CAMPKITCHEN - Cooking Outdoors with Tyler Scott

Combining his enjoyment of outdoor adventures (started as a Scout) and his abilities as a chef, Tyler shares his love of cooking over a fire.

He has also designed and manufactured some really cool twig stoves.

Look for some amazing freeze-dried meals coming in 2025!

www.campkitchenstore.ca

https://www.instagram.com/camp_kitch/

https://www.youtube.com/@CAMP_KITCH

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and good day. Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.

SPEAKER_02: 0:04

I'm Tim.

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

And we are from supergoodcamping.com. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's guest is an amazing outdoor cook. He comes from a restaurant background, but we'll let him tell the story. He and his wife are enthusiastic outdoor adventurers. They've developed their own unique twig stoves. Think lightweight, lots of cooking service. Awesome. And they've set their sights on a collaborative effort to start a line of freeze-dried meals, hoping to launch in 2025. Please welcome Tyler Scott from Camp Kitchen, or should I say Chef Tyler Scott. Yay, welcome.

SPEAKER_02: 0:40

Welcome,

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

welcome. Thank you for having me. I like to call myself an adventure chef. Adventure chef. Yeah, I

SPEAKER_01: 0:46

get there's not too many people with that handle.

SPEAKER_02: 0:48

That's pretty accurate too. So out of the gate, let's talk about your experiences in cooking in restaurants, and then I pretty sure you bought a restaurant at one point.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01

Yeah. Yeah. So we can go way back right to the beginning when I was about 13 years old and I was in grade, I guess, nine or 10. And I decided that I wanted to be a chef and I wanted to, actually, I don't know at that point if I knew I wanted to own a restaurant, but I knew I wanted to be a chef. And so my high school had a culinary program, which is kind of cool. Not a lot of high schools have that opportunity. So I got a job in a restaurant at a pretty young age, washed dishes for a long time. But at the same time, I was in Boy Scouts with Scouts Canada. And I was lucky enough to be in a really, really awesome group. We did a lot of awesome camping trips. We did some tomogamy pontoon plane drop-in trips. Yeah, so when I was 13 and 15, I went on two tomogamy plane... Oh my gosh. Playing in trips. And yeah, so I was really lucky to be in that group and I was working in the restaurant at the same time. And as I sort of developed my restaurant skills, I slowly was pulled out of the outdoor space and couldn't go camping as much. Eventually when I was 17, I think I stopped going to scouts and was basically working in the restaurant every weekend. And yeah, After high school, I went into culinary school at Fleming College here in Peterborough. And I got my certificate or my diploma in the two-year program, culinary management. Got my Red Seal a year after that and worked in restaurants from that point until I guess about two years ago. So yeah, I worked in a lot of restaurants. I worked in Oakville for a little bit at some more fine dining restaurants and eventually moved back to Peterborough, my hometown, when I was, I guess, around 20, 23. And I got a job at a restaurant here in town called Rare Grill House. Worked there for about seven years as the chef, sous chef, and then the chef. And then we bought the restaurant. Um, and yeah, we, um, we bought the restaurant in 2019 and January, 2020, we completely remodeled the entire restaurant, spent all my, all my savings and, and all my, uh, blood, sweat and tears on, on remodeling the restaurant. And then the pandemic hit in March. Um, we opened up in February and the pandemic hit in March. So, uh, very turbulent time. Um, uh, Wouldn't change a thing as far as the restaurant goes. It progressed us as restaurant owners like 10 years in those two years that we did that. But that's sort of where my life really changed getting back into the outdoor space. So really happy the way that everything turned out. Obviously, there's a lot of challenges along the way, but yeah, it was... It was interesting for sure. So

SPEAKER_02: 4:13

yeah, open in February, pandemic hit in March. Turbulent would be a good term.

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

Yeah, takeout meals.

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

Yeah, we definitely had to. Being a smaller fine dining restaurant, like a lot of bigger restaurants and chain restaurants sort of just carried on what they were doing. Same menu, just offering takeout. Maybe they had delivery drivers. So there was a lot of like, seamless transition for bigger restaurants. Not saying it was easier, but for smaller fine dining restaurants, it was definitely very challenging to figure out, you know, maybe we can't bring in these huge expensive cuts of meat anymore. We have to transition to something that's maybe a little bit more available for people to have more than once a month or more than once every couple months so we can get that repeat business and people are spending a little bit less money, but being able to frequent a lot more.

