Hello everybody, it's been a while. I had a rough summer that sapped up much of my free time to spend on this and the other forum I like to visit, but back from the dead I am.
Anyway, I'd made up a fun lunch for my most recent backpacking trip, and I thought I'd share it with the crowd here.

It was kind of a fun play on beans and rice inspired in part by Outdoor Herbivore's lineup, and it turned out to be one of the tastier meals I've had on the trails. Here it is:

20 Oz (by weight)cooked quinoa, fluffed with a fork
1 can black beans, chopped
1 can pinto beans, chopped
1C frozen corn off the cobb, roasted and chopped
1/2 C of your favorite salsa verde
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dried cilantro
1C freeze-dried Monterey Jack cheese
Tapatio to taste (which by my standards, is quite a lot).

Mix the fresh goods, salsa, spices and hot sauce together and spread over dehydrator screens and dehydrate until dry. (It took me about four hours) Break up any chunks into small fine grains, mix in the freeze-dried cheese and portion into zip-top freezer bags. I portioned them out in half-cup increments and it seemed to work.

On the trail, about an hour before you want to eat, add about a cup of water to the mix and knead it together and let it set in your pack as you continue along the trails for a bit. When you're ready to eat, you can just set the bag into you mess cup and span the opening across the lip of the cup and eat with a spoon, or roll it up in tortillas.

It turned out pretty good, I hope you like it!

That does sound pretty darn good

Thanks for sharing!

Sounds yummy! Glad to see you back!

Thanks! It was a fun little experiment to pull together, but the real joy was finding out on the trail that it was in fact edible!



It's good to be back, this community's a good one!


By the way, cost-wise, this is a nice affordable meal. I think my first run netted a full week's lunches with about 15 bucks in grocery items, so abut 2 bucks a meal. The big cost was the canister of freeze-dried Jack cheese. I had to buy that from Amazon for around 13 bucks. Still, a filling, nutritious meal for less than 4 bucks a day is pretty nice.

I'm thinking about experimenting with my next batch and adding some medium-grain brown rice to the mix before dehydration. That way I'll get some extra carbs from the rice and complete the protein equation with the beans.