We leave in 8 days. There will be 6 of us the first weekend with two of us left afterwards. Yesterday while working from home I stared putting some main supper dishes together. We like to prepare ahead of time and freeze the food, which acts like ice blocks in the cooler without taking up the space that ice would. In addition, once it thaws, cooking supper is as easy as reheating and we�re often too beat to want to do much more.

First was a couple elk roasts in the crock pot with a little water, salt and pepper. After cooking all day I sliced it up, added my favorite BBQ sauce and put it in the freezer. This should provide an easy weekend meal for everyone with some left over for the two of us that will remain for the week. Yum!

The next dish is what I call �Slop� but my wife prefers to call �Slumgullion� (which I saw one etymology as �sludge from the cesspool�). In any case, it consists of the following:
Elk burger, 2 pkg
Stewed tomatos, 3 cans (whole or diced, I used both because it is what was on hand)
Three bean salad, 2 cans (the kind with none of those damn garbanzo beans)
Corn, 1 can
Tomato paste, 3 small cans
Vinegar (about 1/4 cup)
Optional stuff I didn�t add this year includes mushrooms, hot sauce and anything else you like.

Brown the burger, add the other stuff and simmer for a while to mix the flavors, which ends up with a little bit of a sweet/sour taste unless you ruin it with green peppers. Yummy stuff.

Yet to do is the baked beans, which my wife is making today. She throws in several kinds of beans, brown sugar and some vinegar for another dish with a bit of a sweet/sour taste. They are soooo good, even cold, I hate to share them. More than once I�ve come back to the trailer after everyone else had gone home and had cold beans for supper. Heaven.

Curious what your favorite foods are for the elk hunt?

dangit, now I'm hungry....

my personal favorite is my buddys "Jambalaya Hooey". it has chicken, onions, noodles, cilantro, and i dont know what else.

it is fanflippintastic with some Franks Red Hot.

I only eat it on elk hunts, which makes it a tad more special.

our standard process is to pre-cook most of our dinners, then just reheat them all day in a crock pot. that way once we get back to the cabin/camper its ready when you walk in. next year, we're camping off-grid, so the crock pot wont be working for us.....

shane

Premade stuff...

Stews, beans, burro meat, tamales, pork roast, jerky.

Ribeyes, chicken, garlic bread on the grill... fried tacos, fish... potatoes with most everything.

Kent

The last few years I've made venison stew and chicken noodle soup. Just like you do I freeze and then reheat in boiling water, easy and no mess.

Its different if you're in a tent v. camper or cabin.

We are in a cabin and going 3rd season. I am going to take lots of beef along, its quick and easy to make. A couple of tri tip roasts, a rib roast. Stuff that eats great hot and then slices for tomorrow's sandwiches. I'll bring some elk along too. Maybe some burgers?

I think i'll put a whole ham in a roaster and let that go all day one day. I was thinking turkey but might change my mind. This stuff isn't hard to do.

I hear of groups eating MRE's and such...ugh. Not for me. Good luck and god bless to all who do but not for me.

MREs, Mtn House and some dried fruit and almonds. That stuff you mention would be nice, very nice, but a bit too heavy and take up too much space in my pack to work for me. Someday I'll go with the high walled tent camp. Just need to find a place where I can reach the elk from a camp like that. Hard to do when living on the east coast and scouting is not an option. Enjoy!

prm:

Yeah these guys are base camping at the trailhead. Lots of options in that situation. Like you I backpack, and in that situation lightweight + easily prepared criteria takes on a whole new meaning when you have to carry everything on your back for several miles. Still I have managed to discover a few meals other than freeze-dried, that are lightweight, non-perishable, easy to prepare and easy to cleanup. That's not an easy task for someone like me who is "cooking challenged". My meals are probably not as good as the meals that these guys will have at the trailhead base camp, but they meet other criteria, it's hot and there's a lot of it.

KC

Very understandable. I wouldn't pack a rib roast very far either.

So what meals do we have when we backpack in other than mtn house. I need help in this department. I am tired of mtn house.

snake:

Some are not quite as lightweight as Mountain House, but close. Most require that you wash a pot afterwards. Here's a list. We sometimes eat the more complicated breakfasts for dinner.

BREAKFAST

Breakfast Cereal & Milk (Carnation nonfat dry milk in 1 quart packs)
Make the milk first and allow half an hour to slake.

Oatmeal - Quaker Fruit & Cream (instant)

English Muffins
Jelly (restaurant Packs)
Need a stove top toaster or
toast them over a camp stove (with tongs)

Biscuits & Gravy & Sausage
Bread Rolls
Gravy mix (dehydrated, white)
Summer Sausage

Breakfast Burritos
Mountain House Breakfast Skillet
Tortillas (XL flour)

Potato Pancakes & Sausage
Potato Pancake mix (dehydrated)
Summer Sausage
Margarine (restaurant Packs)

Pancakes
Bisquik Shake & Pour pancake mix
Margarine (restaurant packs)
Syrup, freeze-dried (cook first, allow to cool)

Eggs & Hashbrowns
Mountain House Breakfast Skillet
Hash Brown potatoes (dehydrated)
Salt & Pepper
Taco Sauce (restaurant packs)