SPEAKER_02: 5:08

That makes sense. Yeah. And probably, probably like food ingredients that would be more accessible for you as well. Yeah. More difficult to the big, get the big expensive ones.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

Yeah. We've always focused on, even to this day, we focus on local ingredients. So supporting our local farmers and our local makers. We didn't want to change that just because there was a pandemic happening. So we, we definitely had to change our menu drastically to be able to still use local ingredients, but make it a lot more accessible.

SPEAKER_02: 5:44

So how did that play out? My understanding is you no longer have the restaurant, right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

Yeah. So actually, I guess it was about two and a half years ago, I would say. Maybe... Sorry, let me think. 2021... Yeah, 2021 in the fall, Peterborough Court of Tourism actually presented me a really cool opportunity for this educational program. I love learning. That's like... I've actually learned over the past couple of years that learning is like one of my favorite, like that keeps me going, it keeps me motivated. So they presented me this opportunity and it was actually through the Gros Morne Institute of Sustainable Tourism out in Newfoundland. And because our interaction with the under the locks dining that we did in Peterborough and Gros Morne sort of helping us out with that, we have a bit of a relationship with them. So we had this program offered to us that was really only for Newfoundland and the rest of the East Coast, but we were able to actually participate in Peterborough. And it was led by a chef named Laurie McCarthy, who's an awesome, inspirational woman. And I was very excited to take the course. I didn't really actually know what the course was about. I didn't really read too much. I just knew it was gonna be a really fun course. And I kind of assumed it was about cooking in the outdoors. which was something that I was sort of slowly getting back into at that time, very, very lightly, cooking more outside. But it was something that definitely interests me. And so I was like, okay, well, I'll take this program. And I started to take the program and realize that the program was actually a storytelling program. It wasn't really about cooking at all. And I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. Lori's awesome and very inspirational. But This program is about building a business within your business on storytelling in the outdoor space. And owning a restaurant, it didn't pertain too much to what I was doing, but I found it very interesting. So I slowly went along with it and sort of made up this fake business. And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to have this fake business and learn from the course, and I'm going to take people out into the woods and cook for them over fire and kind of do an interactive experience. dinner over the fire using local ingredients. So I built this business up and at the time it was called Rare Escape. The restaurant we owned was called Rare Restaurant. And so Rare Escape was sort of an escape out of the restaurant. It was like my dream, right? Like how can I get out of the restaurant space, out of these four walls and take people through a story about the food and connect them to the land. And so by the end of the program, I was like, at that time, I actually had just stopped drinking maybe three months before that program was offered to me. And one of my, let's say, crutches through the beginning part of my sobriety was going for hikes. And so I would like, sorry, a little bit of a tangent, but I would go to like the Chinese grocery store, the Asian grocery store here. And I'd pick up a couple packs of ramen. I'd come back to the restaurant and I'd grab some local ingredients out of the fridge before any other prep cook or anyone was at the restaurant. I'd grab like a little chunk of beef, maybe some green onions, some nice local mushrooms. And I'd pack it up into my hike bag and I would just pick a trail using the AllTrails app. And I was just picking all these different trails. And three quarters of the way, I would stop and I would make lunch. I'd make a tea. I'd make my ramen and sit and just listen. And just do a little bit of meditation and try to find equilibrium from the restaurant and life. And that was my new crutch, let's say. And so I'm going through this program and I'm starting to think, man, I really wish that I could help other people feel what it feels like to eat this bowl of very simple food and this hot cup of tea and and just listen and just sit. And so as I started doing this program, I realized like, hey, maybe I should actually take this a little bit more seriously and try to make this into a real business. And so I did. And so the next spring I launched my first experience. We were featured in the Globe and Mail and a bunch of other really cool media outlets. And it was a lot of fun and it was me. I was storytelling. I was outside. I was cooking over fire, which is cooking over fire has been something that I've been interested in for, I don't know, let's say five or six years. So that was already a little piece of the puzzle. And the reason why I liked cooking over fire is because you, again, you're learning and you're learning on the fly when you're cooking over fire. You're looking at your fire. You're looking at your pan. You're figuring out your heat. You're figuring out if a log's going to fall. You're figuring out what's gonna go where and nothing ever turns out the way you think it's gonna turn out. And slowly you can learn that it can actually turn out better. And you can use the fire to your advantage and you can, you're reading everything so fast. And in the restaurant space, you're kind of just like, you know, you turn your heat on and you cook your food. And there's a lot of emotion in it, but there's definitely a bigger piece to the puzzle. when you're doing it over a fire that you have to control in a totally different manner, using different pans and grill grates. And there's lots of different gear that goes along with that too. So yeah, I fell in love with cooking over fire. I fell in love with cooking for people over fire. I realized very quickly that you can connect just like sitting around a fire with anybody, you're gonna connect with them I feel in a different manner. Now I present some food that they've watched you cook. They watch you grab the fuel from the dead trees and peeling a little bit of birch bark and putting the work in. So they get to see it from start to finish. And the experience was really fun. And it still is. It's still a really awesome, awesome piece. We do a lot of storytelling with it. So we're talking about the ingredients, we're talking about my story and where I've come from and what inspires me about being outside. And we eat with our guests, which you don't do in a restaurant, you know, that's frowned upon. So eating a bowl of ramen, ramen is like the signature dish for that experience. It's such a good vehicle for local ingredients. I make my own broth. I make my own red fife noodles from scratch. And I actually freeze dry them to reduce weight. And I produce my ramen broth down to this cube of jelly. And then I can just add water when I'm out in the woods. So yeah, it's a really fun experience. And people's expectations are so little when you walk into the woods and sit around a fire. They don't know what they're going to get. And then you can present them this amazing meal and they're blown away and they don't understand how that, that they just watched that happen and how good it tastes. Cause a lot of people's experiences cooking over fire is, uh, it's not as positive as, as I've heard a lot of stories. Let's just say that

