A few of my favorite Trail Food Recipes

Here's some of my favorite trail food recipes. They are all easy to make and portable. No refrigeration is needed but I keep all my food in a cool place and out of the hot sun. We'll start with some homemade energy bars.

Homemade Energy Bars

Ingredients
Peanut Butter

Honey
Oatmeal


Put equal parts Peanut Butter and Honey in a bowl and microwave for a minute until they easily mix together. (Please be careful as this mixture can become extremely hot) mix them together adding Oatmeal until it becomes very hard to stir. Press into a cake pan lined with wax paper and refrigerate for an hour or more. Once it has setup in the fridge, cut into bars and individually package in zip close bags.
I like them plain but you can also add a handful of peanuts or trail mix, sprinkle them with some coconut. Dropping some chocolate chips over top of them and pressing them in the bars before cooling them works really well.

Bannock

Bannock is a traditional camp bread, because it uses no yeast it can be a bit heavy but I really like it that way. Here's the ingredients I use.

1 cup of Flour

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
A pinch of salt

Mix all the dry ingredients together and add water as needed I keep it in a plastic peanut butter jar and mix it up with water when needed in a small plastic bowl or sandwich bag. It can be pan fried with a small amount of oil or butter or if mixed very stiff, cooked over an open fire on a couple of green maple sticks. Adding sugar a teaspoon at a time sweetens it up. You can add some extra flavor by mixing in a package instant cup of soup or some powdered bullion. It can also be used as a breading for freshly caught fish. A handful of fresh blueberries or raspberries picked along the trail and mixed in make an excellent breakfast. I like cutting up an apple and adding it for breakfast in camp.

Hardtack

Hardtack has been around a long time. It is basically a very hard, very dry, very simple bread. You too can enjoy the same kind of meal our forefathers cursed at. Here's the simple recipe.


2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt


Mix that together with very little water and knead into a thick dough. Roll out the dough about a half and inch thick and cut into 2x4 inch squares. Poke each square four or five times all the way through with a fork and place on a dry cookie sheet. I then bake mine at around 350 degrees or until the edges start to brown. The important thing is to be sure all the moisture is baked out and they are completely dry. When you're done you should have something that resembles a warm, flat rock. Now  I know that doesn't sound all that appealing but try dropping one or two into a pot of soup or camp stew and letting it soften up for a few minutes and "Taa Daa!" instant gourmet pot pie. Ok... Maybe not gourmet but certainly good. You can always do as our civil war soldier ancestors did and soak it for a few minutes in your morning coffee to soften it up.

There you have it. Three of my favorite trail and camp foods. I hope you give them a try. Until next time, enjoy your time outdoors.
Thanks,
N.E.V.