Bushwalk Australia

I'm doing an 8 day section on the Bibbulmun Track in November with 2 friends that enjoy walking but are never too keen on the food that I typically bring (usual bushwalking fare tuna, dried stuff, mus bars, scroggin etc.). Although they eat what I plan (and don't complain) I'd like to take a surprise food 'luxury' to bring out on the evening of day 5 to improve the morale of the party.

I'm after ideas for some food luxury
-that I can hide in my pack easily
-that doesn't weigh a tonne
- that will keep for 5 days
- sweet or sour, cook or non-cook
- that will lift the spirits of 2 foodies who have been deprived!

Any ideas on what other people have done?

A handful of snow peas or a whole cucumber (sliced when ready to eat) can last for several days, and provide a great fresh crunch that is very inspiring after a few days of bland food. Have these on mountain bread for lunch with cream cheese, or on the side of your hot evening meal.

Chilli chocolate. . . . mmmmmmm

Jar of caviar. If you want a bit of decadence go the whole hog

Mountain bread and cheese. Fry it in yr pan for toasted cheese sandwiches.

Never done it myself, but have been with others who have and was very very very very jealous.

arrr... a whole hog... saddleback of course

If you have a food dryer, i have a killer hamburger recipie .. hardly gawmay, but no one stops to think as they woof them down

You could have a go at a variation on "Carabonara"
300 g San Remo Angle Hair Spaghetti (cooks very quickly)
200 ml Devondale Long Life Thickened Cream
Small Pkt grated Parmesan cheese (the one that you dont need refrigerate) I think the pkt is 100g
About 30 g of Ghee (keeps better than fresh butter)
1 Large Fresh Egg or a large tablespoon of Farm Pride powdered egg mixed with 3 tablespoons of water
About 100g of Pancetta or Rind-less Bacon in a Vac Pack
Good pinch Paprika
Ground Black Pepper
Fresh or Dehydrated Parsley.
Cut Bacon into thin strips fry till crisp add cream and paprika
Add to cooked Pasta with Ghee and egg and 1/2 Parmesan toss over low heat till combined add pepper serve sprinkled with the rest of the Parmesan and parsley
None of this weighs much and would be easy to hide in your pack .

Suggest you try it at home first
corvus

Go to an Indian Grocer and look for MTR brand 'ready to eat' meals. They are lovely indian curries with about 30 different varieties. They are in foil pouches but not freeze dried. You boil the pouch and cut the top open and nibble away. You could boil some rice to accompany. If you dont want to waste water, you can actually pour the contents into a pan and cook it. I use the pouch boiling water for post dinner pot cleaning.

i love these things. one of my best ever camping food finds. They are pretty cheap to, ive seen them on sale for .99 cents, but individually they range from 1.50 to 2 dollars per meal.

ILUVSWTAS wrote:Mountain bread and cheese. Fry it in yr pan for toasted cheese sandwiches.

Never done it myself, but have been with others who have and was very very very very jealous.

Bush cheese toasties! I like that idea! Will definitely have to give this one a try.

you can cook up some pancakes or pikelets with abit of jam

cdg wrote:Go to an Indian Grocer and look for MTR brand 'ready to eat' meals. They are lovely indian curries with about 30 different varieties. They are in foil pouches but not freeze dried. You boil the pouch and cut the top open and nibble away. You could boil some rice to accompany. If you dont want to waste water, you can actually pour the contents into a pan and cook it. I use the pouch boiling water for post dinner pot cleaning.

i love these things. one of my best ever camping food finds. They are pretty cheap to, ive seen them on sale for .99 cents, but individually they range from 1.50 to 2 dollars per meal.

Yeah these are great, several good vege varieties, you can boil 3 types in a billy, add rice and you'll have a great feed for 3 or 4. Bit hard to do papadums though.
I sometimes take a big polish sausage, eggs and pumpernikel bread for a mega fryup, bit heavy and fragile though.