SPEAKER_02: 13:25

sausage out of the wood and extra ash, all the ash. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 13:31

Yeah, we call that just extra flavor. That still happens when I cook over fire. It's

SPEAKER_02: 13:36

smoke flavored.

SPEAKER_00: 13:37

Exactly. You can't replicate it. So yeah, that's the experience piece for me. It took a lot to get to where we were. There's a lot of logistics around it. But yeah, we are actually slowing down on our experiences now. We were offering about six a year. And I think in the future, we're going to maybe try to do more of a workshop based experience. We're still going to have them, but we might introduce the twig stoves into the experience and do more of a workshop with it. So instead of me telling people, okay, well, I'm grabbing a grab wood and I'm going to, this is what I'm going to do. Let's give everyone a twig stove or give in groups of two, let's give all the groups of two twig stoves and let them build a fire and and teach them how to build a fire with a ferro rod and then present them with some local ingredients and teach them how to cook over a fire and not make a burnt sausage mess. So that's sort of what next year looks like for us. We have a lot of other things on our plates. So we're just trying to make Camp Kitchen really mean what it means to us. And sometimes that transition and that's a slow growth, but it's better that way. And yeah, so now we're Camp Kitchen. I didn't mention that, but we did change our name in February to Camp Kitchen, which was the best thing we could do. We sold the restaurant in 2021. No, 2022, we sold the restaurant. And... When we sold the restaurant, we kept Rare Escape and it never felt right. It never felt like it was ours at that point because the Rare Restaurant is still a restaurant in Peterborough. It's owned and operated by two awesome young aspiring restaurant owners and chefs, and they're doing a great job with it. So it also always felt kind of not ours anymore, being Rare Escape. We also had a lot of clientele that were following us from the restaurant journey. And we still wanted to have those people following us, but we really wanted to tap into the outdoor community. And we were having a harder time doing that, being so close into the restaurant circle. So when we changed names to Camp Kitchen, we were able to start a new Instagram, start a new YouTube and really like interact with the community that we really wanted to be involved with.

SPEAKER_02: 16:22

Yeah, I'm sure it would make that pivot easier.

SPEAKER_00: 16:26

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 16:28

Cool. Well, so Twig Stoves, that's perfect. What was the inspiration behind? Yes. So for the record, I started... I became aware of you when Rob Spence was out using one of your, in the outside, was out using one of your, and I went, oh, look at the size of, because I love twig stoves, but they're small, and that heat pattern is itty-bitty. Like, look at all the surface area on that. You can actually use the whole pan. You can do, or whatever. Like, that's brilliant, as long as it's nice and light. So tell me what the inspiration behind twigs your version of a twig stove was and how did you get, like, how did you start doing that? Did you call up somebody you knew who worked in, in whatever, stainless steel or, or titanium and say, Hey, can you do this thing?

