If not taking a stove?
Nunan Iqua
Recommended cold camping foods?
system
#2
Rolled oats work in cold water with nuts and raisins and some powdered milk if you want. Tortillas pack well and last about a week. Cheese or peanut butter go well on tortillas, or cured sausage if you eat meat. Instant mashed potatoes and refried beans reconstitute in cold water with a little extra time. If you can find dried hummus, that’s good on crackers or tortillas. Fig Newtons are good. Corn chips are good with refried beans.
You can eat well without cooking, avoiding junk food and overly processed crap. But you can also add in Snickers bars and Little Debbies, if you want.
Garlic
system
#3
When I don’t carry a stove and pot, I feel better about carrying more fresh food. I try to bring one fresh vegetable a day, even if it’s just a carrot or stick of celery. I think that has done more to keep me healthy on long trails than anything else I’ve ever done.
Garlic
system
#4
Without a stove you have two choices for meals; dehydrated ingredients and prehydrated ingredients. Dehydrated foods are usually prepared with water and heat, but without a stove you’re using water and time. They taste fine but I haven’t used them very much when I’ve gone stoveless.
Prehydrated meals are just regular foods; fruits, veggies, yogurt, cheese, breadstuffs (including tortillas), cold cuts, hummus (not dried), guacamole, leftovers from town meals, etc. These foods “keep” fine in a backpack. If you think the food will go bad, maybe because you’ve been in the desert too long, just sit down and eat it fast. Problem solved. Also, you’ll learn some tricks to extend the life of foods, like wrapping cheeses in cheesecloth (or a bandana) when it starts to sweat. Or bringing the avocado stone along in with the guacamole to keep it green longer. I don’t know how/why this works, but it does.
Prehydrated foods can be heavy. I’ll say that again; if you go this route, your food bag will be heavy but your kitchen will be lights. Leaving town, your backpack could be heavier than before. Arriving at town, it will be lighter. It’s a trade off. Speaking of kitchens, when you cold cook, your kitchen can be almost nothing; half a plastic 2 qt. milk carton as a bowl, a small knife for chopping, and a plastic spoon as a utensil. If you are a little hesitant with this rig, you can pack a cold cook kitchen that doubles as an emergency situation hot meal kitchen. Just bring a small Ti pot, a piece of aluminum foil as a pot lid, a few Esbit tabs for fuel, and a dried soup packet and a tea bag. I carried this emergency set up for the length of the PCT and I never used it once for hot food. Though I did use the Esbits to help start campfires on a few occasions.
Here comes the recipe that changed my cold cooking lifestyle. If I hadn’t invented this template for my dinner meals, I probably would have given up and gone back to my stove. I’ve eaten a form of this meals for hundreds of dinners in the back country and I still love it, it never gets old. This is just the template, feel free to go crazy with variety. Here goes:
FAB FOUR BURRITOS!!!
Summary:
What The Beatles were to rock n’ roll, these burritos are to camping dinner.
Ingredients/musicians:
John Lennon = meat. This can be as simple as a foil packet of tuna, salmon, chicken, shrimp, clams, beef, etc. Or it can be as easy as buying sliced roast beef from a deli counter. Or it can be as complicated as left over beef brisket from a BBQ restaurant. The point is—meat.
George Harrison = hummus. There are many, many flavors of hummus prepackaged in small plastic containers in decent supermarkets all over the globe. If you can’t find hummus, use salsa, tahini, guacamole, or cottage cheese instead. Once in a pinch, I used dijon mustard.
Paul McCartney = cheese. I like pepper jack best. Any solid cheese will work, even a crumbly kind like feta. The denser the cheese, the more it will last. If you freeze the cheese when you are in town, it will last longer. If you see mold, just cut that part off (except for blue cheese, that’s all mold). Swiss cheese is lighter (because of the holes), but it takes up more space in your pack. Even parmesan packets from a pizzaria will work.
Ringo Starr = vegetable. Sorry Ringo, but the drummer is the veggie. I like broccoli, snap peas, green beans, celery, carrots, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, whatever.
And the last ingredient is tortillas (or any other breadstuffs). You could say that the tortillas = “the love of music” that kept The Beatles together (for a while). Or drugs. Or hairstyles. Or their British herritage. The truth is, it is not a perfect recipe analogy. But it is a perfect meal.
Directions: Cube the vegetable and cheese. Take a tortilla and cover it with hummus, then add the meat, veggie, and cheese (a popular variation at this point is too add some more flavor. Soy sauce is good. So is BBQ sauce, Mexican hot sauce, curry, peanut sauce, coconut milk etc.). Then fold it shut. Eat it. Enjoy!
Conclusion: What makes this meal special is every time you get to a town, you can buy different types/flavors of these five ingredients. Don’t eat the same burrito for two weeks in a row (or ever) and you’ll never get sick of it. Once in a rare while you will purchase and use some horrible ingredient that doesn’t work. It clashes with the other Beatles and causes the whole meal to taste lousy. This ingredient is called Yoko Ono. It will be different for every backpacker. If you encounter a Yoko Ono ingredient, just write it down on your sleeping pad in Sharpie so that you never buy it again. Problem solved.
space monkey
system
#5
Garlic and Space Monkey: Excellent suggestions, both. The tortilla idea came up in both your posts, and that’s the real gem. But, everything proposed is good. Thanks.
Nunam Iqua
system
#7
Look at www.trailcooking.com for ideas. Although the directions are for adding hot water, cold water will work for recipes using dried refried beans, instant rice, ramen noodles, and couscous.
Mix dried refried beans and instant rice. You can add spices or packets of salsa/picante sauce or even catsup. It takes about 30 minutes to fully rehydrate. Then eat with tortillas.
Instant rice, nuts, dried fruits, powdered milk can be breakfast or dessert depending on if you add sugar.
Fantastic Foods is the maker of the dried hummus. They also make a vegetarian taco filling that will rehydrate with cold water.
Actually, I like the new OroWheat sandwich rounds better than tortillas. They were fine after a week in my pack, they are softer, more filling, less dry than tortillas. Tortillas are the best if you are using a bear canister.
Turtle Walking