DINNER

Burritos
Mexicali Rose Refried Beans (dehydrated)
Minute Rice (boil-in-bag)
Tortillas (XL flour)
Taco Sauce (restaurant packs)

Chicken Casserole
Lypton or Knorr Chicken Casserole (dehydrated)
Chunk Chicken (foil pouch)

Beef Stew (foil pouch)
Bread

Mac & Cheese
Velveeta Shells & Cheese
Summer Sausage (cut into small chunks)

Tuna Casserole
Tuna Helper
Tuna (foil pouch)

Cup-O-Noodles

Beef Jerky
Cheese (paraffin wrapper)
Sandwich Crackers, Ritz, Cheez-it
Salted Nut Roll or candy bars
Fruit Leather
P B & J

Tang
Coffee (Folgers Coffee Singles)
Cocoa (instant)
KoolAid

Bourbon (grin)

Single Malt Scotch

Are these dehydrated? ;-)

Evercleer & Tang

This last trip, I did have some Mtn House, but I also pack a little plastic bottle of olive oil. (NOTE: I went to an outdoor store and bought one of those little white plastic Nalgene bottles with a tight screw lid. I don't trust the lids of the olive oil bottles. Then I sealed in a ziplock freeer bag) I don't want to imagine the mess in a backpack as a result of a leaking bottle of olive oil.
I took a pack of pita, summer sausage and thick sliced swiss cheese, some bagels and individual packs of jelly and peanut butter. I'd eat a pita, some summer sausage and cheese for lunch. Breakfast was often a bagel with peanut butter or jelly. I also took some of that bisquick pancake mix in the plastic bottle. It's pretty lightweight, though a bit bulky, but you just add water and shake up. Then cook your pancakes. That's a nice breakfast "out there" and beats instant oatmeal IMO but it is a little more time consuming. The batter bottle can be rinsed out and used for water, a tent "pee bottle", or crushed.
One night when we dragged the deer off the mountain, I was too tired to wait on Mtn House. I put a little olive oil in the pan, fried some of that summer sausage, pulled it out and threw a pita in there. Piled the sausage on top, some swiss, folded it into a wrap of sorts and ate it. That was a pretty good, quick and hot supper.

None of this is "lightweight" in the sense of Mtn House but, it isn't *heavy canned goods either, and it's a nice change of pace.

I also take raw almonds and dried cranberries (craisins) I like to snack on these during the day.

*Heavy canned goods become a reality when you backpack with llamas! This last trip I hooked up with my friend Rock Chuck and his llamas.

Snubble those are excellent ideas.

I often take a few cans of Campbells heavy duty soup. 1 can is pretty much a meal for 1 man if you add a little cheese or maybe a slice of ham. Very fast, very easy. I rinse out the pan in the creek and hold it over the stove to sear it to kill any spare bugs.
I don't like instant oatmeal. Whatever they do to make it instant seems to take the body out of it. A breakfast of that just doesn't last. I take rolled 5 grain cereal. It has to soak for a while but it sure lasts longer in the stomach.
One of my staples for hunting is a 2lb ham. I carry a thick slice with cheese for lunch, and throw a slice in whatever I'm cooking for supper. I used to use Spam but the list of ingredients would gag a maggot if you read it carefully.

Last year, while I was shopping for a hunt, there were 2 camo clad guys there who were apparently shopping for a whole gang of hunters. They didn't have a list. They were buying anything and everything. They literally had a shopping cart with nothing but 5 kinds of beer. They had 2 other carts of food. The store had to hire 2 more butchers to catch up after they raided the meat counter. They were going to have to rent a front loader to handle it all when they reached their camp site.

Our menus in a wall tent consisted of bacon, eggs, hotcakes for breakfast, sausage some mornings.

For dinner, one night would be fried chicken, the next night, spagetti, afterthat a steak, steak, steak.

Each dinner had a baked potato, salad, and a green canned vegie.

Thanks for the replies. The oatmeal usually has to soak for a while to be good and then it is cold. But warmed up a second time usually works. The pan is a pain to clean later though. Got to boil water and clean it when your done. Takes to much time in the morning. I want to grab something and head out to the elk.

Fill the oatmeal pan with water while you're hunting. It makes cleanup a lot easier.

I always start my day with a huge bowl of oatmeal and fruit. I've done that for the last 40 years. Seems to agree with me.

We do the oatmeal thing, too, but keep it simple. I start the water heating when I get up and the oatmeal is the instant variety. No pans to clean up.

Not as good as regular oatmeal but easier and it fills the hollow.

My dad couldn't possibly start hunting in the morning without the requisite pancakes, bacon, & eggs. Couldn't be done. We had to get up earlier, but we always started with a bloated stomach. I do it much simpler these days.

I remember one trip when my sister & her husband went along. We had the kitchen set up outside since it was fairly warm. Val was cooking pancakes in the semi dark. She shoveled a stack onto Dads & her husbands plates and poured another round. Off in the dark I heard her husband say that he was surprised that the soft butter had stayed so soft over night. Val looked at me and said 'I didn't bring soft butter'. Mayo. Goes great with Betty Crocker syrup.

I have a very bad memory of that from visiting a friend at Ft Lewis college many moons ago.

I use peach brandy with the tang and Peppermint Schnapps with the hot choclate.