Speaking of Food

[Ingo]

OK, so here's a Hail Mary...

2 things we've brought before and can't find now:
(1) Ham in a pouch, like the tuna pouches. Doesn't require refrigeration.
(2) Precooked bacon packaged as 6 or so slices. Everything is packaged as 12-15 slices now, which may be a bit much for two of us. Last trip we got a box that had 2 separate pouches of 6 (or so) slices.

Can't find in any grocery store down here (N.C.). If anyone sees them in a store in MN or WI, please let me know what chain and we'll try to find on the way thru. Otherwise we'll probably end up with creamed Spam on rice (I have found Spam in a foil pack) and pancakes w/o bacon. Our best supper last trip was creamed ham on rice so we really want to do that again .

Thanks for any help!

[philranger]

I know you can get the bacon in Wisconsin. Madison is the home of Oscar Mayer. Not sure of the ham in a pouch.

[fonixmunkee]

I know that pre-cooked bacon isn't with the other bacon in the freezer area around here...

[Ingo]

Yeh, I can get the precooked bacon around here, just not packaged small enough! Not sure I want to carry around an opened package w/o keeping it cold.

[sgerbs]

Do you have the store Aldi down by you? The one here has packages of the pre-cooked bacon and they're not huge packages (I don't remember how many slices, but I'm thinking 10). Also, my wife and I took some summer sausage with us to IR this year, and even though it says to refrigerate it after opening, we obviously were not able to. We made sure to eat it in two days, but we did not have any ill effects. So you could potentially keep the bacon in your pack without problem just as we were able to do with our summer sausage.

[DonNewcomb]

Bacon, ham and sausage were invented as ways to preserve meat in the days before refrigeration. Same goes for cheese and milk. The old timers used to store bacon and ham on the shelf. The difference is that those products were thoroughly cured. This removed much of the water (and weight) and made the product rather tough to chew. It also made the product much more expensive. If you buy the right type of bacon, ham, cheese or sausage it should not really need to be refrigerated, particularly in a cool climate, like I.R.

[rxgac]

you can get spam in a pouch. lol. but, it is amazing how something you probably wouldn't consider at home tastes sooo much better fried in camp. i didn't bring it, but when some was offered i didn't turn it down.

[DonNewcomb]

you can get spam in a pouch. lol. but, it is amazing how something you probably wouldn't consider at home tastes sooo much better fried in camp. i didn't bring it, but when some was offered i didn't turn it down.

It's an acquired taste. Some of the ships I've worked on had Hawaiians in the crew. Spam is very popular in Hawaii, so fried Spam was a regular at breakfast. I doubt I'd ever carry it backpacking. It has too much water and weighs too much.

[Ingo]

We'll be trying WI grocery stores tomorrow, but we'll probably end up with the Spam backup. Not worried about weight, since it will spend most of the time in a canoe (heck, we're carrying boxed milk!)

[ScoutDad]

I recently tried dehydrating deli ham. Cut in slices, it was easy to add to different one pot meals, and in the morning it's like crispy bacon.

The directions are here...a great website... http://www.backpackingchef.com/dehydrating-meat.html I made the 'pumpkin pie' fruit leather/bark from this website too...good stuff!

[DonNewcomb]

I just tried dehydrating then rehydrating pasta & sauce. I read that pasta can be cooked then dehydrated and it won't need to be bolied again, just add hot water. It worked pretty well but I think the pasta needs to be over cooked (really soft) before it's dehydrated. I dehydrated my favorite pasta sauce (Mezzetta's Porcini & Portabella) like fruit leather. It came back pretty well but next time I must remember to spray the plastic tray with oil first. It was OK but the sauce lost some flavor.

[Don_P]

Hey Don, we actually go al dente on the pasta before we dehydrate and it works out perfectly. The pasta rehydrates well and is no longer al dente (I like my pasta well-cooked).

[DonNewcomb]

Hey Don, we actually go al dente on the pasta before we dehydrate and it works out perfectly. The pasta rehydrates well and is no longer al dente (I like my pasta well-cooked).

Hmmm. Well, I just have the one data point and my al dente pasta rehydrated to a sort of chewy state. I may need to experiment some more with different pasta. This was using farfalle (bow tie pasta).

[Don_P]

The pasta type may be an issue - we use penne, elbow macaroni or wagon wheels (for the kids - that's my story!). Is bow tie pasta "bunched" such that the middle is thicker? That would have an impact. What is your re-hydration method? We boil water, add the pasta and then let it sit in a pot cozy for 10 minutes.

Here is a picture of my pot set-up. The silver "disc" is a piece of closed cell sleeping pad wrapped in foil. I set the pot of boiling water on that, put the lid on, and then cover it with the homemade cozy. Even after 15 minutes the food is extremely hot. Weight of the pot and cozy is 6 ounces.

[DonNewcomb]

Yes, farfalle looks like little bow ties; bunched in the middle. I might try fusilli (little spirals) next time. My single experiment I tried what we'd like to do on the trail: Bring water to a boil and pour just enough over the dehydrated pasta and sauce to rehydrate, stir and wait. This would be the most efficient method for conserving fuel and water. The better procedure from a culinary standpoint would be to reconstitute the sauce in one pan and boil the pasta until rehydrated in another and pour off the excess water. This would be what we'd do if we were canoe camping. Canoe camping we'd probably cook the sauce from scratch. Your pot cozy looks interesting. We just generally use a pack towel wrapped around the pot.