Look into survival food.

Also military food packs can be interesting. Many come with heating pouches.

Seasonings for fish if fishing is part of the plan.

A Solar cooker can be interesting.

dcarch

Fantastic Foods has some great dehydrated stuff for camping. Instant refried beans, tortillas and cheese, supplemented with fresh produce toppings. Dehydrated hummus (or falafel), tabouleh and pita bread, also supplemented with fresh produce. Instant brown rice and vegetable soup, topped with parmesean and sundried tomatoes, along with tuna pate on pita or flatbread. Tomato paste in a tube. Lentil soup with presoaked lentils and a veg. soup packet. Fried apples with brown sugar and cinnamon. Mac and cheese with aeseptically packed milk. Soups in those cardboard boxes, there are some great ounes out there by Pacific brand, Campbells and even V8 makes them. Rye crisp with cheese spread. Those are some of my camping standbys. Along with wine, good bread and good chese and some fresh fruit. Smoked oysters. Marinated artichoke hearts. Kippered mackerel. Fantastic foods also makes I think tofu burger mix which you can mix up with boxed tofu, and chili in a box I think. There are also now great boxed Indian and Thai dinners, along with Zatarains rice and bean mixes (although these are SALTY!) and Middle Eastern pilaf mixes. Carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, squashes are all relatively hardy for a trip. Cabbage, cauliflower. That and tofu and you have the makings of a GREAT stir fry or vegetable stew. Season with tomato sauce and fake bacon bits. Nothing beats oatmeal for breakfast, except for maybe a pop tart which I can justify if I'm out exercising all day. Otherwise avoid like the plague, two of them are 400 calories!

Speargun for sashimi!

We used to go on sea kayaking trips in Baja, out to remote beaches and deserted islands. The guy who led the trips would trot off with his speargun and come back with a quivering fish. We'd eat it then and there, no soy sauce, no wasabi, no utensils. 'Twas great.

For more conventional camping food, the kayaks could haul a lot of weight, but we'd usually have 80+ lb of water (no fresh water on those islands), so there wasn't that much payload or volume left for food. We pretty much cooked and ate backpacking food. Well, maybe a teensy bit better than backpacking food. But we'd have towed your kayak 10 miles for some bread, fresh fruit, artichoke hearts and kippers.

That is why I canoe.

Salad, steak, ice in my drinks.
Even a lawn chair for camp!

Canoes for the win!

Oranges are one fresh fruit which can withstand a battering in a stuff sack. When I went on backpacking trips oranges were a real treat.

Dried fruits such as prunes, apricots or peaches can be eaten as-is for a snack or cooked up with water, which makes them a nice accompaniment for oatmeal at breakfast.

Lpink's suggestion of Zatarain's rice and beans products is a good one. Inside the box they are packed in sturdy pouches. It's hearty food and foolproof to prepare. Middle Eastern brand instant couscous comes in several tasty flavors and is super easy to prepare.

I tried one of those Indian foods in a pouch recently. It was good but the portion would be skimpy for a hungy paddler.

I used to take canned Danish bacon on backpacking trips. Haven't seen it in years. Spam might taste pretty good at the end of a long paddle in the wilderness. Don't laugh.

I had a plastic egg container which protected eggs very well.. Eggs keep without refrigeration for a while if the weather is cool. Nice with fried Spam or canned corned beef hash.

There are many kinds of canned seafood I enjoy -- sardines, mackerel, clams, oysters, octopus, etc., etc. Not all would appeal to everyone.

For variety, you might want to consider a few fragile items stowed in sturdy containers.

Jim

Thanks everyone,
I'll work with those great ideas. Keep them coming.

John,
How long ago did you kayak in Baja? Your guide wasn't by any chance Ed Gillette was it? He was a guide on one trip we took in Baja... he was an amazing paddler... the only person to solo kayak from California to Hawaii.

Indeed. I took a few trips with Ed and he taught my first paddling class. This was when he had his shop, Southwest Sea Kayaks. Ed was (is) a special person. I believe he teaches high school now.

This was in the early and mid '90s. I've also done some kayaking off California, in Puget Sound and a bit around Oregon. We bring our kayaks to Lake Tahoe every year. We have folding boats, so they can be transported easily. I stick to sheltered waters, bays, and close-in now. I don't do it enough to feel competent to go out into the open ocean.

I knew it... It had to be Ed. So we did that trip in 1999. It was one of our honeymoons. But DS kayaked with Ed on a number of trips in the late 90s, crossing from San Pedro to Catalina and circumnavigating Catalina, and also in Baja, circumnavigating Guardian Angel Island. It's a small world!