SPEAKER_00: 17:22

Yeah. So when we sold the restaurant, I, I needed to get a job to support my family that wasn't. So we sold the restaurant for many reasons, but our main reason is I was working 80 hours, 70 to 80 hours a week. And I just couldn't... Like I said before, owning the restaurant through the pandemic, it grew us as restaurant owners by 10 years. And I looked at my wife, Cassie, one day, and I just said, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, I don't want to wake up, drive the kids to school, go to work at 9.15 and get home at 1 a.m. six days a week. Like, I just don't want to do that anymore. And so I was seeing... I have two kids, two daughters, and they're five and eight or six and eight. And I was like, I need to be there. I need to be at home more, especially in the evenings and the weekends and, and, and help share the love of it. I was going outside a lot by myself, you know, cause I, uh, Wednesdays I could maybe like slip out of the restaurant, go for a hike. Um, I guess some weekends I could get someone to cover for me and go on a trip, a one nighter, but, but I needed to experience that with my family. And it was not doable at that point. So we needed to make some big changes. And that was the first of the, well, sobriety was my first big change. And then selling the restaurant was the second for sure. And so, yeah, I got the day job. Actually, my dad has worked in fabrication all my life. And so... He was like, hey, you know what? We're hiring at the shop. Like, it's good. It's 6 to 3, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, five days a week, half days on Fridays. And the pay was okay. So I was like, you know what? That's a very stable job. I'm good with my hands. I'm good, you know, someone tells me how to do something. I can follow instructions. I work hard. So that wasn't a problem for me. So I started in fabrication. And as I worked there, you know, they... were training me on some different stuff, and eventually they wanted me to learn their CAD CAM software. And so they didn't really have any projects, but they wanted me to sort of start manipulating the programming to see if I can learn how to do it. And we had a fiber optic laser there, and it cuts sheet metal like butter. It's amazing. It's completely CNC. You just kind of have to draw something up, and send it over to the machine and hit go. So one of my first projects actually was like a bigger version. Actually, I have one right here. It was like a bigger, this is like the end plate for it, but it's a bigger fire pit. And so I made one of these fire pits. And actually back then when I was starting to do that, it was all Rare Escape still. So my actual prototypes for all these are, they say Rare Escape. And so I just wanted something that was maybe not as lightweight. You know, they're, they're pretty light, but they are stainless steel. They're not titanium, but I wanted something that I could cook maybe a piece of meat on the side and have a pot on the other side. I wanted to be able to put longer sticks in. So I wasn't worried about, you know, these like short little twigs. I want to be able to put like, I can put big, pretty big branches in and push them in at like a long fire. and feed it like a long fire. I wanted to be able to cook a strip loin if I wanted to, or a sausage, or three sausages. And so that's sort of the genesis. And there are twig sows out there that are a little bit larger, like mine. That's sort of where it kind of came from. I think I was watching, it might have been John from Lost Lakes has a more sizable twig sow, and I'm like, man, that's such a good design. but I couldn't find them to order. And it was like, well, I have the tools to my disposal. So why don't I just design something? And that's sort of how it started. First one was for me. And I posted a couple of videos of it and I had like three or four people reach out. And so then I was like, well, maybe, you know, maybe I could do this. Maybe I can make this and make it a thing. So the next thing was, okay, well, if I make the stove, you know, actually it's funny, this grill grate, this is like a restaurant, supply store grill grate. So this is actually what I designed the whole stove around. And then the larger one is the larger grill grate. And so that was the first thing. Order some grill grates, design the stove, get the stove costed out. So I went to the owner and I said, this is the stove I want to make. I've designed it in the CAD CAM software, ran a couple prototypes, tweaked, got all the kinks worked out, made a good stove. And then I had to figure out how I was going to package it. And so I learned how to sew. And I go to, what's it called, Fabricland, and I find the starchiest, thickest denim I can find. I bought a roll of it, and I went to Michael's and bought a heavy-duty home sewing machine, and I just started sewing. And actually, the first couple bags I made were on my grandmother's sewing machine that she let me borrow. But it just wasn't strong. It just wasn't heavy-duty enough to get through the denim. So eventually, I had to buy my own. But that's sort of how it started. And yeah. Then we have the extra large as well, which is a bit bigger. It's twice the cooking surface. And about, I guess... one and a third of the weight or close to one and a half of the weight um as a small one they're great little soaps they're a lot of fun to cook on and and that's really what what it was about for me was enjoying cooking on it instead of just boiling water and you can still boil water on these like no problem um but i wanted to take so that was for more than just boiling water that's sort of where it where it all came

SPEAKER_02: 23:45

that's excellent that's excellent i mean i

SPEAKER_00: 23:48

just

SPEAKER_02: 23:49

I love that the larger surface area to cook on is just, because like I bought one of those Sulik 46, one of his titanium, is it titanium or stainless? Whatever, the one that packs up into like a carbon fiber tube, right? And finding, I love it, but finding the right rocks to balance it across the fire and stuff can be a bit challenging sometimes, especially if you're somewhere where there aren't a bunch of rocks kicking around, so.

