Vegetarian Chili with Cornbread

Not your run of the mill, sad chili here.

Flavor: 8/10

Ease at home: 6/10

Ease at camp: 5/10
Heat level: 5/10 

Times made: 2

Pizza

Now that I've made Pizza #1, the sky is the limit. We are having pizza on every trip, starting now.

Flavor: 9/10 (I think plain sauce will be tastier than meat sauce)

Ease at home: 6/10

Ease at camp: 3/10
Heat level: 0/10 (to taste)

Times made: 1

Resentfully dragging my legs like a bored child in a department store, angry with the altitude as though it oppressed me intentionally, I pulled the "birthday" entitlement card and coerced Dennis into a zero (well, almost zero) day. "This is my birthday trip, therefore we skip Sixty Lakes Basin."

Thai green curry, noodle veggie soup

Three weeks later, I'm still salivating. I know the coconut milk looks "broken", but there is no trace of grittiness. This appearance is the result of the coconut milk powder additives, and thankfully renders no unpleasant quality.

Flavor: 10/10

Ease at home: 8/10

Ease at camp: 10/10
Heat level: 8/10

Times made: 2

Wow, this one is insanely good. Graciously inspired by Dirty Gourmet, and adjusted to taste. If you wanted something really easy, something you could throw together at the last minute, you could follow the Dirty Gourmet recipe and use curry powder- I'm sure it would be delicious. However, if you have the time to dehydrate a few ingredients overnight, fresh curry paste makes an enormous difference and enables the use of fish sauce (which would have to be carried as a very stinky liquid, or omitted, otherwise).

I'm not the first to compile backpacking recipes, but like forecountry, the more recipes out there the better.

The stated purpose of this blog is to catalogue my experiments with backpacking recipes and dehydrating, the good and the bad, including general backcountry cooking lessons. I'm going to try and review popular pre-made backpacking meals and if they're awesome, do my best to reverse engineer the recipe. Most of the recipes here will be vegetarian or vegan with macro emphasis on carbs and fat, and will reflect our personal preference for organic/local/unrefined products.

Hopefully this proves an interesting resource. The only downside I've seen to most backpacking recipe books is the lack of photos- surely due to publishing and photography costs, but disappointing nonetheless. By providing a resource with photos and a variety of recipes rated on flavor and ease, this may grow to be a valuable reference for the hiker with good taste (and spare time).

JMT deer ruminating in a field of wild onions.