Post
by CapSmashy » Sun Jul 24, 2011 8:36 am
If you are not used to camping and cooking, it can be a bit daunting. Fast and easy food are the Mountain House dehydrated meals for backpackers. You can get them just about anywhere now, including Wal Mart, although their selection is limited. A good sporting goods store with a big camping section should have most of their menu including breakfast stuff. I can not vouch for their breakfast selections, but their lunch/dinner entrees are good. Boil some water, pour it in, wait 5 minutes and you have a hot delicious meal. Go buy a couple and give them a try at home.
Other suggestions:
Canned foods: Beef stew, hearty soups, raviolis, tuna, salmon, roast beef, chicken, veggies. If you are solo camping, get the small, pop top cans.
The tuna and chicken salad snacker kits are pretty awesome and fast to make. Open up the packages at home and you can usually pack several of the kits into a single ziplock bag to cut down on packaging material.
Prepackaged stuff: Precooked bacon. Rice and noodle mixes of every flavor of the world. These are usually heat and eat kind of dishes. They are typically high in sodium, but if you are hydrating and active, you'll sweat most of that out. Instant mash potatoes, just add water and poof, mashed tater goodness. Also available in numerous styles from plain to loaded baked potato.
Snack packs of nuts, almonds, peanuts, dried fruits, beef jerky, precooked bacon, etc.
Breakfast foods: Instant oatmeal mixes, precooked bacon, if you have a cooler, eggbeaters, double bagged in the cooler work well.
Spices: pepper blends, garlic, herbs, etc. If you are doing a lot of canned and prepackaged foods, you will not need to add any salt to them.
With this being your first year, you will want to have fast and easy to prepare meal items. I went for hours running around seeing stuff and having fun and the "Oh shit, I'm fucking hungry" would be damn near overpowering when it hit.
And remember, if it tastes okay at home, it will taste like Alton Brown showed up and cooked you dinner out in the desert.
For your kitchen set up:
A single burner propane stove. For about $20, you can get the kind that has a burner and a base and you simply screw the burner directly onto one of the 1 pound cylinders and put it in the base. Very stable and reasonably efficient. Bring enough camping propane cylinders to plan on changing it out every other day even though you will never use this much. Extra is better, running out is bad.
A 2 qt nonstick saucepan with a lid, an 8 or 10 inch nonstick skillet with a lid. A measuring cup for water. A couple of serving spoons and a spatula. A can opener. Quart sized ziplocks. A couple of rolls of paper towels.
If you are a coffee drinker, you can go instant (I recommend Maxim brand from Korea over stuff like folgers) or get a mug topper, one cup coffee maker that uses filters and ground coffee or a french press. French press can be messy to clean though.
When making a meal, think about the ingredients you like. Taking a package of Zataran's premade jambalaya rice and dumping in a can of chicken or tuna and a can of mixed veggies makes a hearty meal that is ready in about 5 minutes. Eat it straight out of the pan. A package of instant mashed potatoes and a can of roast beef mixed together.
If you are going to have a cooler, bring a box of one gallon ziplock bags. When you get back from your ice run, separate the bags of ice into the ziplock bags and put them in the cooler zipper side up. This keeps your ice melt clean and your cooler from turning into a soupy mess by the end of the week. Save a few of your water jugs for pouring off the ice melt from the ziplock bags. Use this for cooking, clean up, bathing etc.
For clean up in the pans and cooking implements, wipe off remaining food residues (use quart bags for leftovers in the cooler and you can reheat later), add water tot eh pan you used, bring it to a boil and stick your spoon or spatula in the boiling water to sterilize it.
Playawaste Raiders cordially invites you to suck it.
And don't store it in the tent or car . . . but somewhere in the shade. Some folks keep it in the cooler, but you've got to keep it out of the water, which I don't enjoy trying to ensure.
mmmmmmmmm 
