Fire Look Out "Camping," Skiing, and Cooking

Well, the blog says "adventures in vegetarian food." Here's my first "adventure" installment.

We stayed two nights at the Five Mile Butte Fire Look Out near Mt. Hood in Oregon.

It was SO much fun. If you live in Oregon, I would recommend staying there to anyone. It was clean, well stocked and so cozy. The views were amazing.
The rest of the photos from the weekend can be viewed here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhextreme/sets/72157613276187536/ . You can reserve it from the government when they aren't using it. During fire season, it is still used as a look out. It was only $69 for two nights.

We had to cross country ski three miles to get there, so the meals I chose to prepare had to be very light, like back packing type food.

Friday night I made Shepherd's Pie which is the S.O.'s favorite dinner. I brought
a packet of dehydrated vegetarian gravy, Haines brand
a packet of dehydrated Idahoan instant potatoes,
A cup of frozen peas and carrots (we were in the snow, so it was ok in a back pack) in a zip loc bag
A 1/2 a tube of GimmeLean vegetarian "burger" crumbles also in a zip loc bag

I used two pans. I made the gravy in one then threw in the crumbles and peas & carrots to cook right in the gravy. The gravy called for one cup of water, but I used closer to 1 1/2 cups so it could cook the other items. Then made the potatoes in another. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. I spooned the potatoes over the gravy mess on a plate. Normally with Shepard's Pie of course, I'd bake it all in a casserole dish. But for the camping version, I kept it simple. It turned out really well. The meal was about 16 oz worth of food to carry, cooked up very quickly and was very hearty and tasty. It fed two very hungry skiers. We camp and backpack quite a bit--I enjoy coming up with yummy, light & packable recipes.