In Your Food Packs

Originally published in our Spring 1999 edition

As most for you know through first hand experience, North Country is constantly looking for ways to upgrade our food selections, equipment offerings, and customer services. The trip critiques made upon your return from the canoe trails are really taken to heart.

We have noted two different trends. The areas of comments split along the lines of customers new to the north country, and our long time repeat friends and guests. The new paddlers were surprised how tasty freeze dried food can be. The seasoned group were pleased most by the packaging innovations and ease of preparation on the new meals.

For fast start breakfasts on travel days, parties liked the new Raspberry Granola: oats, honey, and freeze dried berries packaged right with instant milk. When time permitted, however, they smiled on a hearty breakfast of potatoes, onions, and eggs in the form of the Peasant Omelet served with a side of applesauce.

Our switch to Backpacker's Pantry Beef Stew and Chicken & Rice dishes were both well received due to their increased portion size. The Vegetable Primavera surprised folks with a good meatless dish.

Dessert selections were the other favorite topic highlighted by:

• Strawberry Cheesecake

• Chocolate Peanut Pie

• Mocha Mousse Pie

• But heading the list was the reaction to the French Vanilla Creme Brulee topped with raspberries.

To compliment these offerings, we are adding two new desserts:

• Cinnamon Apple Crisp

• Caramel Vanilla Creme
   

We have always offered bacon with the first morning's breakfast. Enhancing four of our old standbys, we added slab bacon to:

• Buttermilk Pancakes and

• French Toast selections on our Silver menu,

• and to the Gold menu breakfasts of:

• Blueberry / Corn Meal Pancakes and

• Apple / Cinnamon Pancakes.
   

We were able to do this thru custom cry-o-vac packaging. Not only did this allow us to embellish our menu, but it provided you, our customer, with an extra margin of food safety. Naturally, our meat supplier had to charge more for the special handling with our company's weekly orders, but we think it is worth the cost.

We have had smoked turkey legs on the Silver dinner menu for several years. Utilizing the same packaging method, we now have an additional meat dinner for Gold parties, too: Maple Cured Ham Steak.