Here’s a recipe I’m using for freezer bag cooking while camping. The principle is to pack dehydrated meals in freezer bags, then at camp just boil water, let rehydrate and eat.

I don’t have a dehydrator, but I do have a convection oven which seems to work pretty well.

One of my favourite quick dinners at home is lentils, spinach, and some starch with chili oil. I wanted to reproduce this on the trail. Unfortunately it seems that dehydrating spinach is a pain, but kale works very well! It’s also the right season for kale here in north Germany, so I bought myself a 1 kg bag of kale and dehydrated it in my convection oven. It takes about half an hour with the oven set to 75 Celsius and the door propped open.

Ingredients:

• 30 g dehydrated lentils (was about 1c cooked lentils)
• Handfuls of dehydrated kale – I added about 7g
• 30g rice noodles
• 15 mL chili oil (I love this stuff and have taken to using it on everything!)
• pinch of salt

Note about the lentils: I’m not 100% sure whether they were fully dehydrated, though the weight seems reasonable. I need to do more tests to make sure that I got all the moisture I should out. Another thing I’d like to try is using raw red lentils. They only need 5-10 minutes to cook, which could mean that they’ll work just fine for freezer bag cooking without the long steps of cooking then dehydrating.

Throw the dry ingredients into a freezer bag, and pack a small bottle of chili oil:

Adding 7 grams of dehydrated kale

Adding 30 g of rice noodles

Go hiking! When you’re ready for dinner, boil up some water.

Dinner in a forest clearing

Add chili oil to taste (I like about 15 mL – 2 level large spoonfuls) and about 2 cups boiling water to the freezer bag and put it in something to keep it warm. I used my toque.

Dinner is prepared

Wait about 10 minutes and enjoy! Because it was getting late, I packed everything up and hiked on for about 20-30 minutes (while drinking cocoa ) with the rehydrating meal in my bag before I ate it.

Lentils, kale and rice noodles rehydrated

I cleverly forgot my spoon for this trip, so I poured the food into my mug and drank it like a soup. It was somewhat wet, and I can see an argument for reducing the water, but I quite liked it as it was. I’d call this a success!

Camping dinner in a mug

Neugrabener Heide – heather south of Hamburg

Ingredients

• 200 g small lentils
• 500 g potatoes
• 3 carrots
• 1 zucchini
• 2 medium onions
• 3 pickles
• 2 T capers
• 1 pickled pepper
• a bunch of dill
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil
• mustard

Cook Lentils

Boil lentils and halved onion in 800 mL water. It should take 25-30 minutes. Drain and discard the onion.

Sauté Onions

Sauté onions in olive oil. This part can probably be skipped. I don’t think it added that much to the salad.

Boil veggies

Chop potatoes and put them on to boil. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Chop the carrots and add them after 5-7 minutes. Chop the zucchini and add them in the last three minutes. Drain when cooked.

Dressing

Throw the dill, vinegar, olive oil, mustard, capers, pickled pepper, and pickles in the food processor.

Mix everything together. Fresh ground pepper would be a good addition.

I made some cookies to send to family and friends over the holidays, including some green tea shortbread. When I made shortbread (normal shortbread usually) with my family, we shaped the cookies by making balls and then pressing them with a cookie press. I don’t have a cookie press, but I do have potatoes!

This heart shaped press with a A on it worked nicely – the A was even visible in the majority of the cookies.

A ceramic cookie press usually gets covered with flour to keep the cookies from sticking, but with the potato, I just made sure to rinse it often and keep it moist. It worked pretty well!