Favorite Meals on the Camping Tour
 

Alright, I know you guys and gals love to eat! :D
What are your favorite meals while camping on tour?
No fair counting Dominos or your favorite pizza joint! ;)
(We won't be near anything resembling a restaurant.)

I'm trying to put together a meal plan for a group of six cyclists, for three days of touring in Georgia.

Everyone eats different. 3 day tour compared to 3 months tour may be different, but here is my menue

breakfast i enjoy a cup of coffie, instant oatmeal, maybe a bagal. break camp ride till arround 10 am or so stop in a small town diner for a plate of pancakes and water. ride till early after noon eating on the bike fruit and bars i have along. early after noon stop for fresh fruit maybe a sandwich ride till i find a place to camp. dinner is special meal I buy and carry some fresh vegies like an onion, garlic, a potatoe some noodles, a carrot maybe a box of
cous cous, what ever is available then if there is a town near by the camp ill head to a store and get a small chicken breast .
boi up some noodles or a potatoe, or the cous cous, carrots brocklie or what ever i can get. heat up some olive oil add the garlic onion and cut up chicken add the vegies some seasonings and mix it al together and i have my favorite camp meal
some people get real elaborite some just eat out of a can. I met one couple that had a travleing kitchen with them. as craig was setting up the tent his wife diane was making dinner
she made these gormet meals every night.




.

I have found that for shorter trips, pre maid homemade basil pesto is a real treat. All you have to do is heat up some noodles with a stove, combine them, and there it is.
poptarts in the morning and fruit is a great way to start your day.

Plenty of bread, salads and a sh*tload of fruit to snack on (usually bought at local stalls along the way - the best). I usually have a few breakfast bars in the morning, and buy something when I feel like having something different.

I'll bring the wine! :D

My favorite camping meal will always be hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire. :P

But it's easy to make some good soup, too. Bring along some macaroni and cook it...then add some dried veggies (a food dryer is an excellent thing to have) and some chopped-up beef jerky of your favorite flavor. The beef jerky usually has enough salt and spices to season the soup.

Will your trip run you through or near a town everyday? If it does I would carry only enough food to last me till the next town. This way you can look forward to eating a larger variety of foods, food that is fresh, and maybee even try out some fun local foods. IF not Baggels and peanutbutter, oatmeal, and breakfast bars all travel well. For lunches I find that having a lot of high energy snacks at different times during the day makes it easier than stoping for an actual lunch. Things like trail mix, granola bars, fruit, cookies all work well. Dinner go big on if you pass through a town during the day pick up what ever everyone is feeling like. If not to cut down on the amount of space food takes up go to a place like Mt. Equipment CO OP they have many high quality freeze dried meals, that you just ad water to. I am also planning my first long distance trip and from the experience I have camping and from what friends have told me this is the way to go. Have fun! Post when you get back and let us all know how the trip went.

I'm glad someone started this thread. I am curious about some one or two pot wonders and how to make them. I love to cook, but have little experience doing it off the bike. What works?

Dave

Well, here's the menu for now, subject to change:

Day One:
Breakfast on our own before we leave

Lunch Bagels, cream cheese, potato chips, apple

Dinner Tuna casserole with vegetables mixed in, tuna, macaroni n cheese, onion, green pepper, pimento, pear halves w/ cottage cheese. Wine coolers around the evening camp fire.

Day Two:
Breakfast Life serial, or Honey Nut Cheerios, whole milk, banana, boiled eggs, orange juice

Lunch Sandwiches, lunch meat, cheese, lettuce mustard, mayonnaise, potato chips, apple

Dinner Spaghetti, ground beef, onion, green pepper, mushrooms, tomato sauce, salad, salad dressing, dinner rolls, Wine coolers again

Day Three:
Breakfast Life serial, or Honey Nut Cheerios, whole milk, banana, boiled eggs, orange juice (eat hearty, ride safely)

:beer:

Usually when I tour I shop early in the evening for that dinner and next mornings' breakfast. I have alot of variety in the content of my meals but often have the same thing day after day..I am a man of routine. Still...

Breakfast: Bowl of wheaties and skim milk; then I quickly break camp, ride on and grab coffee at the most redneck diner I can find. Gives me good advice about the road to come. Sometimes I will have yogurt; fruit and biscuits/croissants. If I know I am gonna be cooking breakfast and riding a long way before I get anywhere (e.g. the Sierra) I will buy eggs and bacon and cook omelets for those days. I have had no problem carrying eggs and by the way if ya have bread with you you can make french toast!
Of course there is always oatmeal but i try and stay away from the 'boil water and add something to it' syndrome.

Lunch: best ate right out of a grocery store. More bread, peanut butter, cheese, fruit, soft drink. Maybe chips or cookies if I feel the need to go crunch-crunch-crunch. Maybe a small snadwich from the deli if they got one. Try and ask them to give you the smaller end pieces and you'll get a break on the price.

Dinner: Ahhh...nowhere do i part more from fellow bikers than here. I tend to buy a small sweet sausage, fry it up with an onion, tomato, mushroom, and maybe a pepper, add a bit of water and let it stew for a while. The aroma is impossible to resist and it drives politically correct vegetarians crazy. Another possibility is to toss some canned tuna into a small bit of tomato sauce and have it over spaghetti (though boiling the noodles gobbles up precious fuel). When I can't carry meat and must stock up ahead I often have Mac and Cheese (kraft of course) with a can of pork and beans or two. when you are REALLY out there (like I was in my tour of Siberia's Sayan mountains...) I carried canned tuna and dried noodles in quantity.

