Food for a Canoe Trip to the Boundary Waters

For my recent Boundary Waters trip, I decided that I was going to bring food for the Boundary Waters that met specific criteria: easy to make, no cooking for breakfast or lunch, no prep time for any food between breakfast and dinner, could be eaten on the move, and boil-only dinners. I wanted each day of food to weigh about 1.5 pounds and have around 2,400 calories per day. Planning this way kept my cook kit for this Boundary Waters trip simple.

To meet my criteria, I decided on freeze dried or dehydrated food that could be rehydrated in the bag for dinner. I made homemade granola for breakfast. During the day, I picked bars or quick snacks. How that broke down is below.

How to Carry the Food

To carry the food, I put everything inside a waterproof bag from Pacific Outdoor Gear, a company that made great products but went out of business. I used their bear bag kit with a better and lighter non-stretch cord to hang my gear each night. I’m going to change this to Z Packs Bear Bag Kit or something similar. Hyperlite Mountain Gear makes some sweet stuff sacks that would work as well.

I organized my food by the day. To do that, I took the food for each day and put it in a Clear as Crystal plastic bag. I had these in a size I didn’t need anymore for bagging photo prints in my photography business, but they worked great. They are light and I’d use them again for this purpose. I used the 11×14 size. I have a ton of these left, because they come in packs of 100.

Breakfast for the Boundary Waters

For breakfast, I used a modified version of Bikepacker’s granola. My modification was simple. I added more nuts and more dried fruit. The oats I used were Coach’s Oats. A big bag will run you about $12, and these taste great on their own for home breakfasts or in the camp. In the granola, they were excellent. I made enough of this granola for 12 days and bagged each day in their own zip lock. Then I added enough dried milk to each for a 1/4 cup of milk. After calculating calories, I had about 650 calories per serving, which was a great start to the day. Each morning, I’d add a 1/4 cup of water and ate it out of the zip lock.

I hate to say this, but over the last year I started drinking a lot of caffeine again. While I reduced my daily caffeine in the months before the trip, I was still drinking a cup or two of coffee each day. I didn’t want to go cold turkey on caffeine, but I didn’t want to make coffee in the morning because that takes extra time that I could put into paddling or photography instead.

To address my concerns and get caffeine, I brought MiO Energy Acai Berry Storm. Each morning, I drank the MiO in water. It was excellent. I also found if I needed to push myself in the afternoon, I’d drink a quick cup. It was perfect and I will be drinking this again on future trips until I’m off caffeine again. Ideally, I’ll get off of caffeine and just drink water on trips.

Daytime Food (Lunch and Snacks)

This was a mix of different bars, jerky, olives, nut butter and trail mix. I varied the order in which I ate it based on what I felt like each day. In the morning, I throw two or three items into my life vest pocket and eat them before lunch. For lunch, I always had the ProBar Meal and the Rip Van Wafels. I usually stopped somewhere for 15 minutes for lunch. After lunch, I put the rest of the snacks into my pocket and paddled until late afternoon or early evening.

The only change that I’d make is that I needed something with more salt. I think I’d change out the Rip Van Wafels for something else. Each wafel was 120 calories, so I just need to find something to eat that has a similar amount of calories but has more salt and electrolytes. I also had chocolate each night, so the wafel made my daily meal seem just a bit too sweet.

Here are the items that I ate:

• Jack Links Original Beef Strip: Combined with the Kind Fruit Bar, this felt like I was eating pemmican.
• Kind Fruit Bar: I love these bars. It’s just dried fruit in a bar.
• Frutto D’Italia Olives: These are salty and have a different taste than anything else on the list, so it was a treat. I found myself wishing that I would have had two bags of these olives each day.
• Kar’s All Energy Trail Mix: this is a basic trail mix with dried fruit and nuts with a lot of calories for the weight.
• Justin’s Nut Butter: I brought a variety of flavors that I picked up at the local store. I only ate these on the days that I had Trailtopia meals for dinner. The Trailtopia meals don’t have enough calories.
• Clif Bars: Crunchy Peanut Butter, Blueberry and White Chocolate Macadamia Nut flavor. The only change here is that I’d opt for less sweet bars instead of the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut flavor.
• ProBars Superberry and Greens: I’ll note that these do have cashews and that’s not ideal for me. I’m going to have to find a ProBar that I like that doesn’t have cashews. Otherwise, they taste great. If you don’t have a slight cashew allergy, you’ll be fine. This flavor tastes great, too.