SPEAKER_00: 24:18

Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 24:19

and I did that in order to increase my cooking area anytime we're not in the middle of a fire ban anyhow.

SPEAKER_00: 24:26

Yeah, that was definitely a big concern of mine starting this this year was whether we were going to be in a fire ban like we were last year. But you know what? I said, it doesn't matter either way. This is what I want to do. And actually, the twig stove is great, but I look at it more as a tool to our brand. So like for me, I always say that our brand is really like more of a lifestyle brand and really our like motto and our goal is to like try to get people outside and comfortable cooking in the outdoor space. That's like, at the end of the day, I don't care whose twigs stove you have. I don't care what tools you're using. Like, let me help you feel more comfortable cooking over fire. Let me give you some pointers. Maybe I can inspire somebody with a recipe. That's really what it's about for me. The Twix Oves are great, but they're my tool. And there was interest in it, so we started making them. They're a lot of fun to use and you can really cook a lot of different, they're very versatile. They're not as light as a titanium stove. I don't bring mine on all my camping trips. I don't think that like it has a place in every single camping trip you're gonna go on, but it's just a tool for our brand to be able to help people enjoy cooking outside. So yeah, that's the main thing for us.

SPEAKER_01: 25:56

You mentioned pointers for that, do you have any? Yeah, just a few favorite pointers of cooking outside.

SPEAKER_00: 26:01

Cooking over fire or cooking outside, both. Sure. Cooking over fire. You know, people, you can't count on always having good coals. A lot of like, I think a lot of times people say, oh, you got to wait till the coal, like you got to get good cooking fire, good cooking fire. And I totally agree. If you're going to be able to get a good cooking fire, There you go. Good hot coals, that's the best. Chances are, you're not going to get it. You know what I mean? You're going to have pine or cedar at your disposal. You're probably not going to find dead sanding maple. If you do, you're probably way up north or you got lucky. So you know what? If you can get some hardwood, awesome. But you're probably going to cook with some softwood. It burns hot and fast. learn how to cook over hot and fast heat, thicker bottom pots and pans, and just moving things around a lot more. Another big kind of misnomer is you should only flip your steak four times. That's not a thing. I worked in a restaurant cooking 30 steaks at the same time, all different temperatures, because we were basically in a fine dining steakhouse. you can flip them as many times. It does not affect any flavor. Actually flipping them more will help the juices sort of stay in the middle. So, you know, you got to rip in hot fire, flip that steak 20 times. As long as it's not burnt, keep moving it. Like that's really a big trick, I think, is just learn how to cook with that hot fire. Because chances are, especially if you're cooking over the twig stove, you're probably not going to have good dry hardwood at your disposal. That's like the biggest thing, I think. Yeah, you know, when you're hiking, if you see a birch tree that has some flaky birch bark, put it in your pocket. Because when you get to the spot where you want to have a little fire, there's probably not going to be a birch tree. It's just how it works. Yeah, thick, heavy bottom pots and pans can help if you're going lightweight and you only have... um titanium then you might have some issues burning or scalding scalding on the bottom of your pot or pan um but that's just sort of how it works so you know sort of transitioning a little bit but when we cook over fire on a lighter long longer trip we're usually just boiling water um even if we are using the twigs so so that's where your titanium is going to really come in handy you're going to have way more heat hitting that water through that thin titanium you'll boil water a lot faster than having that thick bottom pot or pan

SPEAKER_02: 28:52

well look into the future so you mentioned recipes you're planning to get into freeze-dried recipes now uh for starters just just for the audience maybe explain the difference between dehydrating and freeze drying And what, what there are things that are more that you, that can apply or ingredients that you can use in freeze dried meals that you can't use, or theoretically you can't use in dehydrated meals.