You can carry an assortment of spices in small film capsules. Replenish them at restaurants or from friendly folk along the way.

If you are traveling predominantly in a settled area (like my tour this summer on the east coast) you might forego cooking entirely and subsist on yogurt, rolls, cereal, sandwiches, and other delightful goo you can buy along the way. You'll save alot of pounds not carrying a stove, fuel, cooking gear and stored food.

In any case try and avoid the 'boil water and add' syndrome that bikers have picked up from backpackers; and make sure ya have plenty of fresh fruit and veggies.


roughstuff

AlphaGeek,
Have you done much camping and camp cooking? I have done a decent amount of each, mostly a few years ago but enough recently for a refresher. In the past I have enjoyed cooking on campouts, including elaborate breakfasts, etc. HOWEVER, let me offer some observations. Cooking on campouts is a pain at best. Preparation is awkward and incovenient, cleanup is worse. The whole process takes a lot longer than in your kitchen. So what, you might ask? Well, I have pretty much decided that if I do any touring, I will SEVERELY restrict the amount of stuff I take for camp cooking. When your start gather stove, utensils, staples, cleanup stuff, etc., etc., you wind up with a lot of stuff to carry.

Don't get me wrong, cooking can be a big part of the experience camping and, I imagine, on a tour. On a two week canoe tour a few years ago I was the permanent cook and it was fun, but there were 13 of us to divide up the other work and utensil/supply load (we took EVERYTHING we needed for the two weeks in the wilderness. Breakfast and lunch were both simple - cereal, pb and jelly sandwiches. Depending on your outlook, preparing the evening meal can be the highlight of the day. If I toured with a group I might have this outlook, but then the chores can be divided and rotated. If I do any solo, I will probably do fresh fruit and veggies, cereal, peanut butter, cheese, etc. and other simple stuff for most meals, stop somewhere for a nice breakfast in the morning, maybe alternating other meals out. Probably take a can of Sterno and something to heat water for coffee, eliminating the stove and other utensils from the kit.

I don't mean this to be a discouragement, just another way to look at things.
Regards,
Raymond

Good point, and for my trip this summer I am not going to cook at all. Bingo: no stove, fuel, or cookware, which are not only heavy but awkward and bulky. I am doing just as you said...breakfast at camp with maybe yogurt or cereal; luck sandwiches out of a store; dinner same thing. I love to have bread and peanut butter anyway. I could afford to lose weight, too.


roughstuff

I tried a no-cooking, no-campfire weeklong camping trip once. By the second day, I had hiked back out and driven my car back to the nearest little backwoods town (10 miles) to buy cookable food--at convenience store prices--and precut firewood (since I had saved myself the weight of carrying my hatchet.) It was a cold, drizzly week, and my granola bars and jerky remained uneaten at the end of it.

If you plan to eat cold food on your trip, take it in the warmest weather, in a warm climate. You would be surprised at how unappetizing a PBJ is after a day in low temperatures (getting lower at night), when you're wet and uncomfortable. And getting up after the night has dropped below freezing and there's ice all over your tent is completely unappealing when you know you will be exiting your toasty-warm sleeping bag to shiver over granola bars....

(And, nothing to do with cooking, but sitting in the dark without a fire sucks when it's still too early to go to bed.)

Anyone have any preferences on camping cook ware? Do you guys use the coated stuff? Steel? Titanium?
I purchased MSR's Ti cookset as well as their Alpine (Steel) to make the comparison before my trip.

Anyone have a dehydrator and use it to make food before embarking on a tour? If so, post some good recipies!

Dave

Can't help with the cookware, since I just use an old aluminum Boy Scout kit I got at a rummage sale. :P

A food dehydrator is great, if you want to make soup or omelets or something like that, you can dry green peppers and onions. Making your own jerky on one of those things can be interesting, too. You should be warned that you must run the dryer for hours, and the whole house will smell like whatever it is you're drying.

I don't advise drying watermelon, though. It gets a really cloying, sick sweet-pumpkin sort of taste. In fact, it's probably easier and cheap enough to buy dried fruit rather than bother making it, unless you want something wierd like dried kiwis, expensive like dried cherries, or if you happen to have your own home-grown fruit to preserve.

I made a couple of wood frames with nylon window screening stretched accross them to fit in an oven. Use the lowest temp and prop the door open. Worked great!

I use a stainless steel pot with a built-in aluminum bottom that distrubutes the heat. It is about 8" in diameter and 6" deep, you can fry in it and boil in it and eat from it. Works great, you do not need a whole cook kit you might add a good sierra cup to this pot. I pack it in my sleeping bag stuffbag it fits like a glove. I have found that dried noodles like top raman work great for pasta and weigh about nothing. Additionally there are a whole host of dried soups in the supermarket the kind that come in the styrofoam cups that you pour boiling water into in order to rehydrate. Throw out the styrofoam cup and put the contents in a zip-lock sandwich sized freezer bag, oh be sure to label it. It's hard to figure out what you have by looking at the contents of a plastic bag. These two items work great with whatever you might add from the supermarket you peddle by as your day's trip comes to an end and if there isn't any supermarket well at least you can make a palatable meal. Hope this helps. Oh by the way I got the pot at Wal-Mart and took the handle off. I use one of those camping clamps to lift it.

Mur