If you ever get to So. Cal, come kayak with us, we have plenty of boats, so you don't have to bring your own! Our 10-yo son now has his own boat and is paddling open ocean... but close to the shore... with us.

Last year I was responsible for feeding 6 people dinner on a 41 mi. 3 day/2 night kayak camping trip. The key for me was freezing the meals ahead of time. To ensure there wouldn't be any safety issues with the food, I did a couple of dry runs prior to the trip.

Dinner #1: marinated chicken chunks frozen in individual foil packs. The packs were defrosted and cold in a small soft sided cooler - 6 pack sized, stowed just past my feet - when we stopped 23 miles later . Fresh veggies (hard ones - onions, zucchini, etc) were chopped and cooked in foil on site. Yum.

Dinner #2: Chile - frozen in ziplock bags & stored in soft cooler w/ice (stowed behind seat). It stayed cold the entire time and actually still had a few ice chunks in it when it went in the pot! Garlic bread on the side. There wasn't a drop/crumb left. :)

Any longer than 2 nights/3 days and I would look at rice dishes. I have a great recipe for Jambalaya that could be used w/ smoked sausage. Hmmmm, maybe next year... :)

Thanks, all, keep 'em coming. I'm getting inspired.

dcarch - somehow I knew you'd have a gadget idea. LOL:) Have you used a solar cooker? I've not, but I'm thinking that might be tough, since for the most part, you're on the water through the main part of the day. It would work well in hot climates, like the Baja trip John mentioned. There, it was best to kayak from sunrise (or before), then stop during the heat of the day. I'll have to do some research before I can write about it. As for the MREs and other survival packets... I'm trying to stay away from the completely ready-made options... that takes the fun out of the cooking part!

lpinkmountain - I checked out the Fantastic Foods website. I think they have a lot of what I'm looking for. Core ingredients that can then be made your way. I like that they have bulk products as well.

jimster - I forgot about those egg protectors. Yes, they work pretty well. By the way, my trick with the Indian food pouches is to use them more as a base sauce, first cook items like onions and cauliflower, then add couscous and cook that, then stir in the sauce. We use those as instant dinners at home, not just camping. As for spam, ds loves spam musubi, so maybe I'll feature that as a recipe.

bumble-doodle, I'll keep the suggestion of the soft-sided cooler and how to use it (got to find one that fits well in a dry bag and then in the kayak storage area.) But in general, I'm not one for having any raw meat on a trip. Too many chances for spoilage... now that Jambalaya recipe with smoked sausage... definitely!

You can take cooked or uncooked meats camping or kayaking pretty safely if you can get them frozen in a commercial freezer, ideally a medical freezer.

Home freezers freeze food at -15*, maybe a little lower. A commercial restaurant freezer can pull it down to -30*.

I have access to a medical freezer in a vet office that goes down to -45* It also freezes thing really, really fast.

Some medical freezers go down to -65* but they also hold Ebola and stuff so you might want to think about that while defrosting, eh?

Anyway, a bag of chili or shortribs frozen to minus 45* then put into a cooler is still frozen 4 days later, in the heat of summer. Anything you put right next to it will also freeze so I wrap the ziplocks in newspaper to prevent that.

We have a normal, homeowners upright freezer and a small commercial chest freezer. I can't tell you how nice that is. It was under $200 at a bailiff sale and I already had the pick up truck to haul it away. So, less than a normal chest freezer.

It does consume some electricity tho. But the food savings far outweigh that.

spacific, no need for a dry bag w/ the coolers. Both of mine had a plastic insert so it didn't matter if they were sitting in some water at the end of the day (and they were!). The inside never got wet and the outside dried super fast. The only raw meat I had was the frozen chicken, which was consumed on the first night. I only felt comfortable bringing it because I did some 'testing' a couple of times before the trip. The chile was completely cooked before being frozen.

metaxa, funny you should mention having other items freeze if they come into contact w/ the bags, as it happened to us. I'll have to remember your newspaper trick. :)

bd, metaxa - will definitely do a discussion on frozen foods, thanks for your tips. So many choices for kayak camping meals depend on the length of the trip and the climate and conditions. It's always a tradeoff. But I'm learling alot from the discussions.

In trying to think of alternatives to canned bacon (great, but no longer available I think) and Spam (not fancied by everyone) I thought of two possibilities.

