The original voyageurs traveled on a menu of pea soup and pemmican. Today's voyageurs can eat much better and do not have to rely on over-priced and under-flavored freeze-dried specialty foods to do so.
Bring water and salt to boil. Add other ingredients and reduce heat to simmer for 5 minutes. Top with margarine. Serves two.
At home: cook sausage slowly and thoroughly. Drain all fat and rinse twice with scalding water to remove additional fat. Spread on a paper towels and dehydrate in oven or home dehydrator. It is done when it is the consistency of gravel. Store in 1-pint freezer weight zip-lock bag or vacuum sealed bag..
In Camp: Bring a pot of water to boil. Add boiling water to sausage bag and set aside to re-hydrate. Fry eggs (scrambled) and shred cheese. When sausage is rehydrated, top a tortilla with egg, sausage, cheese. Roll tortilla and eat. Note: Fresh eggs will keep without refrigeration for several days if not broken. You can reduce the cleanup by breaking the eggs into a zip-log, and dropping the bag into the pot of boiling water to cook.
For each camper:
Slice cheese. Fry egg and bacon. Build a sandwich.
This is based on the genuine U.S. Army recipe, and was provided to me by John LeBlanc. Everyone who have served in uniform knows what the initials stand for.
Brown meat and add finely chopped onion. Mix milk and water. Add 3/4 of milk mixture to meat and bring to a simmer simmer. Mix 1/4 of milk mixture and flour together in a separate container. Slowly sir into meat mixture. Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer to desired consistency. Stir constantly after adding flour.
Serve on toast or biscuits.
This stuff will make hair grow on your chest.
On the canoe trail I have used home dehydrated ground beef and powdered milk. The taste is a little different, but still good.
For a variety, change the meat. Ham, corned beef, sausage, bacon crumpled up, whatever makes a good change of pace.
Lunch isn't so much recipes as just stuff. Flour tortillas travel well and make a good base for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hard cheeses like cheddar, Gouda, and Edam also travel well. Throw in some summer sausage, dried fruits, and Triscuit crackers. These will provide a simple base with enough variety to satisfy appetites and enough fuel value to satisfy the energy demands of the wilderness traveler.
My dinners come from scouring the supermarket shelves, paying particular attention to the pasta and rice sections, along with the dried sauce mixes. Here are some standards I use.
There are several brands of pre-packaged red beans and rice. Try several at home to see which you like best. In camp, cook according to directions and chop in some summer or smoked sausage.
Betty Crocker makes a nice pasta salad kit. We "fortify" it by adding a can of white chicken meat that we dehydrated at home.
Place one tortilla in frying pan, sprinkle with chocolate chips, cover with second tortilla. Cook until chocolate begins to melt. Flip and cook a few more seconds. Cut into wedges and serve.
Cover apples with boiling water. When re-hydrated, pour off water and turn apples into frying pan. Add margarine and brown sugar and saute over low heat until done.
A friend of mine who is a Scout Leader, turned us on to using Turkey Oven Bags to cook in... They work best for sauces, warming, vegetables, keeping things hot... We've even used them for cooking pancake and blueberry muffin mix.
This method of cooking works best when you have a larger group to feed, 5-8 people, because you will use a larger pot to cook in...
We take a large pot, fill it with water, cook noodles in the water, or use the hot water for soup. We pour the contents of what we want to cook inside the Turkey Bag, close it (make sure you don't have a lot of air in the bag), and set it in the hot water... Food cooks in the pot and in the bag. Turn contents occasionally, especially more dry mixtures (pancake mix, muffin mix).
The bag does not burn or impart a taste to the food or water. Clean up is a snap, no messy pots or burnt sauce. (Contributed by Carl)
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