Planning, preparation and careful packing will let you eat better than you ever dreamed possible out the hills. Ewan Sargent reports.

Late in the day after a four-hour climb to the top of mountain range, no-one expects to light a fire, put on the billy, and whip up a beef wellington followed by baked alaska for tea.



The upside of tramping is getting away from it all, the downside is that includes your fully stocked kitchen. On top of that, you have to carry everything you eat and cook with. Plus you are seriously pooped.



So tea might end up being some noodles, oats and tomato sauce and fingers crossed it works.

But dad and daughter trampers, Paul and Rebecca Garland, say it doesn't have to be that way. To prove it, they have written a book full of advice on how to get the tastiest and highest energy meals possible.



New Zealand Backcountry Cooking is for trampers and other outdoors adventurers who want to eat well on the journey.



Paul's retired but has a background of cooking in the Army and in commercial kitchens. In 2012 he walked the Te Araroa Trail - the length of the country - over 152 days. He lives near Christchurch, Rebecca is a Wellington-based surgeon.

Paul Garland This minestrone and dumplings dish tastes like a treat after a long day's tramping.

The long trek to the book started in the 1980s with a memorable meal - in all the wrong ways - of "gluey macaroni served with powdered cheese". This inspired them to look into better food for tramping trips.

Garland is interviewed just after returning from an Abel Tasman Park tramping trip with Rebecca and grandchildren. How much of their "eat well in the outdoors" advice had they put into practice?



"All of it, all of it," reassures Garland. "We were even giving master classes in some of the huts, too. Involuntary ones."

"While we were cooking, other trampers started to crowd around saying, 'what are you doing there?', while they were pouring their hot water into their instant stuff."



The main dish that got the others excited was a gumbo. "We were cooking smoked sausage gumbo with rice, and the rice is served more as a soupy rice. You can use longlife sausage, so that will last forever. It's full of lovely flavours with the caramelised onions in there. It's a good meal, a big meal and a nutritious meal. Our grandchildren absolutely love it. Everyone was saying 'oh I never thought about that, can I have a taste?' "



They also cooked blueberry pancakes for dessert and ended up making about 40. "I think everyone in the hut had at least one," Garland says.



Fantasising about food is very common among trampers who are plodding along and have been away from home and their kitchens for a bit.

Paul Garland Making your own muesli is cheaper and packs in more energy for the same weight as a commercial mix.

Garland says the ultimate fantasy for many is instant beer. "Put a spoon in a glass, add water and have a cold beer." That's not going to happen anytime soon, but much can be done around the rest of the meal.

How flash can you get while out tramping before it's silly?

"I would have thought there was a break-off point, but when I read about university students who carry chairs and tables and full dining paraphenalia to the top of mountains for formal dining complete with glasses and wine, I don't know if here is a limit," Garland says.

Paul Garland Stainless steel pots and pans are easiest to wash.

Ingredients for a great meal are easy enough to lug in for an overnight stay, it gets much harder with longer trips because of the weight and the ability to last without going off.

Garland says planning and preparation before you go is everything because very little can be done once you are under way.

"You might be staying in a tent, it's raining outside and you still have to cook yourself a decent meal. Planning and preparation means you have to work all these things out at home. You get everything sorted out into little plastic bags and if you do your homework right and your planning right, when you get to day four you are not left with a bag of rice and 500g of oatmeal and nothing else."

Instead, the highlight of day four becomes dinner. It's something to look forward to.

Garland says if you don't have good food you are not enjoying the outdoors as much as you could and you won't be getting the nutrition you need to give you the energy to power on.

"I see a lot of the overseas trampers, the young folks from Europe and North America, come here to do the hiking and the backpacking thing, and they sit down at night and what do they eat? They eat spiral spaghetti with tomato sauce on it."

Tramping burns two to three times the energy it takes to do ordinary things around the home.