SPEAKER_00: 29:19

Yep. Yeah. So dehydration is great. Um, people who are home dehydrating meals, that's awesome. Um, it's, it's really, it's really great to be able to make your own food. It's a really key skill I find. Um, and it's becoming more lost. Um, So if you're dehydrating at home, that's awesome. A couple disadvantages with dehydration is you can't dehydrate dairy very well or at all, and you can't dehydrate fat. It doesn't dehydrate. If you dehydrate anything with a little bit of fat, you'll notice it doesn't last very long or you'll have to keep it in the freezer because that fat will go rancid. You also lose quite a bit of nutrients when you dehydrate. So if you're kind of living off dehydrated meals for a week or 10 days on a bigger trip, you'll start to really feel it. And even when you're buying those freeze-dried camp meals at your store, you know, some of them aren't even really freeze-dried, like Alpine Air. Very few ingredients in Alpine Air are freeze-dried. Most of it is dehydrated. And so you start to feel your kind of gut feeling. noticing and your energy levels noticing after a while, because you do lose quite a bit of nutrients when you dehydrate. And also your shelf life will not be anywhere near what you'd be if you were freeze drying. Freeze drying, you're drying foods through sublimation. So a little bit of science for you. So sublimation is turning a solid into a gaseous state without it ever becoming liquid. And so what happens in the freeze dryer is you're freezing all your food solid. So all that water becomes ice. And then through sublimation, you're turning that ice into a gaseous state, so water vapor. And it's refreezing around the outside of the drum. So there's these little heating pads in the freeze dryer, and it slowly warms up your food while the food's under strong vacuum. And that vacuum sucks the moisture the water vapor right to the outside of the drum where it refreezes. And so you end up with this food that it's sort of like styrofoam. And it's kind of freaky because it tastes very good. It rehydrates very good. You lose about two to 3% of the nutritional value through the process. And if packaged properly, your food lasts about 25 years.

SPEAKER_02: 31:52

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

Yeah, and you will only lose that percentage of nutrients through that time. So you'll only ever lose 2% to 3% nutritional value over 25-year time. Where dehydrated food lasts about six months, and you lose about 30% to 40% nutritional value right off the hop. So there's huge advantages. Freeze dryers are not cheap. You can go pick up a dehydrator for$40. Freeze dryer, you're looking at around$5,000. So... There's definitely advantages and disadvantages to both. What I love most about it is that, you know, I can do all the hard kitchen prep, the dishes, dirtying up the kitchen in the comfort of my house and make these beautiful one pot meals. And on a seven day trip on the fifth day, have a fresh tasting meal. And all I did was put boiling water in a pot and pour it over the food. And I get to like kind of look at what I'm eating and making sure, you know, if you look at the packaging on some of these store-bought freeze-dried foods, you're still seeing preservatives and you're still seeing a lot of sodium. And I feel like that's because they're adding ingredients that maybe are already preserved. Some will have like gravy powders or soup bases which are high in sodium but they're doing that to cut costs um which is understandable you know they still have to keep keep costs down so they can put profit in their pocket but um what i really like is is being able to know all the ingredients of my food knowing it's going to fuel me the next day or the day of and and just um still using those local ingredients that we love using

SPEAKER_02: 33:46

that's awesome um thank you very much for the science lesson what does uh Is it more expensive to run the freeze dryer as well?

SPEAKER_00: 33:57

Yeah, I'd take up more hydro for sure. I don't exactly know the breakdown. I haven't noticed my hydro bill go up since I've been running it, so it's probably pretty minuscule. It's basically like running a giant freezer, or not even a giant freezer, like a normal-sized freezer. The vacuum pump's only on for about a quarter of the process, Um, so basically it's like adding maybe two more deep freezes or maybe like adding an air conditioning unit to your house. Right. Um, it's not, it's not, it's, it's not substantial. I haven't found, um, now if you add like three or four, maybe, um, but you're going to get, your output's going to be a lot higher, um, for what it's worth. You know, those package meals are not cheap.

SPEAKER_02: 34:43

Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the backpack pack. backpackers pantry and things like that you know so our our eldest kid and i are the mostly the back country although we've got somebody who's who's coming out more so that's good and we we started out buying buying like dehydrated soups you know like cup of soup or the the nor uh rice packages or or whatever and then just adding dehydrated whatever i would dehydrate you know do do Sort of like a jerky kind of thing, and we'd throw that in. Or I'd dehydrate a bunch of corn and tomato slices to throw that in, whatever. Now we make– well, we've got– we have Kevin Wright's Backcountry Eats. That's launched me in a, oh, I can do all these fancy dishes to take into the backcountry. That's awesome, as opposed to just chucking a bunch of stuff in. And we do– We dehydrate because I have a$400 dehydrator, but because that fits my budget at$5,000, nope, not happening, man. But part of also what got me into it was looking at the prices, like pull up the mountain equipment website and look at the price of that bag of food and go, not in a million years, man. I can do this even if I'm thinking about what what my time is worth putting into this, I can still do way, way cheaper than that. Yeah. That's crazy. And like you said, I'll know the ingredients. I'll know what, what is in it and that it's not chock full of preservatives and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 36:20

