More about ICO

There are several factors to consider when planning and preparing meals for ICO trips. These factors are as follows:

Allergies & Other Food Limitations
Ease of Preparation in the Field
Cost & Weight
Quantity
Taste
Packaging, Instructions
Storage

I’ll take each one in turn, plus some additional topics, below.

Be aware that any effort you put into finding and preparing tasty and nutritious meals will not be wasted. So don’t switch into Cup O’ Noodle mode simply because it’s easy and does not challenge your culinary skills. It’s not that every meal must be gourmet; it’s just that good, nutritious meals will seem gourmet in the backcountry. And well-fed campers are usually happy campers.

Allergies & Other Food Limitations:

Kids and adults on any outing may have food allergies or other limits on what foods they can or will eat. On many of our outings, you will not have the permission slips that list food allergies until the day of the outing, so, for meal planning purposes, I maintain a database in Microsoft Works that lists food allergies as reported on permission slips from previous outings. If you have Works, I can send you the file; otherwise, you can simply ask me to check the database for you. Common allergens are pork and pork products, peanuts and peanut oil, and shellfish.

It is also worth considering whether there are non-allergy limitations on what foods participants will eat. For example, for ethical and/or religious reasons, some folks do not eat meat; there is at least one such person amongst us. Others, like me, cannot digest lactose (milk sugar present in milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, whey, and other milk-derived products). If a recipe calls for milk or a milk-derived product call me so that we can discuss possible substitute ingredients; these days there are soy-based ingredients that are excellent substitutes. Because these are not “allergies”, they won’t show up on permissions slips; thus, when possible, it’s a good idea to ask fellow trip leaders and participants, “What foods will you not eat?” This will pick up the full range of dietary limitations, including food allergies.

Importantly, leaders should completely avoid foods to which any kid on a given outing is allergic. When it comes to food allergens, it’s not enough to simply plan two recipes for a particular meal (one with the allergen and a different one without) because even small quantities of an allergen (such as residual peanut oil on a knife later used to cut an apple) can trigger an anaphylactic response (if the person eating the apple is allergic to peanuts, in this example). In the field, it’s just too difficult to isolate food allergens, so it’s not worth the risk of including any in any of the meals that will be served. Also, if you’re buying freeze-dried food for an outing, be sure to check the ingredients for allergens and other off-limits ingredients; ingredients are usually listed on the manufacturer’s website.

It’s also important to thoroughly wash all pots, pans, and utensils before an outing to ensure that all such allergens have been completely removed from the cook gear that will be used on the outing. Do not assume that the last group adequately washed the cook gear before it was returned to storage – chances are that it was washed in the field in less-than-ideal conditions.

Ease of Preparation:

The less difficult it is to prepare a meal in the field, the better. Meals that can be prepared in a single pot are ideal. Meals that also don’t burn easily on a camp stove are even better. Meals that take a long time to cook (more than ¾ hour) should be avoided.

Also, consider what additional cook gear the group will need. For example, if you’ve planned spaghetti, you’ll need to figure out what will be used to strain the spaghetti from the water. It is worth considering, also, whether the additional gear needed to prepare the meal is so heavy and bulky that it’s better to pick a different meal. In the case of spaghetti straining, though, we’ve got a small, light-weight utensil that does the job well.

Cost & Light-weight ingredients

As most you surely know, good-tasting, light-weight freeze-dried foods are now widely available for backpacking. These meals, while easy to prepare, can be expensive and bulky. It is, however, often possible to find cheaper freeze-dried ingredients in the bulk food sections of natural food stores like Wild Oats and Whole Foods. It is also easy to dehydrate almost any food at home. I have two dehydrators that can be borrowed at your convenience. There are good books on food dehydrating available at your local library, at bookstores, and online. If you borrow one (or both) of my dehydrators, you can also borrow my book on food dehydration.

One common ingredient that can be hard to find is powdered eggs. Powdered whole eggs can be purchased through Amazon.com and, directly, here:

http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=631&HS=1

All manner of seafood is now sold in sealed aluminum packets available at most major grocery store chains. Asian markets are also a good source for ingredients that require no refrigeration, but stay away from food imported from China. China has a very poor food safety record.

