Food - Light & Simple | SouthernPaddler.com

Food - Light & Simple

Kayak Jack

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2003
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Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
Nearby me, there is a food co-op. They sell dehydrated refried beans. These are good simply reconstituted with water, and even better when I add minced onion & jalapeno. One day, I'll try reconstituting them with beer. :wink:

These may be difficult to locate locally (try http://www.local.com) but if you can find them, they add a lot of food to your kit without much weight. Spread onto a whole wheat tortilla, they are JARVIS good eatin'!
 

oldsparkey

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Aug 25, 2003
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Central , Florida
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Kayak Jack said:
Nearby me, there is a food co-op. They sell dehydrated refried beans. These are good simply reconstituted with water, and even better when I add minced onion & jalapeno. One day, I'll try reconstituting them with beer. :wink:

Toss in some small diced up pieces of ham ( already cooked ) with the onion and peppers , a little rice would not hurt matters. Heck even some diced up Celery would add more crunch and taste.
Would not have to really cook it since it is already cooked and the additions would stay crunchy ( The rice would have to be cooked) :roll:
 

oldsparkey

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Aug 25, 2003
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Central , Florida
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Kayak Jack said:
Hadn't added meat or celery. Sounds good. I've heard that rice and beans together make a perfect protein.

Rice , Beans ( normally black eye peas ) Onion , Celery and some Ham makes the southern treat of Hoping John. Snap beans ( green beans ) can be added and with some corn bread on the side and a sprinkle of honey over it is some fine eating.

If you don't have the extras just the rice and beans will do the trick.

Vince , " Vin "( rest his soul , 12-27-10 ) when he would do a glades trip for several weeks would have the beans and rice as the main meal and supplemented it with fresh fish if he was lucky enough to catch any.
He is the one who taught me to put the beans and rice in a Nalgene bottle with the water and let it roll around in the bottom of the boat to rehydrate when paddling between camp sites. I was the one that showed him about adding extras to it.
No ham with you ........Two ham bullion cubes does the same for the flavor. :D

By the way , do not dehydrate the onions yourself , purchase then for your dehydrates sake.... The celery is simple to do , remove the veins in it , break it and pull the strings , cut it to 1/4 inch pieces and dry it.

Remember , the bullion cubes has salt in them and the Celery is full of natural salt ( can you say Celery Salt in the spice/seasonings section at the store) so taste the meal before adding any to it. One reason it is a good hot weather meal when you need the sodium intake.
 

Kayak Jack

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Aug 26, 2003
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Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
I never saw any ham bullion cubes before again in my life. I really wish I could buy small cans of ham that is good, like the small cans of chicken. Spam just doesn't hack it. I like to carry both chicken and beef bullion, maybe vegetable bullion too.

Dehydrating onions isn't hard; why do you not like that?
 

oldsparkey

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Aug 25, 2003
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Central , Florida
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Knorr has them , 6 to a pack. Check in the Hispanic food section at the grocery store. The front of the package is green and yellow with "Caldo de Jamon " on the front and says " 6 cubos/cubes. " with a small picture of a ham.

Goya also has them but theirs are in flat foil packs and called Ham Flavored Concentrate. 1 packet equals the ham flavor of 1/4 pound of smoked country ham.

They may be a local ( regional) item for sale to the Hispanic community.
 

Kayak Jack

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Aug 26, 2003
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Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
I was unable to locate any ham (jamomo) flavored bouillon cubes. But did find some tomato bouillon cubes flavored with chicken. These should work nicely for soups.

I like to dehydrate veggies (peas, carrots, corn niblets, mushrooms, etc.) and make soups in camp. Shredded fresh cabbage and/or onion adds a lot of sweet flavor and bulk to soups too. Noodles can be home made (1 cup of flour - whole wheat is extra good, pinch of salt, one egg. Mix, roll into ball, dust w\flour, roll out onto floured surface, cut into strips, air dry. Can add dried parsley or basil too.) or use a soft tortilla (I prefer whole wheat ones) and roll them up & cut into strips. Add a can of chicken or some dehydrated hamburg, and it's JARVIS good eatin'!
 

oldsparkey

Well-Known Member
Aug 25, 2003
10,479
123
Central , Florida
www.southernpaddler.com
Kayak Jack said:
I was unable to locate any ham (jamomo) flavored bouillon cubes. But did find some tomato bouillon cubes flavored with chicken. These should work nicely for soups.

The Ham ones must be a regional thing. The grocery store down here has three different ones.
Since you could not locate any the ham in the cans , tuna size , work really good as a substitute. Heck they are even good when mixed in some eggs and scrambled. :D

With the rice and beans , don't add the ham when you put everything in the Nalgen bottle to reconstitute , add the ham from the can to the mixture just before you put it on the fire to cook it.

If you want to be creative ... Use one of the individual packs of Spam , the one with 2 slices in it. Dice it up , fry it and then add it to the mix. It gives it a ham / bacon flavor when the spam is fried before adding it to the mix or adding the mix to the spam in the same pan. You would think it is some really thick Bacon.

Before the jokes start about Spam let me post this from the web.
Spam (officially trademarked as SPAM®, a portmanteau of "Spiced Ham") is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative. Spam's gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock.[1] The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.[2]
 

Kayak Jack

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2003
13,976
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Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
I'd rather use liquid smoke for my flavor, and will be no competition to you at the spam counter. :wink:

I'm also searching for tomato paste in a tube, like tooth paste. Supposedly, you can use some & recap it. Once a can is open, you have to use or dispose of it.
 

gbinga

Well-Known Member
Nov 7, 2008
736
2
Hoschton, GA
If Spam was as horrible as everybody says, they wouldn't still be selling it.

After all, we eat hot dogs, and Lord only knows what is in them.

George
 

rhutchinson

Well-Known Member
Jan 18, 2008
138
0
Middle Tn.
One of my favorite quick meals my wife makes is scalloped potatoes with spam. Layer potato slices, butter, sprinkle of flour, spam slices, some onion, repeat until full. Pour milk over to fill casserole about 2/3 full and bake. Good eatin !! But then again I love mustard sardines !!

Richard