Yeah, no, that's a really good way to do it for sure. You know, enjoying your food, food is like the most important part of the whole thing for me. It's like, I kind of equate it to like having a camp chair. You know, when I started doing some more longer trips and stuff, I went and got a really nice, I got a big Agnes camp chair and I wouldn't not bring it. It's like after a 35 kilometer day, there's no like, there's no stump and rock and soft ground or moss that's going to replace being able to sit in a chair. It's the same thing with the food. After a long day of paddling, I want to just sit down to like a relatively simple yet delicious and nutritional meal. And something that I've made is going to ensure that all those boxes are checked. And that's the fun part, right? Being able to make your own food for those moments. And that's the fun with the freeze dryers. You can get away with a little bit more You can freeze dry dairy. You can freeze dry fattier foods. I've been playing around with backcountry skillet. So it's like your bacon, potato. You can throw some cheddar cheese in there. You got green pepper, onion, garlic, egg. And you just add a little bit of water on the top of it. And it's like going to a restaurant and having the skillet on the menu. It's that good. And it really is. And so it's hard to like... it's hard to frown when you're, it's hard to think about the suckage that's going to happen that day when you're having that breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I was actually really lucky. I, um, I met, uh, Tosh, uh, from Tosh Self Repelled actually at the outdoor show this year. Um, me and Cassie went to the outdoor, um, outdoor venture show in Toronto. We brought five stoves. Um, we just finished. That was the first five stoves we finished with the bags and everything. And, um, I kind of wanted to, you know, if I saw someone that I recognize, I've been watching YouTube adventures from different people for the last couple years. That was the end of the restaurant era. I'd be in the dining room with my iPad set up, prepping lasagnas for frozen takeaway dinners, and I'm watching Jim Baird or Lost Lakes or Xander and Tosh. And so... That's sort of what I was like, okay, let's take some stoves and we can get some vibes and interact with the outdoor community. I met some awesome people, Ben Beauchamp, Tosh. And I talked to Tosh a little bit and gave him a stove and gave a couple of other people some stoves just to test out. No pressure, just test it out and tell me what you think. You don't have to post it. I don't want you to go make a video. I just want you to use it. and tell me what you think. And Tosh flew back down south because he was actually on his road trip at the time. And he messaged me maybe three or four weeks later and said, hey, I'm going to be back Easter weekend. Do you want to come up and do a video? I've got my freeze dryer at my parents' house and we can do some recipes getting ready for the canoe season. I was like, yeah, sure. That sounds awesome. And so I went up and did some awesome recipes. And near the end, I was kind of like, you know, if you live in your van and you're going to go bring this to storage, Like, if you want, you can store it at my house and I'll give you 50% of everything I make. And because at that point, I just wanted to play around with it. I wanted to see what I could do with it. And so he messaged me maybe two weeks later. Yeah, you know what? I'm going to be swinging by Peterborough. Let me bring it by, drop it off at the house and we can set it up. So yeah, everything I make, I split in half and bag up. Right now, our packaging is pretty standard. Just like this craft bag. Sometimes we put our sticker on it, but most of the times it's just something like this. And... that package has got Mylar on the inside. So that will last 25 years, just like that. Um, so yeah, I package everything up, split it in half. And then when I see Tosh, I give him his, I call it his cut. And, uh, usually it's like three or four big bags of food and, uh, he's happy. I'm getting to test out some recipes and, and that's sort of where everything started.

SPEAKER_02: 41:03

Cool. So, so you've been testing the recipes for a little while now. Are you, are you putting together like a, Okay, this is what I'm going to start making it because you're moving towards doing this as a gig.

