Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling

by Alan S. Kesselheim

Book Overview

" . . . a book that will appeal to everyone who has ever choked down the pre-packaged, bargain-basement camp food (or gone bankrupt buying the good stuff)." --Canoe & Kayak

. . . if you're on the lookout for a way to bring real meals to the field, this book] might have the answer." --Field & Stream

Life in the outdoors revolves around food--cooking it, eating it, packing it, carrying it. We even fantasize about it,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070344361
• ISBN13: 9780070344365
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.7" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

My thoughts

I haven't made anything from the book yet... but it has a lot of great info on how to dehydrate different types of food. I wish it had more recipes. It is a great all around book to add to your backpacking food supply.

Great for drying foods for storage

Great book for drying, food storage, sealing.Books ordered, received are mostly as new . Great values. Daughter turned me on to these folk.

Excellent Book!

I have several books on dehydrating your own trail meals and this is easily the best. It is concise and full of good ideas and recipes. The guidance is flexible enough for the lightweight backpacker or for the canoe or pack mule traveler. For example, some of the recipes call for a dutch oven (too bulky and heavy for the lightweight backpacker) and others are suitable for a one pot meal (ideal for the lightweight backpacker). A nice feature is the chart of drying temperatures and times for different foods. Also, the chart of calorie and protein content of different foods is important to making sure you get enough calories to keep going in the field and enough protein to keep your body from consuming your muscle tissue for fuel. There are also plans for building your own dehydrator for the do-it-yourselfer. The suggested one week meal plan is a good guide to get you started on packing for a trip. The emphasis of this book is on drying individual ingredients and then rehydrating and combining them at meal time. This allows you to be more flexible in your meals, but takes a little longer at meal time. However, it also tells you how to use your own recipes to prepare a conmplete meal and then dehydrate it. Precooked spaghetti, rice or beans rehydrate and cook faster in the field. The book recommends having both types of meals with you for variety and flexibility. You can also dehydrate canned foods like vegetables or canned chicken, tuna or salmon and use them in your recipes. This book is concise and a fast read, but packs a lot of information. This means that you need to pay attention to pick up all the important points. Fully half of the book gives infomration on dehydrating and meal planning as well as other important instructions and the other half gives some excellent recipes. One important point (based on experience) is to be sure to try the recipes at home on the same stove and cooking utensels that you will have in the field. You want to make sure that you have everything you need and know how to use it BEFORE you are in the field and cold and wet and tired and hungry. That's not a good time to find out that you need another pot or that your pot isn't large enough to properly prepare your recipes! "Trail Food" is all you need to dehydrate your own meals, but a few other general books on dehydrating wouldn't hurt to help you gain a full understanding of all the nuances of dehydrating. Excellent book!

straightforward drying advice

I've had this book for a few years now, and have read it cover to cover several times.It gives good advice on how to dry everything from plain vegetables to your leftover dinner.I even started to dehydrate my own eggs,and let me tell you they come back wonderfully.Great book that will have you tossing aside those $6.00 nasty premade meals.

More helpful than a barrel of jerky...

This is an excellent, concise guide to the process of drying as well as impetus to get the canoe onto the top of the car. While Kesselheim does give instructions detailed enough for the most persnickity among us, he also describes method, allowing the use of the imagination. Good tips, good recipes, wonderful guidelines -- and some memories to start the inner loon calling. Very glad I have this book.

Wonderful Book

Time was, drying food was a real pain and involved an old stove and a lot of attention. Now, with the proliferation of dryers on the market, anyone can dry, meat, fish, fruit and veg. The problem is that, in a lot of places, The how of drying is still a closely guarded secret. No more. This is an excellent introduction to drying, and you don't need to be an expert to start either. Wanna dry? Get this book.

Excellant and Concise - Worth Every Penny

KESSELHEIM knows how to appeal to a useful purpose and makes a simple process an ease to work with. His book is what everyone should have on their bookshelf or carry a copy in your backback with some blank paper and pencil to plan future trail meals. You don't need glitz to be good. Christopher D. BORDEN - RCMP - Northern BC