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Welcome to the Vicksburg Pack and Troop 110 Blog. You will find upcoming activities, pictures of past activities, and resources for training and scout leaders.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Freezer Bag Meal Tutorial

I thought it would be helpful to post a short tutorial on freezer bag meals and packing for a backpacking trip. Freezer bag meals are a nice, cheaper alternative to the expensive freeze-dried meals you can get at camping stores. They are good too, just more expensive, so I want to present an alternative. The goal is to just boil some water, add that to the bag of food, and in a few minutes you have a meal ready. No mess to clean up, just simple and straightforward boiling some water. We try and get water on the trail so that we don't have to pack it in. Water is heavy, so the less we have to carry the less our backpacks weigh.

Materials you will need: stove/fuel/lighter, pot, cozy, freezer bags, long-handled spoon/fork/spork, water bottle with measurement marks, and a permanent marker (which I forgot to put in the picture.)


The Goal: Cooking made easy
Step 1, measure and boil the water

Step 2, add water to bag of food

Step 3, put in Cozy. The cozy is actually the secret to making it work. The Cozy can be anything that insulates (store bought and home made both work great) such as a pot holder. I've even seen fancy ones with metalized mylar insulated fabric.

Step 4, wait...

Step 5, let it cool and eat!


Materials
Now, the question is how do you make freezer bag meals. There are a lot of different meals - your imagination is the limit. It will help to learn some of the basics and keep in mind the food pyramid. It helps to start with a carbohydrate to center the meal. This will also help fill you up and keep you going. You can buy several good foundation carbohydrates such as instant rice, oatmeal, couscous, and instant potatoes (not pictured.)


From there the goal is now to make it taste good. You can add sauce mixes, dehydrated veggies, meats, anything you want. I like chicken (in a mylar pouch, not dehydrated), beef jerky, tuna (also in a pouch). For oatmeal you can add dehydrated or freeze-dried fruits, sugar, and even powdered non-dairy creamer. The goal is to make food you want to eat.


There are many web sites with recipes and you can improvise your own. Here I am seeing if I can make regular spaghetti noodles in a freezer bag. They worked great. If you have access to a dehydrator the range of what you can bring is pretty broad. I've seen recipes for freezer-bag chili that use dehydrated, seasoned ground beef. You want to practice (you can boil water on the stove) and try out new foods to make sure you actually like them and want to eat them.


One of the things to think about is re-packaging. The packaging the food comes in is not usually the packaging you want to bring on the hike (with the exception of the expensive freeze-dried meals and foods with liquid like tuna or chicken packets). For example, the bag of freeze-dried strawberries has five servings, so I split it up. Packaging is also designed to make the product look bigger and thus psych you out to think there is more too it. Who needs to pack extra fluffy packaging?

It's also handy to think of things you want to drink as well.

You can also use pre-seasoned kits to help you get started as well. Just watch out for excessive salt (such as the Ramen noodle flavoring packet.)

Putting It All Together
You'll want to package each meal up separately. If there are separate parts to the meal, put them each in their own bag and then put them all in one bag. Important!! Write on each bag the directions for fixing it up. It is pretty tough to mess up a freezer-bag meal but not adding enough water or adding too much will do it in a jiffy. Here I have strawberry oatmeal for breakfast, tortillas with Nutella and Peanut butter (with a side of pineapple slices) for lunch, and a beef teriyaki noodle meal for dinner. I also added three gatorade mixes and some trail mix with strawberries to munch on during the day. It all comes to 1 lb 13 oz.
In the end, pack each day's food in a gallon bag. Pack an extra gallon bag and use that on the first day as your garbage bag. For the second day, use the first day's gallon bag, and so forth. Mark on the gallon bags which day the food is for; this helps with both packing it in your backpack and finding it later when you are hungry.


Recipes
Here are some links to websites with recipes you can start from.

