Camping delicacies

I went camping last weekend near the boundary waters and ended up having some really good food despite the complications of needing to plan meals that did not need refrigeration and were not overly heavy. It's a different kind of food planning - I am more used to bike touring where you can bring cans of things, or pick up stuff along the way. So, in the hopes of spurning a new category on WFDM, I am sharing some of my camping food highlights. Note photo here of "the cooking area" - a grate that was used more as a table, and a lovely view!

I have to say, the total topper of a meal resulted from the final fish catch of the trip - it was so good I will literally try to recreate this at home: fish curry. Before leaving, I packaged up 3/4 c. of basmati rice mixed with 1 t. of curry powder. Another baggie with dried coconut and raisins also came along (to add to the rice with some ghee towards the end of cooking), and a package of Kitchen of India's "ready to eat" fish curry paste. This curry sauce was amazing - spicier than any packaged sauce I have ever had, super easy, and with all whole ingredients and nothing weird. AND, there was a little sauce left over - which made a great addition to pasta sauce the next day.

Pasta and sauce: Mixing the aforementioned left-over curry sauce, an onion and 3 banana peppers (that all made it to day 4 unscathed!) and a small can of tomato paste with some spices and water (oregano, pepper flakes, dried onion, garlic) turned out great. It topped GF pasta* that can be cooked in only 8 minutes.

*The pasta actually is a potato pasta, and we ended up saving the water to try making some sort of horchata type beverage for the day's canoe travel (thus increasing water consumption - the water tasted a little weird - and also relieving the need to dump starchy water anywhere). The experiment was surprisingly successful: left over pasta water plus most of a can of milk, honey and stevia (or whatever sweetener) all shaken up in a nalgene. It totally tasted like horchata, though i would bring cinnamon for it next time.

Other items of interest:
My Charming Companion made Ghee before we left, which is a process of heating butter so that it separates, leaving a more solid, buttery, rich product that can go without refrigeration for up to 3 months and is very good for cooking at high temperatures. See how to make it here. We fried fish in it, added it to rice and porridge...it was aces. The photo here shows it going on a fry pan. Ghee = Delish.

I am new to the world of fishing and preparing fresh fish, and we forgot to bring a corn meal/GF flour mix to fry the fish in. We did have some buckwheat flour (originally for pancakes) that we used instead, and did some frying in that with lard (another fat that stays solid without refrigeration). Whatever flour substance, I am bringing something along for fried fish next time.