Garland says a few key changes to ingredients can make a big difference. For example, dehydrated potatoes are a popular tramper's food. 100g will give you about 275 kilojoules. But take 100g of peanut butter instead, and you get 2500 kilojoules. "You can make up a lovely satay sauce and we have several recipes for that."

Another example is "power porridge". The Garland recipe weighs the same, tastes better and has three times the energy. They add ground almonds, quinoa cereal, coconut flour to the rolled oats.

* New Zealand Backcountry Cooking, by Paul and Rebecca Garland, published by Potton and Burton, $40.

RECIPES

Minestrone with herb dumplings

This is a favourite Italian vegetable soup recipe that can be easily turned into a full meal by adding plump herb dumplings. It is great for multi-day tramping as it can be made from a wide variety of dried vegetables, while the addition of some freeze-dried or

dehydrated beef helps to give the dish more substance. The herb dumplings are made from pre-packed scone mix and cook well on top of the minestrone mix simmering away in your billy. Serves 4.

1½ cups dried vegetables (peas, beans, corn, peppers, onion, mushrooms, tomatoes)

½ cup dehydrated beef

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 sachets beef stock

2 teaspoon dried herbs

2 cups of camp scone mix

Scone mix

3 cups flour; 4 teaspoons baking powder; 4 tablespoons whole milk; 100g grated butter.

At home

Combine all the dried vegetables in one bag and the scone mix (with dried herbs) in

another. Pack these and the remaining items into a main meal bag and label.

In camp

Combine the dried vegetables and dehydrated meat in a pot and cover with 1 cup of warm water. Stand to one side for a few minutes to soak. Add the tomato paste and stock, along with 3 more cups of water and bring to a slow simmer. In the meantime, add a small amount of water to the scone mix and work it into a dough with your hands. Roll it into eight small round balls and arrange on the top of minestrone. Turn the heat down to low and simmer with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Try not to take the lid off until the dumplings are cooked.

Trampers Anzac Biscuits

These homemade Anzac biscuits are fantastic for a high-energy biscuit. This recipe cooks up into a fairly tough biscuit that will still be in good shape after three or four days in the bottom of your pack. It is easiest to make these at home. If you are concerned that you might run out of fresh Anzac biscuits, take a smaller batch of biscuit mix with you as they cook up a treat in a frying pan or on a piece of teflon cooking sheet on top of a woodburner. Makes 50 good-sized biscuits.

2 cups plain flour

2 cups quick-cook oats

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups desiccated coconut

½ cup chopped ginger

1 cup dried apricots

½ cup sunflower seeds

½ cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup chocolate bits

300g butter, melted

½ cup golden syrup

2 teaspoons baking soda

4 tablespoons warm water

Combine the flour, oats, sugar, coconut, ginger, apricots, seeds and chocolate in a bowl. Add melted the butter and golden syrup, along with the baking soda dissolved in 4 tablespoons of warm water. Mix everything together and roll into walnut-sized balls. Press flat and bake for 10–12 minutes in a 180degC oven. These will keep for a week.

Toasted Muesli



Making muesli yourself adds more of a treat to your tramping food and the nut count will be higher, which increases the protein and energy for weight. This mix is over 50 per cent nuts and seeds! Measure how much you will need for your group and pack this into bags for

each breakfast. Then you won't either take too much, or get to the last day with half-rations.

Swap in other grains as you like, such as flaked rice, quinoa.



2-3 cups coarse wholegrain rolled oats

½ cup sunflower seeds

½ cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup nuts, roughly chopped

⅔ cup coconut thread

½ cup honey

¼ cup light oil

½-1 cup chopped dried fruit



Preheat oven to 180degC. Mix oats, seeds, nuts and coconut on a large flat tray. Boil honey and oil for 1 minute. Pour liquid over oat mix. Stir, place in the oven and take out every 5 minutes to stir as it browns on the top. Bake about 20 minutes but stop before

it gets too brown as it will continue to cook out of the oven. Cool, break up with your hands. Stir in chopped fruit. Store in an airtight container.