wrote on May 4^th, 2004 at 7:21pm:

I have collected a lot of suggestions that sound good.  I suspect that most canoe country food sounds good but some of it just plain stinks.  Sound off with your worst canoe camping food experiences!

This one wasn't terrible, but in the same respect it has never made the menu again.  AND bogwalker's story made me think of it because it, too, is beef stew.

The story is simple enough.  I saw "Stew Starter" on my grocer's shelf and figured to give it a go.  I bought stew meat and figured to dehydrate it.  Well, I didn't want to dehydrate it "as is", I thought it would go bad with out a preservative in it like salt.  So, I marinaded it, much like jerky, using soy sauce.  Dehydrated it the next day.  It came out good.

Now fast forward to the BWCA and the night we are going to cook it.  I figured that I'd have to rehydrate the meat for at least an hour.  I did.  It was still hard.  I had little choice than to procede because I looked at the directions for the Stew Starter and it said something like, "Bring to a boil and then simmer for four hours".  FOUR HOURS!!!

Well, it was about 5:00 pm.  Not only would supper be late.  I'd have to cook it on a fire because there was no way I was going to burn up four hours of stove fuel to cook this.  

Well, I had to get a fire going.  I had to tend the fire.  I had to collect additional fire wood. I had to be inventive to come up with food to appease the rioting masses while it cooked.

Finally it was done and served.  It looked good.  The meat, however, was still more than chewy, but the worst part was the salt content.  This stuff was saltier than movie theater popcorn!  The salted meat, along with the already high sodium content of the Stew Starter was enough to launch all of our blood pressure numbers through the roof.

We managed to choke it down but had to drink a few gallons of water each.

It was way too much work at home.  It was way too much work in camp.  It took way to long to prepare.  And it was way too salty. To this recipe I say ... NEVER AGAIN!