Spicy Peanut Butter Soup for Backpacking

Our planned trip got cancelled, but we still cooked like we were on the trail, and tried a new recipe: Spicy Peanut Butter Soup.  Most commercial soup mixes have dairy, msg or both which don't work for us, so I've been experimenting with creating our own.

Soup mix, Pretzel rolls and water.

Combine powder and water

 Stir and wait......

A delicious dinner

Spicy Peanut Butter Soup for Backpacking

inspired by Copperbadge

serves 4

1 large onion grated

3 large cloves of garlic minced 

2 carrots grated

2 potatoes grated or in peeled curls 

1-2 TBS vegetable oil 

1 tsp dried celery leaves

curry powder, ginger, and pepper to taste

 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth (32 oz)

6 TBS powdered peanut butter

* I used 1 sweet potato and 1 regular, I liked it - Birch asked for just normal potatoes next time

In advance at home

Saute the onion and garlic in oil until the onions are translucent.  Stir in the rest of the vegetables and spices, and let cook for a few more minutes.  Add broth, and simmer for about 15 minutes until vegetables are soft. Taste and adjust seasoning as appropriate. DO NOT ADD THE PEANUT BUTTER.

Let soup cool, dehydrate, and break into powder.  Combine soup powder and peanut butter powder in a bag for the trail.

On the Trail:

Combine soup mix and 4c water and heat until it is as hot as you'd like to eat, stirring well.  For a heartier meal you could add some bagged chicken. 

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Dried Hummus

Lunch is always tricky. We don’t care to go on snacks evenly spaced throughout the day (though some arguments for that method are tempting).

One day we saw hummus powder at a grocery store and decided to try it. We often eat hummus and stuff in a pita, so it seemed a good choice (we have best luck with food that’s like our at-home food).

The prep work we needed was to find a measuring vessel. The particular hummus we got is 1 part powder to 2 parts water. I had, on a whim, gotten Squishy shot cups, and one of those made a perfect measuring cup. 

So powder. Then water. And… this is like dirty water. As we pondered this, and then realized it just wasn’t done rehydrating. Waited a few minutes and it made an acceptable pita filling. 

It has a lot finer texture than fresh hummus, which is a slight mark against it for both of us. The flavor was fine. We will certainly make it again, though in the future we may dry our own rather than purchasing. 

Have you tried dried hummus? What did you think?

Dairy-Free, Kid Friendly Trail Mix

Trail mix is easy to buy at the store. Unless we want trail mix that all three of us will eat. Lee can’t eat dairy. I am allergic to apricots. I don’t care for peanuts much, and Boo doesn’t like nuts at all.

So we mix our own. 

It’s a complicated process of going to the store, buying a bag of everything we like, and dumping it together. Each bath we try a new protein thing in hopes Boo will like it (and knowing that kids’ tastes change as they get older and get more molars). 

We try to keep approximately even amounts of nuts/seeds and dried fruit. 

For sweet, we put in dairy-free chocolate chips. These make a sticky mess if it’s going to be warm or sunny. We have pondered vegan M&M-type candies for less mess when it’s warmer, but haven’t gotten around to actually trying them. 

Dried Fruit: raisins, craisins, blueberries, apples, strawberries, cherries.

Nuts and Seeds: walnuts, pecans, cashews, sunflowers, almonds, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds. 

We will sometimes throw in pita chips or whatever crunchy chip/cracker thing catches our interest.

Dried fruit can get expensive, so we try to buy things in season and dry our own. This is difficult, as we tend to devour fresh fruit even when we could have sworn we had more than we could eat…

What do you like in trail mix? What don't you eat?

Lee’s Maplewood Thai-Ish Dinner

This is a tasty Thai-inspired meal that Lee made up.



