Isle Royale Forums

The last time I went to Isle Royale was in the mid 80s. At that time, food choices seemed to be fairly limited and we settled on a number of freeze dried dinners and grocery items for breakfast, trail and lunch foods (oatmeal, dried milk, pudding, etc). I am going again in July with my 2 older kids. I have been collecting ideas from this forum on what is good, but I am still searching for additional ideas, particularly for breakfasts and lunches. I most recently went on a canoe camping trip to Algonquin with my son's scout troop, and it seemed the best treat was cheeze and summer sausage for lunch. I have a smoker, dehydrator and vacuum packer; and would think that my opportunities would be pretty wide, but I've searched the internet and don't seem to come up with much for backpacking ideas. Any suggestions would be appreciated (or even directing me to sites which may have good ideas).

Eric

Check out the backpacker.com sub-forum titled "Backcountry Cooking".

http://www.backpacker.com/cgi-bin/forum ... =512107219

Do all of the above mention methods you have available. Smoke some cuts of beef or venison for jerky, dehydrate leftovers from regular meals, store them all in your freezer after vacuum sealing them. I have dehydrated leftovers, and vacuum sealed them. They keep long enough on the trail, after being out of the freezer, to not be any worry of spoilage, unless you're going for months. Spaghetti with meat sauce, chipped beef with spanish rice, turtle stew, shredded carrots, asparagus, all dehydrated; on the trail, boil water, add to my meal choice, stir, let sit for 5-10 min, stir, eat. Pretty much boiling bag cooking. Simple, quick, easy clean-up, doesn't get much easier.
Your imagination is the limit; do what foods your hiking partners and you like the best.

I'm not real big on the Mountain House meals, so I try to make my own. For breakfast I stick to Oatmeal and Couscous with fruit in it (although I have done pancakes and shelf stable bacon). Lunches are generally no cook with tortillas and flavored tuna packages. Dinner is where I usually go all out and make something a little more tasty. I've used the below websites for a bunch of meals.

http://www.trailcooking.com/

http://www.wildbackpacker.com/food/reci ... index.html

Make sure you test them out before you go on the trail though...

I was able to get some ideas from the Backpacker cooking forum, and from the other sites, but don't seem to be able to register and post on the backpacker forum. I am all set for my dinners, and have ideas on use of my dehydrator for breakfast and lunch foods, but a more specific question that I don't seem to be able to find an answer for is if there are any foods that would benefit from use of my vacuum packer. Are there any foods that should or could be vacuum packed which would then extend their useful edible time frame to longer as opposed to ziplock or other means of storage?

There's a lot you can do without resorting to prepackaged camping food. You can do a lot if you have a dehydrator. If you pre-cook and dry pasta products they re-cook very quickly*. You can cook and dehydrate lean ground beef and it will make good spaghetti sauce or soup. Couscous is a fantastic camping food and needs almost no cooking. Always carry some fresh garlic and onion. In addition to keeping the vampires away, it really adds a fresh taste to dehydrated food.


*Commercial pasta actually takes a long time to cook only because it is extruded from high-pressure machines. Homemade and some specialty pasta cooks quickly because the wheat is not packed so tightly together.

www.Cachelake.com has some great fying pan breads and other items. I used some of these on my trip. The sweet potato corn bread is awesome. A small frying pan/mess kit is all you need and a flame.

[quote="RDellar"]http://www.Cachelake.com[quote]

+1 on Cache Lake. I had the no-cook pudding for a nice dessert last week on IR, and the the Chicken Casserole too, which was a lot of food (easily enough for two). I also talked with the guy who comes up with the recipes at the Midwest Mountaineering Expo and he said his goal is to make the meals more condusive to cooking in a JetBoil-type stove (which is what I use all the time).