First is canned corned beef. It's shredded like the stuff used in canned corned beef hash, So it's quite different from and nothing like corned beef from the deli. However it may have possibilities as a camping food. I wonder what a Ruben sandwich made from it would be like. Never tried it.

The other is canned ham. It's still available isn't it? It should be OK for most of the things we use ham for.

Speaking of Ruben sandwiches, we used to get a very sturdy whole grain German bread which held up well to backpacking. It was a lot denser than what I normally like. But, in the outdoor air after vigorous exercise, it was good.

Jim

Jim - there are some shelf-stable, precooked bacon choices out there. I haven't tried them, but I've heard reasonably good things about them. A small canned ham works just fine if you're feeding a group.

Most people recommend pita bread and tortillas for the bread component. But yes, those really dense pumpernickel or rye breads could work too... I'm thinking a Ruben breakfast sandwich... canned corned beef, fried with scrambled eggs (or eggbeaters), topped with swiss cheese and mustard (not sure about sauerkraut first thing in the morning) on an openface toasted slice of rye. yum...

Canned goods were invented for those situations. Today we have the luxury of lighter weight plastic and foil pouches. I see tunafish, oysters, even cooked hamburger in foil pouches.

Nuts, dried fruit, dried meat (jerky) you probably already thought of. Potatoes wrap in foil and will cook nice in the coals of a campfire. Dry beans don't weigh much... bean soup cooks fine over a campfire. Traditional travel foods were often pickled, salted, or dried. Ziplock baggie of green olives?

A whole fishing pole is not needed... some line and a couple hooks and some lead shot sinkers? Bait is found under rotten logs and layers of leaves. People were spearing fish for thousands of years before line fishing was invented... pin it to the bottom then reach down with your hand to grab it.... does take some practice as light refraction makes the fish somewhere other then where you see it. Pour salt on that leech and it will let go... btw it will make fish bait.

When I was young went camping up in the artic circle with not much more then beer and pancake batter... ate fresh caught fish until I was sick of them. The variety of the modern world is such a luxury! Being familiar with edible berries and plants can help give variation... one decent puffball mushroom can change a meal for the whole group. A half handful of wild raspberries flavors a pot of oatmeal. Know what you are eating... all puffballs are edible but that toadstool might give you a trip of another kind.

Salt! Don't forget salt... potatoes, beans, and oatmeal are all better with a pinch of salt in the pot. Dried hot peppers are nice because they take little space and pack a huge flavor... black beans and cayenne peppers!

So the bannana or apple got mushed... cut it up into the oatmeal in the morning. Part of the adventure is making do and being creative. Dump corn bread batter in the bottom of the cooking pot and set it over the fire... bread!.. got a jalpeno in it and it is good bread. It does not have to slice nice... scoop it out with a spoon and eat it in chunks.

A plastic bottle of brandy makes an emergency antiseptic, reduces bug bite itch, and passes well around a campfire.

Oh... and a ziplock baggie of lard! Lard won't leak out if the baggie gets a hole. Fish and potatoes fry well in lard. Worst case you could eat the lard to stay alive if stranded.... lots of calories. My grandma took lard sandwiches to school as a young girl... 90 years old now and still skinny as a bean pole.

Biggest thing I remember about teaching boy scouts was nobody knew how to build a fire. Even the scout masters were pathetic fire builders. No lighter fluid or gas... you don't want to get burned bad far from help. Practice at home building a small campfire with dry grass, finger sized dry twigs, and finally thicker chunks of wood. Fire grows from grass, to matchstick twigs, to finger sized, to wrist sized, to arm sized, to logs. LOL... I remember the idiot scout masters pouring lighter fluid on whole logs thinking they would catch fire. One year a scout named Rick squirted lighter fluid on a fire and the can exploded... he lived but is still ugly 30 years later. Beauty is fleeting but ugly is forever....

If you can't build a wood fire you will need a propane camp stove... don't run it in the tent no matter how cold!... carbon monoxide.

Bunnyman ---
I could make a year's worth of articles on your thoughts. But best of all, what comes through loud and clear is "do with what you have". It's sometimes easy to forget that simple thing with all the gadgets and convenience foods available for "roughing it".

My trick for roasting potatoes and corn in the fire is since it works best to cook them after the fire is down to glowing embers, cook them after dinner and use for breakfast hash, not dinner. Simple thing, but you can get awfully hungry waiting for those potatoes to cook for dinner!

Ahh, yes, leeches and mosquitos... the great Michigan outdoors! We used to keep the salt shakers down at the beach at my aunt's cottage for that very reason!

Like the baggie of lard idea.