Ingredients: 

1 bag of coleslaw mix
1 package noodles  (whatever dry Asian style you prefer. These were cellophane rice noodles.  Next time I will probably use a thicker rice noodle)

Sauce
1tbs soy sauce
1tbs peanut butter
2tbs rice vinegar
1/2 tbs dark sesame oil
1/4 tsp sriracha
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp garlic

Toppings
peanuts
sesame seeds

At Home: 

Dehydrate the coleslaw mix – it gets really small.

Pre-break the noodles into bite-sized pieces (shorter than the shortest dimension of your bag). The noodles are needle-sharp and will poke holes in the bag very easily.

Mix the sauce and put in a container of your choice. We used a squeeze tube, which worked nicely.

Containerize the toppings – we twisted them into a bit of plastic wrap.

 Put everything into a freezer Ziplock-type bag, and write how much water you’ll need (based on the noodle packaging).

 
 In Camp:

 Remove the sauce and topping containers.



Add sauce to bag (with coleslaw and noodles)

 

Add water. Mix, mix, mix.

 

 If you poked holes all over your bag, transfer everything to bowl before too much drips out.

Garnish with toppings.

Enjoy.

This was very yummy.  Pretty spicy, adjust the seasonings to your taste. Dehydrated cabbage stays crunchy when it's rehydrated, which is a nice change.

Chicken and Chickpeas

This week we took a couple of days off to sneak in one more overnight trip.  I threw together a meal from what was in the pantry, and some ideas that had been rattling around in my head and it turned out delicious.

Dicing the vegetables very fine helps them dehydrate and rehydrate faster.  The same applies to mashing the chickpeas.  Using sun-dried tomatoes makes for a richer flavor, and I had a bunch on hand (we make them from excess garden tomatoes, after all, why have a dehydrator and not use it)

Chicken and Chickpeas

serves 3 adults
Ingredients
2 cups noodles (we like the Barilla Plus noodles for their higher protein and fiber content)

1 onion chopped fine
1 T oil

2c chickpeas (canned or cooked)
1 carrot chopped fine
1/4 c (approx) sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
2 T dried celery
1 c chicken broth

1 7 oz package chopped chicken

Cook the noodles as directed on the package, drain very well, and dehydrate

Saute the onion in the oil for about 10 minutes.  Add the carrot and cook for another 5 min, then add the chickpeas and broth.  Cover and let simmer while preparing the tomatoes.

While the chickpea mixture is cooking, puree the tomatoes and the dried celery.  You may need to add a bit of water.  Add the tomatoes to the chickpeas and let the whole thing cook until the chickpeas are nice and mushy, and most of the broth has been absorbed, about half an hour.  Use the back of a spoon to mash up the chickpeas and dehydrate until its nice and crunchy.  Package the noodles and chickpea mixture together.

At dinner time, boil 1 L water  (this makes it a bit soupy, you can adjust to your preference), and add to the dried noodles and chickpeas.  Mix in the chicken and enjoy.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Lee found this recipe at backpacker.com. We first tried it on a weekend trip to Backbone State Park in Iowa (a very nice trip). I ended up with a bad migraine and ate like 2 bites, but those 2 bites were so tasty…. So tasty in fact that it’s the same dinner we took this June on the Superior Hiking Trail.

J liked all the tastes separately, but didn’t care for the cranberries mixed in with the chicken and stuffing. For me, that’s the best part – savory stuff then a burst of sour fruity cranberry.



Ingredients:

Bag-o-chicken - we find these in the tuna aisle

Box of sage stuffing (sage being the only flavor we found that has no milk and no MSG)

1 c Dried cranberries - a cup-ish depending on how much you like cranberries

Small package Almond slivers – for crunch and extra protein

Gravy packet – read the ingredients, many gravy packets have milk, MSG, or both. This actually made the meal saltier than we preferred. It’s fine without.

Directions:

Heat water - enough for stuffing (directions on box) and cranberries

Put everything together with hot water. Wait. Devour.

Feeds 2 adults and 1 kid

We’ve made this in a plastic bag (in the pics) or heated in the pot. Either is fine.



Do you prefer to buy pre-made, use store-bought ingredients, or make from scratch?