The backcountry cooking party is coming up in a couple of months and I just realized I have nothing interesting to make.  So I decided to pick up a few books from Amazon on backcountry cooking.  To date, I have relied on one source, Lipsmacking Packpacking.  It's a pretty good book but I have fixed just about everything I found interesting in there.

Yesterday my books arrived.  I haven't been through each one in detail yet but one caught my eye called "The Leave-No Crumbs Camping Cookbook".  I don't think you can really categorize it as a backpacking cookbook.  It's more of a car camping book but the recipes look to be adaptable to backpacking.

Here is one I absolutely have to try on the trail, Quesadillas.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds tomatoes
• 1/2 pound mushrooms
• 1-2 Sierra cups water, to rehydrate
• 4 spoons cooking oil
• 8 corn or flour tortillas
• 1 Sierra cup sliced cheese
• 1/4 cup dehydrated salsa
• Seasonings of choice (salt, pepper, cayenne)

at home

1. Slice the tomatoes and mushrooms 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick. Dehydrate on oiled trays for 24 hours, till hard.

at camp

1. Place the tomatoes and mushrooms in a pot with the water. Bring to boil and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes till rehydrated. Drain, reserving the water, and set on a plate (to dry)
2. Rehydrate the salsa with just enough of the boiling water so that it ends up the consistency of, well, salsa.
3. Heat 1 spoon of the oil in a frying pan. Place one tortilla in the pan. Spread about 1/4 Sierra cup of the cheese on the tortilla, then 1/4 of the rehydrated mushrooms and tomatoes. Spoon on some of the salsa and add your favorite seasonings to taste. Top with another tortilla.
4. After about 1 minute, when the cheese has started to melt, flip the quesadilla. After another 30 seconds, when the cheese has melted completely, it is ready to slice and eat.
5. Add a little more oil before cooking the next one.
6. Cut the quesadillas into slices, like a pizza. Eat with your hands; no plates or utensils allowed.

Makes 4 quesadillas, enough for 2 people.

Obviously, the one problem for a backpacker is the frying pan. I don't know what a frying pan weighs and I'm not going to find out.  However, I've fried a lot of fish in my days on backpacking trips and I use a little titanium fry pan (6 oz with folding spatula).  If you don't want to put out the cash for one then make mini-quesadillas with the lid of your pot. 

I'm getting hungry just thinking about this meal.  In fact, it might just call for a margarita!