ACCOMODATING A GLUTEN FREE DIET WHEN CAMPING
Boundary Waters Menu For Five
Gluten Free and Paleo options
For months now my two oldest kids have been gluten free and for one - mostly Paleo as well. This made planning our menu for our canoe trip into the Boundary Waters a challenge. If you know me, you know I am not one to back down from a packing/planning challenge!
First we realized we’d have way more options if we purchased the right cooler for this type of trip. For us that turned out to be a Hydroflask 22 liter backpack cooler with a 2 pop bottle of ice.
Our 8 year old carried the cooler over the portages.
We’ve been camping a long time and have some tried and true meals that would no longer work for two of our kids, but that didn’t mean we ALL ate gluten free. We sometimes had three different things on the menu for a meal to make sure we had food everyone could enjoy.
We always have a printed menu along - often it mentions how many granola bars or fruit leathers each person can eat a day. This helps make sure everyone gets their share/we don’t run out of food/we don’t haul a bunch of leftovers home.
You’ll notice a couple notifications from when the menus was printed and what we actually prepared. We weren’t 100% sure we’d make it a full 48 hours with ice in the cooler so we opted to have eggs and sausage vs. eggs and bacon since the bacon was cooked ahead of time. We ate the bacon (cold) with the oatmeal and didn’t have to wash the skillet. Win! Win!
It turned out that the ice lasted longer than we thought it would. Cold temps at night (30’s-40’s) and not above 70 degrees during the day was a big help along with freezing precooked food ahead of time (sweet potato/peas/chicken, quinoa/peppers, and the sausage. The bigger the ice container the better off you are. A 2 liter bottle was perfect.
Tip: Fill the bottle with drinking water for a nice refreshing cold drink once the ice is all melted.
The best part about bringing a cooler was the ability to clean fish and not eat them right away. Fishing was terrible - we only had one meal of fish and it took us 2 days of fishing to catch 5 keepers.
But wait….how do you have a fish fry if you have gluten restrictions? Good question! We tried a bunch of different combinations of flours/bread crumbs before we left and came up with a recipe that our whole family liked. This meant we didn’t have to fry fish separately or make two people miss out on one of the best parts of being in the BWCA.
Walleye and Northern cooked lake side over the fire.
One batch of mix made 30 fillets cooked in Crisco butter flavored shortening sticks.
We also brought an unopened plastic bottle of avacado oil since that is what we did our test frying with. In the end we went with what we usually use in the BWCA - sticks of artery clogging Crisco.
Enough pre-measured gluten free fish fry mix for two meals fit in a big plastic peanut butter jar.
Gluten Free Fish Fry Recipe - BearCountry Edition
Enough for about 60 small/medium fillets
1cup Casava Flour
1 cup Almond Flour
2 cups Rice bread crumbs
paprika, salt, and pepper to taste
Wisk in a bowl and store in a plastic container.
How will this recipe compare to what you are used to? For us we didn’t notice a difference between this recipe and our usual white flour mixed with salt and pepper. If you are used to shore lunch brand you’ll want to adjust the spices to your liking. This was one meal that we could all enjoy the same thing and still accommodate food restrictions.
Below is the rest of our meals…food is from Aldi and Walmart and wherever possible we freeze the meal ahead of time. We mixed up a dozen eggs ahead of time and poured them into the pan with a little butter to scramble them up super fast and easy.
We are frugal camp food people. We spend about the same amount of money on camp food as we do to eat at home for the same number of days. We can do that by shopping at Walmart and Aldi vs. the higher end outdoor stores.
Your turn! What’s an easy camp meal your family enjoys? As you can see from our menu we spend as little time as possible cooking when we camp with the exception of frying fish.
Bonus Menu ideas: Check our this post from 2017 that covers Canoe Camping with Kids and some yummy meal options!
Gear notes:
We use a Coleman duel fuel camp stove.
Our silverwear is from REI.com and GetCairn.com The Chow Pal is our most useful set of silverwear because it includes a sharp knit for slicing apples and summer sausage. The other Cairn silverwear I like best is the fork and spoon set by Human Gear. We eat with plastic when we camp because I haven’t splurged on Titanium yet - some day!
Next up: How to pack all.that.food. because unfortunately it doesn’t all fit in the cooler. 😊
There is a hidden zipper on the back of the cooler that opens the perfect spot to keep our sunglasses from getting crushed.