there is a tradition of eating gourmet food on canoe trips (and fishing
trips) which originated with George Simpson when he was governor of the
Hudson's Bay Co. He started a dining club in Montreal called teh Beaver
Club for people who made a lot of money off the fur trade. He gave the
Prince of Wales a grand tour in canoes and shipped a couple of gift canoes
(birch bark naturally) to the Prince in London where he started a canoe
dining club which, fashion being what is was in those days, lead to a
widepspread interest in canoes in Britain. The dining clubs had nothing to
do with canoes or canoeing outside of canoes brining the furs to Montreal
where the diners could live well of the profits.

I've never held to that sort of social climbing tradition. I favour the
actual paddling tradition of a simple cheap diet of pemmnican, tea, and
pea soup. The boat food I make was initially intended as a vegetarian
version of pemmican to save the cost and trouble of drying and pounding
buffalo meat,or any otehr kind of meat. Bit I also hold to the old
scottish tradition of going to war with a bag of oatmean and a pinch of
salt. Simple is best when travelling light IMHO. I like to travel light,
keep the cooking simple, and spend my time enjoying the environment
instead. I do buy frozen fish fillets and hang them to dry to carry when
paddling. That's more of a native tradtion. Dried fish is a very light and
nutritious snack. All boating, and especially padding, is abut saving
weight. You'll find the trail food spreadsheet on my website calcualtes
both the weight and volume of the food it analyses. That's for portaging
and backpacking.

The sheep's brains may have originated in Scotland. Their favourite
outdoor passtime is hiking to the top of hills and back down again. The
practice would be of the later post-clearances perod. I don't know if I'd
call it traditional.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R Watt National Capital FreeNet Ottawa's free community network
homepage: www.ncf.ca/~ag384/top.htm
warning: non-freenet email must have "notspam" in subject or it's returned