Prepper's Freezer Bag Meals
Trail Cooking Freezer Bag Meals

Here is a site that looks like it has helpful condiments and things to help round out meals, like strawberry breakfast smoothies!
PackItGourmet

Campout at Camp Wilkerson

We had a fun campout at Camp Wilkerson! We placed flags at the Military Park for a service project, we did an orienteering course, and we had some fun leadership training and activities. Here is a link to all my photos from the campout. http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g364/AaronRByrd/May%202012%20Campout/ Ryan plants a flag.
Nathan plants a flag while Nic discovers the benefits of Venture Scouting...
We finished up the last few markers.
Afterwards we did an orienteering course. The Varsity team put it together as part of the orienteering merit badge and the scouts did it as part of their rank advancements. The boys had to both figure out the course from the map and directions as well as figure out the orienteering symbols as part of a quiz. Bro. Caudle won the race with Trevor taking home the gold for the boys. Angelo studies his map.
Jared studies the marker symbols to figure out what it means.
Bobby takes a bearing.
Jon finishes up and figures out the last clue.
Checking over the answers at the end.
Later on we did some leadership training. As part of the training the boys had some activities. The most challenging one was to simply put a stick on the ground. They hold it up with the stick resting on their fingers and, with no on letting go, try to set it on the ground. It is a lot harder than it sounds.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

New Plans

We had a planning meeting Sunday night. We worked up plans for the next couple of months as well as some long-term plans.

We are finishing up the Cycling Merit Badge and the Citizenship in the Nation Merit Badge.

Nov. 29 - Set up track for potato race
Nov. 30 - Combined Activity, Potato Race

Dec. 3 - Temple Trip
Dec. 21 - Visit to ERDC (maybe also see a movie at Wilcox Theatres)
Dec. 30-31 - 15 & 25 mile bike ride / campout

Jan. 21 - 50 mile bike ride
Jan. 28 - Tri-stake activity at Baton Rouge Temple

Feb-Mar-April (Theme: Orienteering)(Orienteering Merit Badge)
- March 2-3: Spring Camporee (12 mile orienteering hike)
-OA Elections

May-June-July (Theme: 25/25 afoot/afloat) (50 Miler Award)
-Prepare for hiking / canoeing
-Week-long high adventure
-Camp Hood for those who need merit badges or not yet 1st Class

Aug-Sept-Oct (Theme: Mechanics) (Automotive Maintenance Merit Badge Farm Mechanics Merit Badge)

Still working on ideas for a fundraiser...

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

National Jamboree in 2013




The National Jamboree will be held at the new Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia in 2013. It will be a really great experience. To go you will need to register to attend with the Council. We don't attend as a troop but rather the Council will make up two troops from all the scouts who want to go. Each troop can have 36 boys. So the sooner you sign up the better the chance you have of going. There is a $100 reservation fee.

Here is some info on the National Jamboree:
Get ready! The 2013 National Scout Jamboree is coming and it ain't your father's jamboree. We're talking seriously high adventure, people! Whitewater rafting, zip-lining, rappelling, mountain biking, hiking, and more - with 50,000 of your closest friends at the brand new Summit Bechtel Reserve in the wilds of West Virginia.

The web site for the National Jamboree

How to apply

Monday, November 7, 2011

Upcoming Activities

Just wanted to make sure everyone is aware of the upcoming activities for the youth.

Nov. 12 - Baptism

Nov. 13 - YM Presidency/Scout Leadership Planning Meeting

Nov. 16 - Board of Review

Nov. 19 - Stake Youth Activity
This is hosted by the Clinton Ward and Raytown Branch. Is it for all young men and women ages 12-18.
Schedule:
2pm - 4pm games
4pm - 5pm diner (on your own)
5pm - 8pm dance (14-18), other activities (12-13)
8pm - 9pm bonfire

Nov. 20 - Standards Night

Nov. 23 - No scouts

Nov. 27 - Court of Honor

Sunday, November 6, 2011

2011 Fall Camporee Pictures

We had a great time at the camporee!

Pictures and Videos

Clarion Ledger Pictures

YouTube Videos
Canon demo
Canon Firing #1
Canon Firing #2
Canon Firing #3
Canon Firing #4
Canon Firing #5

Our unit was asked to do the opening flag ceremony. They did a great job.


During the day we visited many re-enactors who told us about various battles and cities around Vicksburg during the Civil War. They also told us what life was like during the Civil War era. We also had fun shooting tennis balls at a replica gun boat!