Boundary Waters Freeze Dried Dinners

My dinners were basic. Each night I ate a premade freeze dried or dehydrated meal and chocolate.

Each night for dinner, I ate 1/2 of a TCHO chocolate bar (I carried several different flavors). For meals, I mixed the meals between Food for the Sole, which is gluten free and vegan, and, made in Minnesota, Trailtopia. The Food for the Sole meals had between 500 and 600 calories. The Trailtopia was light on calories with about 300, so I always carried a nut butter when it was a Trailtopia night. I wish that Trailtopia offered solo meals with twice the calories or at least 500 per bag.

Both companies only use English system measurements for the water amounts. They don’t list metric system measurements. I point this out because many pots are labeled in milliliters and not cups. I actually had to use my Garmin InReach to text my wife to get the conversion, because my meals were coming out too watery. One cup is 236 ml. Unless these companies update their labeling, I’ll write the metric amounts on the package when I’m packing for a trip.

Food for the Sole

You can buy Food for the Sole direct, at Amazon or over at Garage Grown Gear. It’s hard to find in stores. For some reason, I didn’t order the Lentil Walnut Pilaf with Kale. I can’t wait to try it on my next trip.

• Coconut Rice and Cuban Black Beans: Excellent. This was my favorite meal from Food for the Sole. I could have done this every other night.
• Ratatouille with Nutty Quinoa Pilaf: This was so good! I’d do this again.
• Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Kale and Quinoa: This was okay. I’m not a huge sweet potatoes fan, but I figured that I’d try it. It was okay. If you like sweet potatoes, you’d probably love this. That said, I’d eat it again and not complain.
• Triple Peanut Slaw: You can make this with cold water if you want. It was interesting. I probably wouldn’t do it again in this meal plan because I was already eating a ton of peanuts.

Trailtopia

Trailtopia meals need more calories. If you buy the single serving packages take this into account or buy the two-person meals. You can pick up Trailtopia direct or on Amazon, REI, and Garage Grown Gear.

• Bent Paddle Beer Braised Chicken Stew: Excellent. I’d do this again. It would be excellent poured over instant potatoes.
• Chili Mac with Beef: I think this was my favorite or a close second to the Jambalaya. I’d do this one again.
• Jambalaya: So good. So good.
• Pesto Chicken Pasta: This was good. I’d do it again.
• Ginger Chicken Stir Fry: I ordered this, but didn’t end up eating it because I finished a day early.
• Beef Stew: I liked this, but at 270 calories, it needed something more. This would be a candidate to combine with instant potatoes.

Food Gear
Pacific Outdoor Gear 15L Dry Bag	4.7	Replace this entire kit with the Z Pack Bear Bag kit or similar that weighs 3.4 ounces total. This saves half the weight and that bag shape is better.
Old Pacific Outdoor Gear Bear Bag Rope and Throw Bag	2.1	This is shot. It has holes and I feel like this was its last trip.
	6.8	0 lb 7 oz

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Food
Food 1.5 pounds per day, 12 days	288	I loved the way I packed this food plan. I’ll use similar on solo trips in the future. We may use this on family trips as well.
	288	18 lb 0 oz

Due to the nature of my trip, I entered and exited the Boundary Waters several times. I had two overnight permits and one day permit to make it work. It also worked out so my wife and kid were able to celebrate my 50th birthday with me on Gunflint Lake! Here’s what they brought. It was really good.