UKH

Inspire me!

I'm with a vegetarian friend next week, and we're planning on camping and/or bothying wherever the conditions take us. Two stoves, two pans, and no aversion to carrying in actual ingredients and making actual food as long as it doesn't take five hours and 3T of gas to make and won't result in enough portions to feed London's homeless ('5 can chilli' is out for example). So far planning a mushroom and nut risotto, and a one pot pasta recipe I just found online (link below). If you have anything to better that, I'd love to hear about it.

https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/one-pot-protein-pasta/

Miso soup - maybe not filling.

2 can chilli? 1 can of tomatoes 1 can of mixed beans. Onion, pepper, some spice (could mix and just take in a tub).

Curry, vegan is easy, spices, onion, spud, carrot, coconut cream, some green stuff. I always took boil in the bag rice camping as doing proper rice seemed a faff.

Can of soup, packet of crisps and a cheese roll (the easy option).

I might be able to help:

Pasta: 

Cook onions in a pan,
add chopped red/yellow green peppers,
add chopped garlic
Add chopped mushrooms
Boil chopped potatoes
Add chopped boiled potatoes when soft
Boil pasta at the same time as the potatoes
Add chopped spinach at the end If necessary
add tomato purée so that the sauce isn't too runny

Curry:

As above but add garam masala (tablespoon), turmeric (quarter of a teaspoon) and cumin (1 teaspoon), maybe some chilli flakes depending on how hot you want it. Also, chopped fresh coriander leaves will add flavour. Of course, do rice instead of pasta.  If it's too much of a faff doing the potatoes separately at the same time maybe do them before the pasta/rice or just add them in with the sauce and they would soften anyway. 

I hope that helps. Of course you don't have to follow that religiously but it might give you the basis of a nice vegetarian meal. 

Addendum: You could add red lentils to my two recipes, which would make them even healthier. 

Refried beans?

https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/refried-beans-foldover

It'd be easier to make some amendments  (eg. chopping tomatoes rather than grating them) but this is quite filling and delicious, and allsorts of optional extras can be added.

These all sound perfect, thank you all. Another friend has also thrown minestrone into the mix. Plenty of options which have a reasonable number of common ingredients.

The red lentil recipe is said to contain "a ton of protein". It may provide no useful protein at all since most plant sources, with the notable exceptions of soya and quinoa, lack at least some of the ten or so essential amino acids that humans cannot synthesize. Amino acids are building blocks of proteins. Unlike fats and carbohydrates protein cannot be stored in the body so unless the food contains other items with the missing amino acids proteins required by the body cannot be formed. The lentil protein amino acids would have to be broken down into something else. This reply is partly for my own interest as it is my totally simplistic, school biology take on things, and someone with more knowledge than myself will hopefully correct me if I'm wrong. 

Large populations of the planet more or less live on lentils and rice (or lentils and other grains.) It must 'work.'

Good point. However possibly many of those populations would actually eat a mixture of cereals, legumes and dairy products which would provide protein.

The last thing I ever want to do in a bothy is spend half the night trying to cook something from scratch that probably won't taste as good as if you'd made it at home. There may also be the issue of just wanting to get a lot of calories into your body quickly.

My favourites are Tortellini and pasta, vegetarian haggis and some bread ( could be potatoes of course) and veggie sausages and coleslaw wrapped in tortillas.

If you have lentils with rice you will get your essentials amino acids or rice and beans will achieve the same.

I get your point about wanting the food quickly but there’s something nice about preparing fresh food in a tent or bothy. It helps to pass the long hours.

Generally I make my teas at home for 2 nights. Normally a fresh curry with beef, or a 5 bean chilli. It’s worth the extra weight to have a decent meal.

My understanding  (from Delia Smith) is that although most vegetarian foods don't provide a complete set of amino acids alone, a mix of grains and beans or pulses will do so.  The example she gives is the classic beans on toast.  

Macaroni cheese is another old fashioned vegetarian dish with a complete combination.  

Just looked on Google and methionine seems to be an essential amino acid deficient in both lentils and rice. Also, at least as I remember from school biology, most protein in the rice grain is stored just under the outer surface and is removed when the rice is "polished" for white rice....which is why brown, unpolished rice has a higher nutritive value. So there might be a problem if relying on lentils and rice for protein.

The OP recipe was for lentils and pasta and I think pasta contains little protein.

https://vegfaqs.com/essential-amino-acid-profiles-beans/              says "Regardless of which beans you eat often, you need to find a better source of methionine."

One might need to eat an awful lot of beans!

Yep. Another thing I do is when cooking a curry or suchlike I make enough to freeze two or three portions so I can take something really nice to eat which is quick and easy to prepare.

Yeah. With a bit of forethought and not too much extra weight, you can eat like a king on the hills for a fraction of the cost of some packaged crap. 

Given cheese has all the amino acids it hardly needs a combination.

If she's right presumably the wheat grains contain the complementary amino acids. I suppose anything with cheese should be OK as milk is a "complete" food for young mammals.

Fair enough.  I'm not an expert. 

Just put it all on wheat toast and you will have it covered or add some cheese as the op said vegetarian not vegan.

Some vegetarian permesan-style cheese will be part of the plan, and perhaps some cheddar or similar too.

Interesting discussion about amino acids and protein - it's not something I had much knowledge about beyond the very basics, and had never considered that supposedly protein-rich foods might not be of any nutritional value without supplementation. Food for thought as well as for digestion!

Fifteen minutes chopping vegetables and half an hour of cooking is hardly a drain on time and will help pass the long dark hours by, I think, as well as providing more morale than yet another bowl of Super Noodles. Weight isn't an issue as there's no uphill to any of the places we might base ourselves, so carrying in supplies shouldn't be particularly arduous.

If I were carrying everything long distances I'd think twice, but it's more likely to be an hour flat walk in to somewhere to base ourselves for a few days. Once it's there it's there, and I don't find cooking an unpleasant task. Maybe slightly irritating without all the comforts of a kitchen, but then maybe I just need to get better at it...

You could try this, 

https://www.firepotfood.com/collections/firepot-dehydrated-meals/vegan

If it's vegan then it's also vegetarian and these meals sound quiet nice. 

If you really want to cook fresh then I'd go with the curry and rice option. Just remember cooking fresh means carrying more ingredients, more pots, more fuel etc... 

I agree, cooking is a great way to while away the long dark hours. Many is the time other bothy users have looked jealously on, their dehydrated meals but a distant memory, as our repast nears its completion.

Usually have a starter such as soup and pasta early on to keep the wolf from the door though. 

In the end we made that sweet potato and peanut stew recipe, and it was delicious. A bit of tweaking and it'll become a staple camping meal for me I think. We otherwise cheated and did pasta and sauce one night, and ate a big lunch in the Clachaig another day.

When it turns dark at 1600, cooking is definitely a good way to spend some time if your natural bedtime is closer to midnight. There's only so much cards and staring into the fire you can do before you get a bit bored...

I stayed out in a Bothy in Mid-Wales over Christmas and I cooked us a Vegetable thingy which was made up of 2 x packs of wild rice grains (microwavable so they cook really quick on the stove) Celery, Chestnut Mushrooms, Red Peppers, small tinned Potatoes, Onion, Chick Peas and Red Lentils, Spinach, some Ragu Tomato Pasta sauce, water and some basil. 

Cooked it slowly on a low heat so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan, trick I found is to keep stiring. 

I even made up a pudding which was instant custard powder with sliced peaches.

A hot meal goes a long way when your wet and cold

L

Instant custard powder - also known as 'powdered morale'. Also goes great with a golden syrup or ginger cake