Leftover food

I always plan meals out as close as possible, my stomach is often a bottom-less pit and I live by the mantra of “theres no leftovers in camping”.

But what if there is? Say you made a meal and ended up with a lot of extra mashed potatoes. Everyone’s stuffed, cant eat another bite. How do you responsibly dispose of it?

Feed it to fish? Bury in woods (animal will probably dig it up)? Incinerate it in the campfire? Etc.

Option #1

Option #2 depends on what it is but I usually bury it which is no worse than the Forest Service in the BWCA telling you to bury your fish remains.
Option #3 is pack it out

Honestly though, I don't usually get past option #1!

If it's dinner leftovers I'll have them for breakfast. Otherwise I would burn them.

Mylar bags. They are great for a couple reasons. First, you can use them to rehydrate ingredients or lessen boiling time by steeping and if you have leftovers, they seal up nicely. This is what we did this summer on a trip. The leftovers are still good after a day and this was in late July. You can find some on Amazon for a decent price.

Midnight snack, next day breakfast or lunch........

That is for group trips, when I solo there is rarely any leftovers, if there is then burn or dump in the lake/river. Keep in mind that most of my tripping is in areas that rarely if ever have any significant amount of traffic and little or no previously used campsites.

From time to time I paddle more heavily used routes, for those I am a little more careful about disposal. I recall getting reamed out once by a group that caught up to me and asked if I was the idiot spraying pistachio shells into the water! I took their comments to heart and started taking pre-shelled pistachios instead (FYI-in a bag of pistachios with shells almost exactly 50% of the weight/bulk is in the shells).

Since I only eat pre-packaged commercial freeze dried meals and protein bars, none of which weigh much or take much space, I don't ever really have a too-much-food problem even if I don't eat every package. Just tote them home in the same Ursack they were toted in on.

I once did have an ecological dilemma as to what to do with an apple core in the middle of South Carolina's Sparkelberry Swamp, a 16,000 acre flooded forest of moss-covered trees and zillions of other Mesozoic vegetation. I was on one of the few rises of high and dry ground in the swamp.

Should I throw the apple core into the forest attached to the rise, where it would surely disintegrate from bugs and bacteria rapidly in the high heat? Or should I throw it way out into the water where it would blend in with the millions of metric tons of branches, leaves and other vegetative detritus that drop into the swamp every year, and maybe sink?

After a lot of thought, I chose option 2.

I posted about this dilemma on another canoe site. Got attacked by a fair number of LNT cliches, which seemed contextually dubious to me.

So . . . I don't bring apples anymore . . . and, more fulfilling, took ownership of my own canoe site, leaving no more traces on the other.

My trips aren't too long (generally about a week) so I pack it out with the rest of my trash. The trash bag gets a little gross by the end of a trip, but we usually have an empty blue barrel or cooler to stuff it in by then to make it "disappear," since a loose trash bag is gross in the bilge of a canoe. It's a bit like reverse musical chairs... because every boat is hopeful to avoid taking the trash bag.

As a camper, when I first learned canoeing, I remember being asked by the counselors to take turns chugging down the leftover liquid in gallon cans of peach juice, or eating a third helping of Maypo (gross!) until we polished everything off. Despite that, corned beef hash and canned peaches still remains a favorite camping breakfast due to the nostalgia, even though it's usually attended by a case of heartburn these days.

Travel with college students and you'll never have to deal with leftovers again; and that's based on a 45 year career with college outdoor programs.

Until next time...be well.

snapper