Maybe just stash a couple of juicy apples, awesome on day 3 or 4

A jar of homemade basil pesto is amazing, just pasta and the fresh taste of the pesto yummy. If you are lucky enough to catch any fish or shellfish cook and add these to make a restaurant quality meal

doogs wrote:A jar of homemade basil pesto is amazing, just pasta and the fresh taste of the pesto yummy. If you are lucky enough to catch any fish or shellfish cook and add these to make a restaurant quality meal

Yeah, I've done this with pesto and pasta, added chopped salami, and a handful of pine nuts, and it's a fantastic meal that's very easy to prepare.

My favourites are...

Fresh Pesto (I could eat just this for a week or more!) and the pine nuts of course
Smoked chicken - a nice treat now and then and you can get it vacuum packed
Chocolate coated coffee beans!
Real bacon - in a big chunk not rashers - it will also last for quite a while in muslin.

http://ourhikingblog.com.au/food-to-go might have a few more ideas

Best meal I've had was a freeze dried wild mushroom risotto ( forget the brand, but made in tassie by a bushwalking chef) with fresh trout from lake nameless last year. Late afternoon looking over the lake from ironstone hut. It was the last afternoon of my week long solo walk and fish in the blue peaks area and after a week of what could best be described as "variable" weather the hut felt 5 star as did the meal!!!

ILUVSWTAS wrote:Mountain bread and cheese. Fry it in yr pan for toasted cheese sandwiches.

Never done it myself, but have been with others who have and was very very very very jealous.

Along these lines, i have a mate who has a few times made pizza on her trangia, with mountain bread topped with a pasta sauce of some sort, some salami, mushroom, capscicum etc, whatever was handy. then topped with some cheese. base crisped up nicely and the cheese melts well and she becomes the envy of the rest of the walking party...

I love Big-Sister pudding with UHT long life cream. It is absolutely CHOCKERS with calories, but all you have to do is boil it for about 15 mins in water; (Hey you did say luxury) and you have enough pudding for 3 - 4 people and a desert that will make you sob with happiness.

When I was counting trees on the Errinundra Plateau aeons ago, one of the blokes was a chef, in his previous profession. He would cook the most simple bush meals ever ... Phil the gourmet geographer I called him.

My favourite dish Phil cooked was Field Mushrooms (at Woolies they're Flat Mushrooms) poached in Stones Green Ginger wine, with a bit of garlic and pepper and chilli, as a sauce on pasta. We would wait all day for that meal. In a good week we would have it every day. There is plenty of fresh Mountain Pepper, Bush Pepper, found on the Errinundra.

I certainly second, the Tasty Bites Indian meals available at Woolies. Bombay Potatoes and Jaipur Vegetables, are both first class and very affordable. Pre mix something like an Indian flat bread mixture at home, a Poori or a Lucchi and just whip up the dough prior to dinner and with bit of oil fry small flat breads in the Trangia frying pan. A complete Indian meal. Don't forget to buy some dehydrated plain rice.

As a snack, dehydrated watermelon is one of my favourites. It is watermelon on sugar steroids. When the watermelon is dehydrated, it releases copious amounts of flavour. You don't need to eat much to feel satisfied. I found this on a US chef's site, who specialises in recipes for hikers.

Warren.

Spaghetti Bolognaise, I think this is a luxury for every main meal, and or maybe even every lunch


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw1biAa2oeg

Yummy pasta

Cheers.

Chocolate pudding topped with oranges and passionfruit.

The pudding is the powder one you get from the supermarket, and make it with powdered full cream milk (won't work with skim milk powder), then top it with pieces of orange I've dehydrated at home, and a fresh passion fruit - light to carry and lasts just fine in the pack for a few days.

