Low-protein camping food

A good chunk of the reason I started this blog was because of food.  Go figure; the hardest part of managing a protein disorder is the diet.

What sparked me to do it, however, was when I started planning a camping trip.  I love camping, and I like cooking; I have a great deal of experience with both.  What I didn't know how to do was low-protein camp food.  So I started looking for suggestions online.  And I was... underwhelmed.  A big green salad for dinner, when you've been hiking all day?  Meat-substitute hamburgers?  Low-protein "peanut butter"?  Zebras, we can do better.

I've done tent camping with all kinds of amenities (and barely any).  Forest glades with water, trash service, fire pits, and bagged ice a short drive away?  Sure.  Desert camping where you have to truck in your own water and haul away your garbage and wastewater?  Yep.  Cold camps?  Occasionally.  No ice available?  Not yet, but I was sketching it out after I found out I'd be camping at Big Sur when landslides blocked it to north and south, and I wasn't sure any store would be open.  So I know how important it is to cater a menu plan to what facilities you'll have.

Refrigeration is an important thing to consider.  Will you have a refrigerator or a steady supply of ice?  That affects how many perishables you bring, and in what state.  Will you have a stove, a campfire, or no heat at all?  Will easy cleanup be a big plus, such as when water is limited or wastewater disposal is an issue?  Will you have limited time to cook, and will the weather potentially make cooking outside difficult?  You need contingency plans.

There is absolutely no reason you can't eat great food with a little planning.  Make-ahead meals, creative use of leftovers, and quick one-pot dishes can make camp food some of the best you have all year.  What follows is my (ever-growing) list of meal ideas.  You'll have jealous campsite neighbors for sure!

Marking time

Well, I'm still trying to find a geneticist... Once I discovered that my health care system didn't have any on staff, didn't have any on contract, and didn't have a list to help me find one out of network, I started pounding the pavement myself.  July was spent trying to get a response out of Stanford, who told me they'd get back to me and then stopped returning my calls.  Now I'm waiting for my doctor to send a referral to UCSF.

I'm still pain-free and continuing to lose excess fat on a low-protein diet, though the scale isn't budging because I've been doing so much more exercise.  The fact that I'm still able to build muscle is encouraging.  No new revelations; I've been supplementing with arginine and acetyl-L-carnitine, with occasional doses of glutamine, glucosamine, and proline.  My joints feel fine, and I haven't felt any other side effects.

I still figure that I have some kind of amino-acid disorder, but new clues are not forthcoming.  There appears to be no significant difference in my symptoms if the protein comes from an animal source vs. a vegetable one, though I haven't tried another challenge diet using plant protein... I'd rather avoid that if possible.  I'm trying to be patient and wait for a professional so that I can have lab tests done, rather than picking representative amino acids for the various disorders and doing challenges with them.  I'll leave that as a last resort, because cowboy research is far from ideal.

Meanwhile, I'm planning a camping trip.  I originally started this blog because of the complete lack of suggestions for outdoors food on a low-protein diet, and now that I have several months of cooking experience under my belt, I'm managing to make a decent list of options.  I'll share that here, along with some recipes I've been really enjoying.

Life goes on while we wait for developments...