Recipes

About

The design of this recipe was the result of some serious thinking on my part as to how we could meet a bunch of requirements for our winter outdoor lunch:

• The food has to be hot. Eating hot food on a cold day can make all the difference between miserable and satisfying.

• The meal has to be quick to prepare, both at home and on the trail. We don't want to spend a lot of time with preparation the night before and nobody wants to stand around long in the cold waiting for their food to be ready once on the trail.

• The meal needs to promote hydration. We have found that it is easy to not consume enough liquids when exerting ourselves in cold weather. In the cold, we just don't drink as much or as often as we do in warmer weather.

• The food needs to be energizing, delicious, and nutritious. Having food on the trail that everyone looks forward to is a huge benefit to family morale. Because this recipe is made with green tea, the extra kick really helps to perk people up for the afternoon.

This recipe has turned out to be a home run in our house. Everyone in the family now looks forward to our winter trips just to be able to eat this meal. The bonus for me is that I can have lunch prepared and packed for our family of five in about 15 minutes.

Gear Requirements

• A backpacking stove, suitable for cold weather use in the conditions you will be out in. We currently use an MSR WindPro stove with the canister inverted.

• A light-weight pot, big enough to boil about 1.5 cups of water per person. We have a GSI Halulite 2L Boiler.

• A light-wight plastic food storage container (with lid) for each person, big enough to hold 3 - 4 cups. We've found Ziploc 4 cup storage containers with screw-top lids work great for this purpose.

• A spoon/fork/spork per person. We like our color coded (one for each person) sporks.

• A water container/bladder for carrying enough water to prepare the meal (about 1.5 cups per person). Our's is a MSR DromLite bag.

Ingredients

• Cooked brown rice, 1 cup per person

• Cooked beans, 1 cup per person (any bean will do, shelled edemame is absolutely delicious, tofu cubes work good as well)

• Shredded carrots or cabbage or both, 1/4 cup per person

• Dried nori, approximately 1/2 a sheet per person, cut into small strips

• Miso paste, 1 teaspoon per person

• Soy sauce, 1 teaspoon per person

• Furikake, any flavor (optional), sprinkled to taste

• Sesame seeds, 1 teaspoon per person

• Japanese matcha or sencha green tea powder, or 1 green tea bag per person.

Preparation At Home

In each person's storage container, add all of the above ingredients in the amounts specifed except the green tea. If you are using green tea powder, add 1/2 a teaspoon of powder to each container. Close the lids firmly. If you are using tea bags, put all of the tea bags in a separate Ziploc bag.

Preparation on the Trail

Boil a pot of water, enough to prepare 1.5 cups per person.

If you are using tea bags: once the water has boiled, add all of the tea bags and make a large pot of green tea.

Open the containers of food and add hot water (or prepared green tea if using tea bags) to each one. Stir well, making sure all of the miso paste is mixed thoroughly.

Enjoy!

Notes

The standard recipe size is good for an adult, but may be too much for a child depending on how old they are and how well they can pack-it-in. You may have to adjust as appropriate.

This meal can be super-easy to prepare if you have the cooked rice and beans on-hand. We always make a little extra a couple of days before the weekend so that we are well prepared.

Green tea rice is a traditional japanese meal. It is typically made with white sticky rice, green tea, and furikake. This version has been spruced-up a little to make it more nutritious and add additional calories.

About

Unfortunately this photo does not do these bars justice. They are very good and easy to make. We make them at home for a special dessert sometimes and also make a batch each weekend for our hikes. They are a great "treat" for the trail.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups raw cashews
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/4 cup dried fruit - raisins, prunes, cranberries, apricots
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 2 teaspoons ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preparation

Place cashews in food processor, process until cashews are ground into a course flour.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Add a little water if too dry.

Scoop out of processor and pat into a small container. Refrigerate and let set a couple hours. Cut into small squares and serve.

Notes

The photo above has molasses added so it looks darker than this recipe.

