Paleo Camping Biscuits (a la corn bread)

My canoe trip last week turned out to include some amazing meals, including lots of fish (sometimes twice a day!) and also some very delicious biscuits. The weather was cooler up there, so I was wearing long underwear and fleece most of the time, which was cozy and nice. It was all very peaceful - there was a full moon, and it was the equinox so the sunrise and sunset were pretty near 7:00 on both ends, which meant getting to see them. Well, I slept a lot and didn't always get up with the sun, but I could see it from the tent!

My favorite BWCA portage to date: a forest of red pines

There was also some rain, and must have been more the week before because there were mushrooms everywhere! I have done little to no learning about edible mushrooms, but My Charming Companion has done some and was able to identify some Boletes (easily identified because rather than gills on the underside, they have pores and look spongy). He wasn't 100% on the precautions for bolete eating, but we looked it up upon returning and discovered that all boletes are edible EXCEPT for those that turn blue when you scratch/bruise them, and the ones that have red or orange pores. The ones we found were neither, so we could have eaten them. I think I'll bring a mushroom field book for future fall or spring trips.

Some other interesting highlights of the trip: there were no leeches to be found for fishing anywhere in the Ely/Virginia vicinity. All the bait sellers said "nope, it's not leech season" which seemed puzzling because how could it no longer be leech season? So we purchased night crawlers and that all went fine to catch our dozen fish. But upon coming out of the woods and stopping in (my now favorite) bait shop to check for a map, we learned that actually the leeches for the region are supplied by people from the White Earth reservation. And it is wild ricing season now, so they are no longer trapping the leeches because they are ricing instead. This particular store got the last shipment of leeches actually, and he said they were the healthiest ones all year. Apparently the late thaw/spring really slowed up the leech trapping. Anyway, it was all very interesting because I had sort of forgotten (or never given much thought) that leeches need to be gathered, as in trapped. And because I had just written about it being ricing season, it all feels like a nice cycle of things. But funny that it repeatedly got summed up as "It isn't leech season." The same guy at the bait store had gone on a 3 mile hike the day before, and he was lamenting that he did not learn the art of identifying wild mushrooms from his dad. He said he saw so many mushrooms on his hike, and remembers eating tons of them as a kid, but never has learned. I enjoyed the 5 minutes with this guy so much - I wish I knew the name of his shop, but it's the one that looks like a log cabin just past Zups in Ely.

So. The biscuits! They used the same paleo biscuit recipe I posted a few weeks ago, including OvaEasy eggs in lieu of actual eggs, with some added dried blueberries. Yum! It was an experiment (we had tried making the biscuits with OvaEasy before, and MCC had attempted an outdoor biscuit baking experiment before the trip, but with different pans) that turned out deliciously well.

1. Prepare a baggie of the dry ingredients (minus eggs) before the trip (see link above for recipe).
2. Make sure to also have ghee and/or coconut oil in your food pack - you'll need 5 T for the recipe and some more ghee to eat with the finished biscuits. Bring some dried blueberries to put in as well.

Pot nestled on top of skillet (and 3 stones)

3. On a day when it is perhaps rainy or cool, or misty and cool in my case, build a small fire to sit by for a bit. You need to develop some nice coals, so use some bigger bits of wood and burn them down to get a good bed of them.
4. Arrange your pots so that you create an oven of sorts. We had three total pans: two pots that nest, and a stainless steel skillet that basically nests with the larger pot too. We put the frying pan on the bottom and placed 3 stones in a triangle to set the smaller pot on. The batter for the biscuits gets spread (corn bread style) in the pan. *We spread lots of ghee in the pan first to avoid any sticking, which worked great. We covered the smaller pot with the larger pot upside down, which tucked nicely into the frying pan, creating a top surface on which to put some coals.

Coals on top and bottom.

5. Once your pots are set and the dough is in, spread out a small bed of the coals to set the pots on. using two sticks, pick up some coals and set them on top of the pots. You can put a few small twigs and sticks and blow on the coals to get a teeny tiny fire going up there, just to keep the coals hot. "Bake" in this manner for 10-12 minutes. Slice the biscuit bread, and eat with ghee and honey.