ago my son, BIL and nephew had a six day trip. Somehow the food bag did not get packed. 100% my mistake. Oddly in a last minute haste I tossed a box of cream of wheat in my pack. My then nine year old son loves to fish. The others were less experienced with fishing. We ate fish and/or cream of wheat for each meal for six days. It also rained four of the six days. All the fish was cooked without oil, seasonings or breeding. The cream of wheat was eaten plain."

I would have lost a lot of weight. Mom used to make cream of wheat weekly, for 9 people, By warming the milk and cooking it on the stovetop. It was occasionally lumpy, too thick, too something, a lot of the time. I still can't eat it.

The couple we went with last time brought a dehydrated soup mix from a farmers market. I watched her make it and thought something did not look right. The directions called for a LOT of water. It took forever to boil, and I just new it would be pretty thin. I was hoping it would thicken up as it rehydrated. Nope. Even after adding extra veggies was like drinking hot water with a few veggies floating in it. Good thing I had an extra dessert along.

I'm always looking for recipes I can dehydrate or adapt for long term camping. Sometimes I dehydrate a whole meal, sometimes I use components that are dry store bought mixed with home dehydrated items. I try to be creative each year & add to our favorites. I decided a cheesy pasta with broccoli from knorr/Lipton would be a good base, add additional dehydrated broccoli and ham would be a good protein. I read about people dehydrating strips of deli ham. So I made the whole dish at home with the fresh deli ham & it was good. I went ahead & rinced & dehydrated the ham, it came out crunchy like chips & tasted fine. Previously I've always tried the whole meal beginning to end at home. So..The chips of ham only half rehydrated & were awful..like hard and yet slimy, made the whole dish salty..and it was very broccoli forward. Never did that one again...and I went back to trying meals from beginning to end.

Also, diced shrimp doesn't rehydrate very well...it's like chewy, shrimpy, fishy erasers.

And there was this one time I put dehydrate apples in a fry bread that turned into a gluey mess...that then burned.