Getting out each weekend takes effort and preparation. Now that we have figured out the right gear needed and each child can pack their own bags (with a cursory review from Dad to just make sure they have what they need) the main work of getting ready for a hike is preparing food.

Preparing everyday food takes a lot of time around this house. Eating healthy whole foods that protect our bodies from disease and fuel our activities does and should take time to prepare. But if it takes too much time we'd never get out the door so we don't want that either! We mostly resolve this time crunch by preparing easy, one-pot meals - both at home and for the trail. But by easy I don't mean packaged. Here is the food routine that we currently use for our hiking days and it is working very well for us so I thought I'd share it here.

Breakfast

Because we like to be out the door anytime between 6 and 9 am (depending on how far we have to drive) we have started to pack breakfast with us. In the summer this meant blending a fruit and nut smoothie before leaving, putting it in a large canning jar and drinking it either on the road or when we arrived. The kids would also pack a little bag of mixed nuts, dried fruit and sometimes whole-grain cereal flakes (a treat around here) to eat along the way if they wanted more sustenance.

Smoothies just don't cut in during the chillier fall months though. Instead we're eating baked apples with a nut and dried fruit crumb topping. For our last family hike I prepared this dish the night before, put it in the fridge and then baked it for one hour before we left the next morning. I wrapped it up in my quilted casserole carrier and kept it at my feet in the car until we were ready to eat it. I dished it up and we ate it while driving.

Another good whole food option is granola but we don't eat a lot of it because it takes a few hours to prepare and Damien can't eat gluten. It also usually involves milk (dairy-free or otherwise) which is one more thing to manage on the road. For a camping trip this summer I prepared this easy (& delicious) muesli for our early morning departure. The kids managed the addition of soymilk better than I thought.

Lunch

This one used to always perplex us. What do you pack for lunch when you don't want to eat bread because a) it's refined even if it's whole wheat, and b) one family member is gluten intolerant? Add to that we choose to mostly avoid meat and cheese, traditional sandwich type foods. We finally decided that we'd eat what we already eat a lot of at home - rice & beans!

When Damien gets home from work on Friday night he puts a pot of rice on to cook. Earlier in the day I try to remember to get some beans cooked but if not there's often some kind of cooked bean or lentil in our fridge. When the rice is cooked Damien puts it in a portable, sealable container (right now we're still using plastic unfortunately). The beans he mixes up with either salsa, pasta sauce or chopped tomatoes and spices. Those he packs in a separate container. The next day on the trail we eat rice topped with bean sauce. Super easy and inexpensive. We also pack a piece of fresh fruit for each person.

For variety we sometimes have baked beans (homemade or store bought) and rice cakes, brown rice crackers and sometimes even bread for the kids and I. But those options are all either more costly or processed - factors we are trying to minimize as we make adventure a lifestyle.

Snacks

We snack often while hiking. The kids pack a little bag the night before with nuts, dried fruit and anything else they can rustle up from the pantry (you can be sure they don't find any chocolate chips in there!) for their own personal snack bags. In addition Damien prepares easy nut bars that we eat during our hiking breaks. To read more about the breaks we incorporate into our hikes see setting the pace.

Sometimes, especially if the hike is particularly difficult we pack a bar of fair trade, slave-labour free chocolate (and I'm not trying to be all hoity-toity here, eating chocolate that is slave grown is not cool). It's amazing what a little square of chocolate does to motivate! Even better though is hiking during the summer months when wild strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and then blackberries are in season. Munching on these morsels is such a special treat.

Supper

This is where it gets fun. We eat out once a week at our house and this is the night we do it. So, I'm sorry I don't have an easy supper recipe for you. Ideas that come to mind though are crockpot meals, leftover soup, or stews prepared in the pressure cooker. In our family we save our meal out (most often at our favorite, cheap local thai restaurant) for our hiking day. This gives everyone a break.

Do you have any whole food, vegan, gluten-free ideas to share? Please feel free to contribute.

For more trail & camp recipes check out our Backcountry Recipes page.