Warm weather meals

[Cheeseandbeans]

What are some favorites when it’s too darn hot for pasta, rice, oatmeal etc.? Sandwiches and fresh fruit/veggies are the usual for me, but heavy! A cliff bar or similar is fine for lunch, but I like a decent meal a couple times a day if I’m burning calories. Cold pasta dishes are an option, but get monotonous on extended trips. I have a local trip planned later next week and am looking for ideas. Thanks!

Bob

 

[Jim Dodd]

Cold meat Hoagie ? Chef's Lettuce salad ? Hard boiled egg, and sliced ham. Some good French type dressing.

Just Ideas that popped into my head ! Now you made me hungry !

 

[frozentripper]

Midday, when temps were high, hard salami held up well...lots of flavor and looked forward to hacking a piece off the stick and chewing in some shady spot when it was too hot to cook. .

Also dried fruits, raisins, apricots, apple slices. With the ubiquitous granola that never goes bad.

In cooler weather when a fire could be had without working up too much of a sweat, boiling up some dehydrated soup, adding some noodles or pasta or instant rice for body.

 

[gumpus]

Hot weather calls for spicy food. You could bring a small bottle of hot sauce to spice up your cheese and beans and maybe some tortilla shells. You could also change up your cold pasta with hot sauce or salsa. It's not hard to make your own fresh salsa and it would go nicely on your cheese and bean tacos. You might also bring a couple of avocados for your tacos...they are pretty satisfying.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Add tuna to the tacos.. The kind in a pouch is decent.

 

[Cheeseandbeans]

Now we’re talking! I will be stuck in my Helinox unable to move, but happy...

 

[ppine]

I like tacos made with beef, chicken, buffalo or fish. Add lots of vegetables, like avacado, cilantro, lettuce, onions.
Make a big salad and add sliced cooked beef on top of it.
Sometimes in the heat like Death Valley, we just have a cold supper of various things like cheese, fruit, nuts, salami, and do not cook at all.

 

[Guest]

What are some favorites when it’s too darn hot for pasta, rice, oatmeal etc.? Sandwiches and fresh fruit/veggies are the usual for me, but heavy! A cliff bar or similar is fine for lunch, but I like a decent meal a couple times a day if I’m burning calories. Cold pasta dishes are an option, but get monotonous on extended trips.

Bob, great question, worth pondering as summer is now officially here.

I don’t consciously think about hot weather meals when packing for summer trips, but something in the gray matter reminds “You are not going to want a simmering hot dinner on a warm summer evening after a hot day”.

Breakfast, typically being the coolest temp meal of the day, I’m good with the usual quickie; coffee, oatmeal with dried fruit, or grits, cheese and hot sauce, breakfast bar.

Lunch is almost never a warm meal; tortilla shells, sandwich rounds or bagels, foil pack tuna or peanut butter, slices of hard meat and hard cheese, cashews, more dried fruit. Apples keep well, pears less so. Bananas take some care, but the immediate peel and eat nutrition of a banana is hard to beat.

Potassium: 9% of the RDI.
Vitamin B6: 33% of the RDI
Vitamin C: 11% of the RDI.
Magnesium: 8% of the RDI.
Copper: 10% of the RDI.
Manganese: 14% of the RDI.
Net carbs: 24 grams.
Fiber: 3.1 grams.

If I am feeling weak or out of sorts mid-paddle a banana usually puts me right. When they get brown I just mush them up in my morning oatmeal. Waste not, want not.

A “snacky” lunch is easier to titrate “How hungry am I?” and “How full am I?” I’m not cooking something and eating only half of it. Or, burp, forcing down the rest.

Dinner I guess is trickier. Cold pasta type meals are great for the first night or two, provided I prepared them at home and brought a cooler & ice, I’m not into making that at camp. Raw veggies likewise; heat wilted veggies not so much.

On summer trips I usually pack an “emergency” hot dinner or two, for an extra days stay, or if it turns unseasonably cool and rainy huddle-under-the-tarp want something warm. Freeze dried meals that can come home uneaten and head back out next trip.

About “prepared at home”; I don’t do much pre-trip cooking prep/dehydrating at home, or make DIY bannock, but a loaf of banana or nut bread is easy enough, and pretty durable, especially if you leave it in the oven a little longer than usual to better crisp up the centers.

Otherwise dinner it is more of the lunch same. Although, provided it is a cans type trip, a cold can of beans or, personal favorite, shoe peg corn makes a great side dish. Love the little mini-cans with the pop top ring. As easy to open and eat as a banana.

And, if it is a cans trip, a nutritional supplement beverage. My favorite is Guinness in the 15oz draught cans.

Calories: 125.
Carbs: 10 grams.
Protein: 1 gram.
Fat: 0 grams.
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 4.2%
Alcohol: 11.2 grams.

That is a tasty mealtime dessert, even when the cooler ice is gone. At a mere 4.2 ABV I may have another while I put my feet up after dinner.

 

[Cheeseandbeans]

Good call on the room temp friendly beer. I have a mesh bag that has a few in it that I toss in the water. Eggplant caponata could be made ahead... I wonder how that would dehydrate? I can’t do the freeze dried stuff. Never found one I enjoyed- always a salty mess in my opinion. That said, I do carry a couple for an unexpected longer stay. Thanks for the great ideas folks!

 

[scoutergriz]

My go to lunch is generally hard sausage like salami, pepperoni, or summer sausage, with either a chunk of old cheddar, or those waxed cheeses made for kids lunches, some dried fruit (I make my own so no sulfites) and some crackers.
Hot weather dinners consist of dried chili, spaghetti, stew, or similar, plop it in a nalgine with water at lunch to rehydrate, and then you're just running the stove to reheat it, and to make a cup of coffee, and are usually eaten when the first evening breezes start ti kick up.
Breakfasts run the gamut from a bagel with cream cheese to full blown bacon and eggs depending on hunger and how cool the morning is.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

C&B, you're from Goshen, CT? Heck, just pack a couple of gigantic and delicious grinders from Carbone's Market in Torrington and feed yourself for a week.

 

[Cheeseandbeans]

Ha- thanks Glenn. That is my buddy’s standard dinner for a couple nights.

Bob