Hey i have a question were do you put your food in a yak and your cooking gear on traveling trips,Do you use a cooler strapped to the top ?
Hmmmmm…
I don’t take anything that requires refrigeration.
One small drybag which contains pre-packaged pasta mixes, dried soups, dried fruits, tuna, GORP, energy bars, etc. A one-burner backpacking-type stove works well for my needs. No problem fitting 3-4 days worth of food plus tent, clothes, etc. inside the storage compartments. With more practice and planning, i’m sure I could go a week or longer.
My front hatch opening is small, so I put the empty drybag in the front storage area and pack it in place.
Tons of trips - no problems
All the food and cooking stuff goes in dry bags in the compartments.
We never take anything that requires refrigeration, and we don’t go into the wilderness to enjoy gourmet meals, so everything is simple.
If we can’t fit the fresh water in the compartments, then it goes behind the seat backs and also strapped to the back deck.
Cheers,
JackL
food for trips
– Last Updated: Jul-25-05 9:32 PM EST –
I like fantistic foods bean dip. frontier dehydrated veggie soup mix and cheese sauce. organic steel cut (not rolled) oats made overnight in a thermos, sun dried tomatoes dried mushroms gorp cliff bars pasta dehydrated onions. spices, all of these can be bought at my local food coop and probably over the internet. At home I make ghee, home made beef jerky, and other dehydrated goodies. Pancakes for the morning if you are lazy, muesli if you are hot to go. You can wax the outside of a fresh raw egg and it will keep for two weeks at least. Waxing seals the pores and keeps them from rotting. Coughlans makes a good egg carrier but you must get one rated for the size eggs you are using. Eggs pasta bouillion makes egg drop soup fast and tasty with high protein. Boiled eggs do not keep as long.
Tell me more, Peter
You’ve got some great ideas there. Can you elaborate on the egg-waxing process?
Erik
If I am going for more than a day trip,
I never take anything that requires refrigeration. Regardless, as a food storage container, I use a plastic bucket with a watertight seal. If you look around enough, you can find one in a size and a shape that will suit your particular boat constraints. I find that the main advantage to the plastic bucket is racoon deterrence. The rivers and creeks that I paddle and camp are loaded with the ingenious critters and I do not feel like sacrificing dry bags, tents, boat hatch covers to them.
We Use a Soft Cooler
to carry cold stuff. The soft cooler just fits into the stern compartment. I freeze a few gallon water jugs which have to be removed from the cooler and stored separatly. When we get to the camp site the gallon containers go back into the soft cooler.
Mark
Food and Water Storage
You can do as many do and prepare your own dry food mixes ahead of time or visit the local camping store for dehydrated foods. Other alternatives include www.minimus.biz and www.packlitefoods.com. WRT to water, I use a soft-sided cooler and fill it full of 1/2 gallon jugs of frozen water. Then as they thaw they become my water supply and the empty jugs become containers for hauling out the garbage. (Some other tips are in the “Features” in the left margin of this website.)
Remember to “Paddle softly and leave no trace”
SYOW
Cal
Enjoy Food
I’d look for ways to enjoy food. I have a small campstove if that is all I want but my favorite stove is a Century two 12,000 BTU burner with refillable 4 1/2 lb propane tank. I’m not backpacking with my boat and don’t like eating like I did in those days.
Freezing meats and packing with dry ice in soft coolers can provide you with steak and fish for a couple of days. Frozen water bottles can be wrapped on a sleeping pad during the day and stored in a soft cooler at night to keep cold drinking water around as long as possible.
Canned chili is about the easiest to carry and work with when kayaking. It heats quickly and can be modified easily or used with eggs in the morning. Canned foods are easier to pack than others. They cram into tight places meaning you can shove them into plces that can help you trim your boat. With canned veggies I’ll use the water their packed in to cook with. Cans crush very well and a weeks worth weigh about 1 lb. I think most people who avoid carrying canned goods are old backpackers still stuck in that rut.
Cooler location & food suggestions
My suggestion is to avoid placing a cooler on your deck. Placing heavy items (fluids, food?) low and nearer to the center of your boat will help stability and turning. Avoid weight up high.
I always take a small plastic cooler and found one that fits snugly forward of my foot rests (actually have to move one forward and slide the cooler in and turn it sideways). I line the cooler with a plastic trash bag before packing and twist the top when closing with a web strap that critters can’t open. Freeze water (rectangular containers pack better) to place with pre-scrambled eggs, margarine, cheese, even some 1/2 and 1/2 for coffee - or as milk concentrate for cereal. I also keep one beer in there.
Boat camping means weight isn’t critical so I routinely eat well. A frozen steak, and precooked potato wrapped in foil make a great meal if you can build a fire (a few charcoal briquettes help grill vs burn) with no cleanup.
As the cooler food is used up (plus the second beer you put into it after the first one consumer), put in your empty containers or even trash. Save the boat deck for your sleeping pad, lightweight folding chair and perhaps a daypack in front with things you’ll need during the paddle.
Frozen Chili/ Soup
I like to make homemade chili and freeze it in plastic instant coffee containers. It serves as ice in a softshell cooler.
Last weekend I used the day compartment as an ice chest, I could have put a case of beer in it with ice…but kept it at a twelve pack…
Frozen whole danish hen chickens will keep a while in a cooler.
I use a lot of MRE main course dinners as well.
That along with instant mashed potatoes is a fav.
for the next day, or when cooling is impossible.
(it was so hot this weekend I almost burned my hands picking up a paddle off the shoreline, those black hatchcovers could have cooked eggs.)
First you get a fresh egg
– Last Updated: Jul-26-05 11:39 PM EST –
There are still some good farmers near enough to me, and one super great organic farm. Then you take an ordinary candle and rub the outside of the shell with it. I recommend against beeswax unless you are going to warm the candle first. (Beeswax has a high melt point so does not rub on as easily.) Rub it good and thoroughly to seal up those pores in the egg which would have provided for enough gas exchange to let the chick live if the egg were fertile and kept warm. Then put it in the egg carrier. Do not put jumbo eggs in a carrier meant for extra larges.
To make the steel cut oats just boil water, throw in 4 parts water to one part oats in a thermos at night and heat and eat in the morning Steel cut oats are entirely different fron rolled. which are steamed before rolling and thus 1/2 rotten before you eat them.
MREs
Nobody I know eats MREs unless they have to. I was on a fire years ago when all that was offered to us to eat was a couple of cases of MREs. I mentioned that I knew where a bunch of jump bags (good food like smoked oysters) where stashed in a room locked with only a Forest Service key. I didn’t have my key but someone else did. The overhead team that was flying in to town every night to stay in motels had left them there for themselves. I passed out 20 bags to 20 hard working firefighters. We told the overhead that we thought they must have forgot that those bags were sent out for us. Which was true.