I have a backcountry oven that can be borrowed for any outing. It’s best to practice with this device at home before trying to bake bread in the field. Hot biscuits are a real treat on a cold morning in the backcountry.

Quantity:

It’s not a bad idea to plan an extra serving or two into at least one meal per day, particularly if you have reason to believe that this meal will be popular with (or at least not objectionable to) the participants.

Taste:

You can satisfy some of the kids all of the time, all of the kids some of the time, but you can’t satisfy all of the kids all of the time. So do your best, but don’t beat yourself up if one or more of your meals aren’t a hit with the kids.

If you can, have the kids help select meals. On daytrips, I’ll even take ‘em into the store with me at the start of the outing and, then, have them select their meals as a group. This is a great opportunity to teach them about nutrition and green consumer choices, both topics often not taught at home (especially to boys).

Bring along lots of snack food as insurance against unpopular meals.

Packaging & Instructions:

Ziplock plastic bags in various sizes are key to packaging food in a space-efficient way. In packaging food in this way, it is important to remember that you’ll need to bring along any food preparation instructions that will be needed in the field. You can print these instructions on a 3 x 5 card (with a Sharpie or other permanent marker). In so doing, avoid cryptic abbreviations that the kids may not understand.

When you’ve got lots of meals and some meals that are in multiple bags, a good numbering scheme is needed. My system is simple: each meal is numbered by the day of the trip on which it will be eaten. A letter indicates which meal it is. So lunch on the second day of the outing is marked, “2L”. If the ingredients for the meals are in four bags, I mark the bags, “1 of 4”, “2 of 4” and so on.

Cooking oil should be stored in a small, unbreakable plastic bottle and double-bagged. Otherwise the stuff gets everywhere.

Storage:

On many of our multi-day outings, meals for the entire group will need to fit into bear canisters such as this one:

http://www.rei.com/product/738570

Apart from lunch and dinner on the first day of a multi-day trip, everything must fit into our bear canisters when this is the method of food storage being used. If food will be stored in bear canisters on an outing, borrow the bear canisters as you assemble and prepare the meals so that you’ll know if all of the food will fit.

When loading the food into bear canisters, load the meals in reverse so that the meals you’ll eat first are near the top of the canister.

Check & Double-check:

On a multi-day trip, it’s easy to lose track of all those little bags of ingredients. Thus, it is important to check and double-check that you have assembled and packed all of the ingredients for each meal. Spaghetti without the sauce can be a ghastly business as I learned on one trip when our leader forgot the sauce and the salt.

I usually spread the bags for each meal out in a grid on the floor before packing them into the bear canisters.

Sourcing Food:

It’s not a bad idea to buy locally-produced, organic food, when possible. Peanut butter, raisins, and grapes should always be organic because these foods have high residual pesticides otherwise. Meat should be fresh, hormone-free, raised without antibiotics, and in humane conditions. Fish should, ideally, be from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “green list”:

http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/content/media/MBA_SeafoodWatch_WestCoastGuide.pdf

Of course, it may not always be possible to find ingredients that meet all of these criteria (particularly fish, given that only a few types of fish are available in foil pouches). The idea, of course, is to make the best choices we can under the circumstances, and, in so doing, show the kids how consumer choices matter to the environment.

Software & Books:

As I mentioned in our conference call, I use computer software in meal planning. This software can be downloaded here:

http://www.accuchef.com/

The great virtue of using software is that you can adjust the recipe automatically for the specified number of servings. It also makes it easy to share recipes over the internet. I have attached to his email a library of backpacking recipes in the file format used by this software. If you already own recipe software, I can probably export my recipe library in a format that your software can read. If you find a recipe that is popular with the kids, please share it with the rest of us so that we can add it our own library of backpacking meals.

Finally, in your quest for tasty, light-weight, inexpensive meals, I can recommend two books:

http://www.amazon.com/Lipsmackin-Backpackin-Lightweight-Trail-tested-Backcountry/dp/1560448814

http://www.amazon.com/Lipsmackin-Vegetarian-Backpackin-Christine-Conners/dp/0762725311