For Foods We Carry on Genryu Fishing Trip
It has been ages since my last post. I wanted to post more stories but I was somehow very busy. Anyway our Keiryu fishing season is over and I am already looking forward to next spring and spending cold winter days. Today, I would like to write short posting about foods we carry on Genryu fishing trips. Last time I wrote about that we eat fish we caught, Sansai (mountain plants) and wild mushrooms when we camp in Genryu, but of course it is not always. We can not get sansai or mushrooms in every season.For instance, we take rice as a staple food and also pastas, breads or some instant foods every time we go to Genryu. So I would like to introduce our favorite foods for Genryu fishing trips.
1. Rice. We almost every time take rice and cook steamed rice with messtin. We eat rice with retort curry or other retort foods such as Chukadon (Chinese bowl). We eat rice of course with Iwana Shioyaki or menu like grilled beef. The great thing about rice is that we can eat anything with rice as side dish, and it has high BTU.
If some steamed rice is left, we can put it into soup or miso-soup and make like risotto that we call Ojiya or Zosui. These are very good for breakfast. To make Onigiri (Rice-ball) and take it for lunch is also good idea. I feel that I was lucky to be born as Japanese might be that rice was our staple food.
2. Pastas. We sometimes take pastas as Genryu foods. Most of the time it is spaghetti. I really think that we Japanese people live in the noodle culture. We cook pastas and eat with retort source or cooked source sometimes. Of course some people take penne, rigatoni, farfalle etc.
3. Ramen. Another great food invented by Japanese. No, to be exact, invented by Chinese people and improved greatly in Japan. It is Ramen. I think there are so many Ramen restaurants around the world nowadays.
Yes, we often take instant Ramen or Cup Ramen to Genryu for lunch or as emergency food. You need a pan to cook instant Ramen but you only need to make boiled water to make a cup Ramen. These are very convenient for lunch in the stream. After wading the cold stream hot meal saves us.
If you would like to buy some instant Ramen or Cup Ramen, you must buy Made in Japan products or Japanese company’s products. The quality is very different. I recommend “Sapporo Ichiban” or “Maruchan Seimen” series for instant Ramen and “Cup Noodles” series for Cup Ramen.
4. Bread. For breakfast or side menu of lunch, we take bread with a long shelf life. We can get many kinds of long life breads at supermarkets. Breads are good we do not have to cook. For instance for lunch in the stream when it is raining.
5. Freeze dry rice. In recent years, there are more pretty good products in freeze dried foods and those are very handy to mountain climbing enthusiasts. We always take those freeze dry food to the mountain streams too and the recent masterpiece of those products among us is “Onishi no Gohan” series. It uses pre-gelatinized rice and we need to wait for 15 minutes after putting boiled water but it is hard to tell it and general steamed rice apart. The product is very light and compact too.
Nowadays many Japanese cooking ingredients and foods are sold worldwide. You can find and get instant Ramen or Cup ramen easily. I am not sure if you could get freeze dry rice but may be you can find them at Japanese foods shop or mail order. I hope this post is useful for your mountain stream fishing next year.
