All Is Fare in Camping Cuisine

I’m no gourmand but I do appreciate a good meal, particularly after a day of all-out exertion. On short trips and in cool weather, this isn’t too hard to achieve. But what do you do when your trip is measured in weeks rather than days, the schedule doesn’t leave time to break out the chef’s hat, and the mercury is busting through the top of the thermometer like in an old cartoon?

There are options for quick meals that won’t have you schlepping massive loads, using several pots or wondering if your fresh food is going to liquefy before you get a chance to devour it. A couple of months ago, My family planned a hike in Pukaskwa National Park in Ontario. We had to carry seven days of meals for a family of four. My husband and I would be doing all of the heavy lifting. Here’s how we made it work.

Breakfasts were oatmeal, oatmeal and more oatmeal. I dehydrated some fruit to throw in and jazz it up, but the kids found it less than jazzy. Some packaged bacon that didn’t need refrigeration was a nice treat, and powdered eggs taste fine when piping hot, but a little less so as they cool off. Basically, we’re going back to the drawing board on breakfasts.

Lunches were on the fly with no stopping or cooking. We opted for good old-fashioned gorp, rice crispy treats, cured sausage, jerky and energy bars. With this stuff, we’re good to go.

And for the main meals there was no getting around it, we would be eating freeze-dried dinners. I first tried one of these meals over a decade ago – a somewhat mushy, yet still crunchy bag of salty brown stuff that made me swear off them in perpetuity. So I reluctantly went exploring in the food aisle at MEC in Toronto, but I was pleasantly surprised by the choices available. They sounded like real food, but would they taste good and cook up easily like the packaging promised?

Consider me a convert. Dinners were fabulous, there wasn’t a dud in the lot!  Some people find pre-packaged meals to be too salty, but to stretch out the portions without adding too much weight, we added a cup of instant rice to add to each. The rice rice balanced them out perfectly. And each one was the correct consistency, neither mushy nor crunchy. Granted, we were tired and hungry and that may have boosted their tastiness. But regardless, we’re making up a list of our favourites and testing new flavours for our three-week canoe trip next month.

Including drinks, meals (26 of them!) and snacks (there may have been some candy thrown in) we tipped the scales at a total of 10kg.  For our canoe trip we can bring more weight and will have more time for meal prep. So I’ll be breaking out the Outback Oven to satisfy mid-trip cravings for pizza and coffee cake, and poring over our collection of camping recipe books for inspiration. When things get tough, when you really need it, it’s nice to know there’s a piping hot bowl of Thai satay with beef just minutes away.