Our Hiking Blog: Vegetarian Hiking food

Creating a vegetarian meal to take hiking or white water paddling is simple and easy. All you need is a fruit dryer and some imagination.

In this post, we share some ideas on how Clare , our daughter, prepares two simple base ingredients that are excellent to build a meal around, allowing some flexibility in what you cook once you are out in the bush.

Clare is heading off to paddle the Franklin River in Tasmania and she has prepared several vegetarian meals for this 10 day trip into some of Tasmania's most spectacular and remote environment. The Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park is in the mid northern area of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The first recipe is Tomato and chilli sauce. It is a great base to add to several meals

Ingredients:

Large tin of peeled tomatoes (or around 800g to 1kg ripe tomatoes)

Handful of dried chilies

4- 5 cloves of garlic

Table spoon of brown vinegar

Blend all the ingredients together until it looks like the picture below.

Add one table spoon of oil to a fry pan and heat.

When pan is really hot add the sauce and simmer for 15 minutes.

Dry on a fruit leather tray until it looks like the pictures.

Store, refrigerated, in a zip loc bag until your trip.

To rehydrate, cover in boiling water and allow to slowly return to sauce status!.

Use to flavour any sort of meal such as pasta, Chilli Con Carne, stir fries , pasta sauce, wraps etc. Just add a few pieces and your taste buds will enjoy this great chilli dish!

The next idea is Dried assorted vegetables.

Cut up vegetables of choice into small pieces like in picture below.

Clare used beans, broccoli, potato, sweet potato, carrot. Pumpkin, cauliflower or anything else that takes your fancy would also be suitable.

Boil or steam your vegetables until just cooked.

Lay out in the fruit dryer and dry on a medium heat until they feel "not springy" i.e. dry but not like a rock!

Store refrigerated in a zip lock bag until you are off on your trip

To rehydrate, cover in boiling water and allow to slowly rehydrate. Allow an hour

Clare uses the vegetables for curry or pasta sauce. By drying the vegetables seperately, she has the option to use them any way she likes depending on her mood for food each night.