These recipes were first featured in my first book, "The MidAtlantic Trailblazer - A GPS Trail Guide". They were originally designed to be prepared outdoors over a campfire. You can now have these recipes - and a few more I've added - for your culinary pleasure.

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MEALS FOR BACKPACKING AND TAIL-GATE TRIPS   
    While meals for camping trips could fill volumes, and this book is not intended to be a treatise on culinary excellence for the out-of-doors, we will share just a few of our favorite recipes with you. The meal plans presented here cover the range of what could be done from a 4-by-4's tailgate to a hiker's backpack.

FREEZE-DRIED FOODS
    On a backpacking expedition or camping trip spanning more than a few days, it is definitely desirable from the standpoint of weight, to use freeze dried foods as much as possible. Secondary to the weight consideration, there is the problem of garbage disposal.

    With freeze-dried foods, there is little (if anything) of the packaging that cannot be carried out easily, or disposed of in a campfire. There are many specially designed prepackaged trail meals available in sporting goods stores, but you can save a considerable amount of money by purchasing the same items in your grocery store, and packaging the meals yourself.

    There are many fine freeze-dried foods on the market. On a 1993 trip to the Pine Barrens, my nephew Billy and I brought in some Mountain House brand freeze-dried Lasagna for our hike down the Batona Trail. We followed the instructions to the letter, except the part that said to wait 10 minutes. We were both hungry, and I like to eat my food steaming hot, so I stirred a little more vigorously than required, and when it tasted "just right", we ate it.

    I must say, that THEIR Lasagna came pretty close to my mother's own, and that ain't no mean feat!. However, the METHANE attacks 3 hours afterwards, were absolutely BRUTAL. We had to EVACUATE our two-man pup tent SIX times during the night, three of those times in the pouring rain. We were laughing so hard, (we both have a SICK sense of humor) I had to use Ben-Gay the following morning, my sides were aching so bad. The Lasagna was one of the "highlights" of the trip, although next time, we'll wait the full 10 minutes.

BREAKFAST
    They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When I'm home, I rarely have the desire to eat breakfast. However, when I'm in my true element, the trail beckons, and I need the energy that a good breakfast provides. Breakfast, in the form of cereals, is the easiest meal to plan, and the lightest of the loads to carry. Many cereals provide 100% of USDA RDA of vitamins, and you should choose those types of cereals over the other sugar-coated, artificially flavored and/or colored stuff in the form of "smiley faces" and "huggie bears", that provide little or no real nutritional value.

    Before I have that first cup of Joe in the morning to get the neurons in the brain kick-started, I have all to do to handle the pyrotechnics of getting the stove lit without blowing myself up, much less tackle the complicated task of preparing a hot breakfast.

    So rule #1 is to have the stove all primed, pumped, and ready to go, and the pot preloaded with water and coffee before you hit the sack, so that you can have that first cup as soon as you get up. Being awake helps you to do the rest of the job of preparing breakfast without a great deal of fumbling around.

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