# Multi day food list question.



## bkp77 (May 9, 2004)

throw a bunch of snack pack puddings in the cooler for the kids and ...beer for the adults.

that's really all you need.


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## stinginrivers (Oct 18, 2003)

Can't help with the menu itself but, something to make your life a bit easier is when you are packing your coolers. Pack them by day, ie. cooler 1 has day 1 lunch, dinner, and breakfast for next morning and so forth.

This way when it comes time to cook you don't spend an hour trying to find the onion for that dish everything is all together.

Lots and lots of beer.

Have fun


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## yojimbo (Oct 12, 2003)

Can't find a damn thing written down in my files, but here's a couple of ideas

get a dutch oven and Google for recipes. Super easy to make a really good pot of food for a crowd especially if you pre-prepare the fixings.

One is called "Pronto Taco Bake" and is layers of Jiffy corn bread mix, diced hot peppers, precooked hamburger, grated cheese, canned corn, etc.

"Peach Dump Cake" pour 2 cans of fruit slices in the bottom, sprinkel on 1 box of yellow cake mix, top with a few pats of butter. NEVER STIR it! BAke about 40 min or until the smell kills you.

Dutch Oven Lasagne - don't remember the recipe but it was good.

Chicken Sate - if you bring a bbq grill - precut, skewer and marinate chiken in your favorite sate sauce. Double wrap in ziplocks and freeze. Serve with boil-a-bag rice, peanut sauce and fresh veg salad.

Precooked and frozen ravioli in sauce. We're lazy and get ours at Herb's Meat in Boulder. They do chilis and other stuff that's good to freeze and use as cooler ballast.

Breakfast - we used to make a bigger deal, but have evolved to faster cold breakfasts like yogurt/granola/fruit to get on the river faster.

Lunches - pitas+hummus+veg, tortillas + fillings, pringles, melons, oranges.

Launch early and plan a long first day to get out of skeeter land. I prefer the shuttle service that drives or flies someone in to drive your car back to Green River. That way you can drive to the put-in, camp, rig, and launch the next morning and not hassle the vehicle. But if you have time and want the job of shuttling, the flight back up the river and landing on the mesa is worthy.

We found the water at McPherson Ranch and Florence? Creek to be alkaline and not very useful. Rock Creek is better - walk up above the swimming holes to fill and filter/boil/purify.

More beer than seems reasonable of course.

Have a great time; can you tell I'm jealous?


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## El Flaco (Nov 5, 2003)

PM me with an email address and I'll send you an excel file with a Middle Fork menu / shopping list.


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## alex (Mar 29, 2005)

just make sure you have excellent spare tires and vehicles that are highly functional. The road to the put-in is a tire-munching truck-killer. You do not want those 6 kids howling by the roadside in the 100 degree heat and chasing rattlesnakes while you all try to figure out how to change a tire.


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## deepsouthpaddler (Apr 14, 2004)

If your packing a mack daddy kitchen setup and people don't mind doing dishes, theres no reason not to have a good hot breakfast every morning. Eggs and bacon soak up last night alcohol really well. Otherwise the granola and yogurt works pretty well.

For lunch, sandwiches, cold cuts, cheese, chips (pringles hold up well), cookies etc work great. Minimum setup and prep. Bring a coupld varieties for a longer trip. 

For dinner I second the easy big pot method. Spaghetti works well. One trip I was on, the guy made the spaghetti and the sauce before hand, and all we had to do was dump 3/4 cooked spaghetti in boiling water, and heat up the sauce. Also, easy appetizers like smoked oysters in a can, cheese, and some crackers are great for arriving in camp to tide you over while you set up camp, set up the kitchen and get dinner going. 

have a blast!


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## brendodendo (Jul 18, 2004)

Dry Ice layaring in the coolers. Use this for coolers that will not be opened until end of the trip. If done right you can have Ice Cream on day 5. 
I also prefer the 1 pot method. dutchies are great. If not familiar, line them with foil for easy clean up. Each coal is about 25 degrees. 1/3 coals on top, 2/3 bellow. Iron is best, but have made a change to Alluminium lately as they do better getting wet. Not as good a taste, but if you are linning w/ foil who cares.
Also good are foil packet dinners. Make a chilie of you preference and get the kids involved in the process. let them decide what goes into there own at home and double wrap in foil. freeze it. cooks on an open fire with little clean up. 

Frozen steaks are great treat for one of the last nights with a bottle of jack to wash them down. 

Small nallgen bottles are good for eggs (pre-cracked) I like to do food prep at home and be able to enjoy time on the river. If running you own shuttle use that time to make salads, etc and ditch waste in car when it gets back.

just my .02$


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## Geezer (Oct 14, 2003)

Lots of beans... take lots of beans. :shock:


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## Ture (Apr 12, 2004)

The group I go with prepares all meals (as much as possible) in advance. Ideally, all the hot meals will just need to be warmed up with some exceptions like steaks that you will want to start raw. For example, if a cook shows up with raw potatoes they need to be shot and dumped in the river.

My advice would be to leave the dutch oven/anchor at home. If you do use a dutch oven then have appetizers or tequila shots or something to keep everyone happy while you fuck around with a fire and that slow-assed dinner you are about to make. If I ever see the cook break out a dutch oven then I just grab some jerky and start drinking.