Well if they are good foodies then all you need to have with you is some some fresh garlic, fresh ginger and some dried chilis. They may even help you out with the cooking.
Dried porchini mushrooms (from supermarket) will help plush out basic foods which are add water heat and eat.
If you like them a lot then you could get a little bit of truffle oil in a small plastic bottle with a little bit of truffle in it $$$$$$.
If they are good and strong and you can have a camp fire then wrap some potatoes in foil (noramal and sweet), then from supermarket get a smallish marinated lamb roast and take off all plastic coatings and wrap it in about 7 layers of foil. Freeze the lamb before you haed off so it can come out of your pack on night 2 and then let them cook a roast slowly over a small camp fire turning the roast every 5 mins.
This goes down well especially if a 2litre goon bag of red is stowed in the packs.
Marty.

For a snack I suggest dried mango or paw paw. It's cheap, light, keeps and is sweet and yummy! Great for after dinner.

Oh another goodie is to have de-hydrated some baked beans before you go and for breakfast you re-hydrate them the night before in a ziplock bag.
Also carry in a chunk of bacon or Kaiser meat (a supermarket version of bacon type pork meat with lost of fat on it).
Slice off chunks of the Kaiser meat/bacon and fry them up on the bottom of your pan/pot then add the baked beans (hopefully now re-hydrated) to warm up and finish off the re-hydrating. Serve hot with fresh coffee and also onto toasted crusty bread things from supermarket (they are round slices of toasted bread - very dry and will soak up extra moisture if you muck up the re-hydrating a bit).
Yum I can tell you this smells o good in the morning for breakfast your friends will love you.
Unlike what happened to me the other week on the South coast track where one of our party did just that. Not only on the first day but also on the forth morning.
If I was much much bigger and stronger I would have hijacked his breakfast. It smelt so good.
Marty.
PS I got home and now have de-hydrated some baked beans ready to go....

I think it's going to have to be at least a little bit heavy to qualify as a luxury food, otherwise why not carry it all the time?
Really expensive caviar would be an exception to this.

The indian (and thai) food in foil pouches (e.g. Tasty Bite) are just as good dehydrated/rehydrated as they are "fresh", so no point in carrying the weight of those (unless you don't have a dehydrator or the time to dehydrate them).

Pesto is not a luxury item; it's a staple. And it isn't heavy either since it has so much fat (if made properly).

Fresh fruit or an avocado are my usual choices. I've never carried these five days into a trip though.
Beer, wine, champagne are probably too heavy so what about a really fine whisky?

What about oil popped popcorn? It isn't heavy (I usually carry enough to have every other night).
But most people I encounter are suprised by it.

I just got back from 6 days in the Walls, we had Creme Caramel for our last night as desert. Just some packet mix thing, simple to make, super light to carry, set in the cold waters of Chapter Lake. YUMMO!

Nothing like a hot chocolate muffin after 4 or 5 days on the track. Separate a packet mix into individual portions and store in snap lock bags. Make a foil double boiler for your pot (before you leave home). Construct the double boilder in the field. While you are waiting for the water to boil, add water to the muffin mix and mix it in the bag. Put the bag straight into the pot or transfer the mixture to small mold. Stem for 10 minutes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43818052@N00/6884892560/in/photostream
Enjoy!!

Some Canadian girls I met on the NZ Stewart Island shorter circuit prepared a great luxury dessert...

Cut some small slits in a banana, and bury some pieces of dark chocolate under the skin towards the centre... wrap in foil and either steam in a pot or bake on the coals.

The baked banana and chocolate sauce combo is REALLY delicious, the smell when opened had the whole hut drooling

Tilleyman wrote:Some Canadian girls I met on the NZ Stewart Island shorter circuit prepared a great luxury dessert...

Cut some small slits in a banana, and bury some pieces of dark chocolate under the skin towards the centre... wrap in foil and either steam in a pot or bake on the coals.

The baked banana and chocolate sauce combo is REALLY delicious, the smell when opened had the whole hut drooling

Sometimes you read a recipe and you go "oh yeah!!!" and this is one . Desert is always a bit of a challenge to get something special, "healthy" and reasonable on weight. This ticks those three boxes.

Cheers

Next week on our hike one of our desserts will be pancakes with homemade lime butter on top! Have also made crepes with nutella and banana.