Aloha rice & beef

Bag up this one- pot meal that’s interesting and exotic. I like the beef version best, but substituting dried shrimp and chicken- flavor bouillon, is also very good. It works well, too, without meat; and it may be worth trying with vegetarian bouillon. Instant bouillon is salty, and I use the reduced- sodium versions when available. The bouillon cube should be dissolved prior to addition of the remaining ingredients, lest you end up with a weak flavor, and a bouillon- rock surprise hiding in the pot. Granular bouillon is easier: just combine it in a bag of mix and dump it all into the pot when you’re ready to cook. My recipe calls for instant brown rice, but other instants, like Success rice or Minute rice should work fine, too; and maybe need less “cook” time. Aloha Rice prepares conveniently in my camp cup… Just boil, cozy, and eat out of the cup! To cook, search out the bouillon cube from the bag of mix, unwrap, and drop it into the water; heat and stir. When the bouillon cube has dissolved, dump in the dry mix and oil. Bring it to a boil and cover; keep it hot in a pot- cozy to “cook” for 15 minutes; add soy sauce, if desired. This recipe yields a “normal” serving size, so I also want a dessert on ravenous occasions.

1/2 C Instant brown rice
2 Tbsp Dehydrated pineapple chunks
1 tsp Orange- flavor Tang mix
1 tsp Green onion flakes
1 tsp Chopped beef jerky
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ginger
1 cube Beef bouillon, low- sodium
1 Tbsp Olive oil (optional calories)
3/4 C Water
Dash of Soy sauce (optional)

Nutrients:

Calories……...... 280
Fat……….....…. 1.6 g
Sodium……..…. 670 mg
Carbohydrates… 62 g
Fiber……….…… 4 g
Protein…….......... 5 g

Baking in my camp cup; revisited

Well, restricting sodium has forced some changes in my camp menu. I always enjoyed a big hunk of skillet bread, but the salt and leavening in commercial biscuit mixes add up to too much sodium; just one helping of the package’s “serving size” contributes almost 500 mg, and I usually plan on having two “servings”. A homemade mix with the salt omitted yields a rather bland biscuit. I could maybe work a compromise mix with salt and no- sodium baking powder. I previously described combining biscuit mix with cornmeal, flour, or oats to produce large- enough loaves with less sodium. Some of my one- pot meals, like soups, never yielded enough calories to be complete dinners, and bannock or cornpone was a good way to round them out. I’ve been trying multiple courses and adding desserts, but I like biscuits and want to try them again. I had a bag of cornmeal + biscuit mix leaking powder in my grub sack, so I bought some of those aluminum- foil muffin liners to experiment with… others have claimed success with them. I added water, kneaded the mix, and discarded what wouldn’t fit into the muffin tin. So, I estimated about 250 mg of sodium in that muffin. With 3/4 inch of water in the camp cup, I dropped in the muffin and steamed it for 15 minutes. It came out OK, not soggy or unpalatable; just the crust was not browned. A utensil was needed to remove the muffin from the cup, so I stabbed it with my pocketknife and lifted it out. If I could learn to eat things “baked” this way, I could lose some weight (that 4- ounce frypan could be left out of my backpack). Repeating the trial with 1/3 C of biscuit mix plus 1 tsp milk powder gave 500 mg sodium, but proved to yield just the right volume for the muffin tins. Water volume was tricky in the steamer operation: too little and it dried up, too much and the muffin floated and tipped over. Breads from the camp cup may yet be do- able; I need to experiment with this working- volume of 1/3 C mix.