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## AndTheLab (Mar 19, 2006)

Look at the rice section of the grocery store. There is all kinds of new stuff on the market that is designed for microwave use. The majority of this stuff can be cooked on the stove top with nothing to add (even water). The cool part of this is that it does not need to be put in the cooler. The jambalaya with polish sausage pieces (that we did add) ended up being the best meal we had on our deso trip.

I will the 2nd the tire comment. I went through 2 tires (bfg at's) in may for our trip. The rocks went through a sidewall on one tire, and the other tire ended up with a 2 1\2 in. cut through the middle of the tread. Neither were repairable. The only tire shop that was open on the weekend was frickin' wallmart in vernal. That equaled to about 5 hours and an extra 150 miles before we got on the river.


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## alex (Mar 29, 2005)

With that many kids (ages?), I would make everything easy and quick. If you are doing the whole trip in 5-6 days and you get wind (common on Deso), you will have some long days on the river, so be sure to have lots of snacks handy so no one melts down when they get hungry.

I would skip the hot breakfasts if you are trying to get 6 kids off the beach in the mornings; you can do cereal, yogurt, bagels, fruit, etc.. If you pack the cooler well (solid blocks of ice at the bottom, food goes on top, no cube ice, cover all with piece of ensolite pad), drain daily, cover with wet towel, you can easily have ice thru day 6.

Take a lot of stuff that the kids will drink, but no drinks in your food coolers; keep them closed as much as possible (use drag bags or separate coolers for drinks). Water down fruit juice or give them something else, or you'll have a bunch of kids with the runs (same is true for any drinks full of high-fructose corn syrup).

Lunches are super easy; tortillas, pita, bread, veg, cheese, meats, PB & J, add chips, carrots, dips, cookies, fruit. Squeeze cheese in cans lasts forever. Jello pudding is always a hit. Remember to take lots of ziplock bags to keep stuff dry in the cooler (don't want meat juice leaking).

For dinners, again choose easy and quick to prepare in case you have a long day. Pasta and rice dishes are fast; the prepared mixes like red beans and rice are easy; you can make instant no-bake puddings and cheesecakes if you don't mind a few preservatives and artificial colors. The bags of frozen fruit/veg look great in the store, but they thaw fast and leak all over the place. I would store inside ziplock bags and use within first couple of days. Or, use cans instead.

Remember that weight is not an issue and you can take watermelon if you want; backpacker-style cuisine isn't necessary.


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## SSOWDEN (Apr 29, 2004)

prepare ahead of time, vaccum seal, then all you need to do is boil water. It even works for lasagna.


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## Dave Frank (Oct 14, 2003)

A lot of good ideas coming out here. 

One thing we always do is freeze water bottles. Quart sized odwallas work well and we even do gallons or a 2.5 for longer trips. Let a little out so the bottle doesn't crack on expansion. This keeps your cooler all but completely dry (still some condensation). Your ice also becomes drinking water.

I disagree with leaving the DO behind. They are heavy, but its a raft trip right? If the prep is done, all you have to do is light charcoal and stack. Some of the best food I have eaten anywhere is DO on the river. Line it with parchment paper instead of foil.


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## benpetri (Jul 2, 2004)

I definately agree that DO cooking is the best part of multiday river food. 

One tip on DOs that works really well:

Get the largest size of DO (16" or bigger), and then use round deep dish baking pans for whatever you're making. You just throw the baking pans in the DO rather than screwing with foil or other lining materials. It helps if you put a few small rocks in the bottom of the DO to keep the bottom of the pan off the bottom of the DO, so that your bottom doesn't burn. Use a channel locks for lifting the pans in and out. Doing it this way, you can cook multiple batches in the same DO without having to clean a sticky mess out of the 40LB boat anchor each time, or ever for that matter.

For heating its usually 2/3 of the coals on top, and 1/3 on the bottom. Some people count coals, but I never do. You'll need more coals with the larger DOs. Also, if you have multiple DOs, you can stack them.

I used this method for 3 weeks on the Grand with 2-3 DO items every night and it was sweet. You can pretty much make anything you would make in a normal oven: pies, cakes, cobblers, lasagna, even did a christmas ham. I'm hungry already!

Have fun!


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## El Flaco (Nov 5, 2003)

I've also lined a DO with freezer saran wrap, prepared a lasagne in it, then froze it solid. Once it's frozen, the DO-shaped pasta can go in the freezer cooler until the day that you want to cook it. Then you just bust it out & drop it in the DO with no on-river preparation, and slow-cook it while swilling cold sodie-pops on the river & throwing horseshoes.


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## WAVER (Jul 21, 2005)

Ben Ben Ben.....taking credit for Don? LMAO! (none the less, using inserts allows quick changes with multiple courses)


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## benpetri (Jul 2, 2004)

Don is definately the DO master. I am but an unworthy apprentice.


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## pamfitz99 (Mar 7, 2004)

HUGE amounts of BUG SPRAY and hire a shuttle to avoid the multiple, I repeat, multiple likely flat tires.


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## JBL (Jun 7, 2006)

There's a great book on river trip planning that has detailed menu planning information:

http://store.lnt.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=RO&Category_Code=BOOKS


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