SPEAKER_00: 41:15

Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest challenge is space right now. I'm actually going to look at a space next week to set up more commercial style prep kitchen. Once we get that all dialed in and certified and figured out, then we can really start figuring more of the details out. But right now we're just in like pure development stage, testing out recipes, figuring out, you know, maybe 10 or 12 launch meals, figuring out more permanent packaging, figuring out, you know, Jeez, lots of different figuring outs. We're very lucky. We have a local outfitter here, Wild Rock Outfitters, and they love what I'm doing and are very, very supportive. So they're already committed to, or they're going to commit to carrying our meals and are very excited for them once they do launch. We've had a lot of people reach out, waiting and anticipating it, but we just have to get everything done dialed, uh, to make it, um, just to make it perfect or as close to perfect as we can make it. We know that there's going to be a bit of, um, learning as we go. Um, but we definitely want to get into the stage where we can roll it out slow and get people excited for it and, and just showcase what we can do. Um, Tosh is awesome. He's camps a lot. Um, camps more than I can camp, uh, just with, with, uh, everything going on, but he loves tasting the food. He loves, he loves eating it. So just having him sort of helping with some of the flavor profiles and, um, you know, I have big dreams and maybe I'll make a meal and he'll message me like, Hey, I'm, um, just got service on my third night, here uh this meal was good but this kind of didn't work and it's like oh good okay cool now i you know and and so i get those kinds of messages or i'll get messages where it's like dude that was like so good that like that's a staple that's a staple for sure so so having that feedback and um And the palate, um, the different palate, you know, sometimes I can taste things and I think it's the best and someone else could taste and be like, oh, it's good. But like, it's just missing that little, and you know, like that, that matters. Um, so I'm not just feeding myself at that point. I'm, I'm trying to make something that, that lots of people like. So, so yeah, one pot meals are definitely, um, you know, the the easiest to make and consume. But there's so many different avenues we can go down. We're looking at sides, so people can stop bringing sidekicks into the woods. So when you catch your fish, you have a beautiful summer zucchini rice pilaf to go with it instead of some dried scalloped potato dish, you know? Uh, so just like having those like side dishes, um, we're going to have maybe some like, um, filling fillings, maybe like some pizza topping kits, uh, or some like burrito kits. So you can either have it as like a bowl for one or have like two burritos, maybe a burrito for two people kind of thing. So yeah, lots of, lots of different different playing arounds that we can do. We've been playing around with oatmeal with freeze-dried fruit and nuts and Just using maybe a higher quality oat so it doesn't taste like you're, or feel like you're eating a big pouch of glue. Something maybe that's a little bit easier in your gut that gives you just as much boost and carbs in the morning. We are working on a meal replacement bar because both Tosh and I don't, we don't really stop, we don't eat lunch very often. We like to have a big breakfast and a big dinner and I think that's pretty common in the outdoor space. So, you know, trying to have a bar in the middle of the day that can give you fuel to get you to dinner is important to us so we've been working on that as well so lots of stuff to come and and working on a lot of cool things so yeah it's very exciting and very busy i'm still doing lots of adventures to test out all these meals as well so i spent most of the morning editing a video from like i don't know two months ago i got a month six weeks ago probably um so yeah that's That's a big part of our brand for us now is the media-based stuff. If we want to tackle that educational space in the outdoor community, we want to try to have lots of media that's super accessible. And it's very overwhelming. There's lots of different things we can do. Right now, we're focused on just tripping and making it accessible and having fun with it, doing stuff that I like to do, going on some camp trips. doing some day trips, some cooking over fire videos. Uh, so that's, that's going to get started back up. We kind of had a, a bit of a break in our YouTube media, but we're going to be rolling out five or six videos probably before the end of the year. And, and yeah, so that's like a, a big piece for us right now too.

SPEAKER_02: 46:47

Busy is a good word.

SPEAKER_00: 46:49

Yeah. Yeah. Actually I just, um, I guess last week or the week before I had an awesome, uh, little trip with Tosh and Ben and we did a four night, yeah, bamboo shop. Yeah. So that was a lot of fun. So yeah, just like, honestly, that's like one of the best parts is, is hanging out with, with like-minded people who appreciate similar things, you know, type two fun, some of the like beauty that you get to see followed by the, the suckage and, and, and hard work. So that's, that's like something that, I always bridge the restaurant community too. Restaurants versus outdoor space is like so much work, so much effort, but it's always worth it in the end. That's sort of like a big connection that happens in both spaces. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 47:39

with some suckage in between. You're right.

SPEAKER_00: 47:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 47:43

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 47:44

Yeah. I think if we can inspire people to get outside, that's awesome. If we can inspire people to get outside and cook, that's honestly, if no one buys any stoves and nobody buys any of the freeze-dried food, but we inspire people to get outside, that's still a huge win for me. I just hope that people can feel what I feel when I go outside and cook. And that's really what our brand is about. And these are all just tools to help.

SPEAKER_02: 48:19

That's excellent, man. That sounds very much like... what we're all about. That's

SPEAKER_01: 48:23

it for us for today. Thank you so much to our special guest, Chef Tyler Scott from Camp Kitchen. Please do check them out on YouTube and Instagram and any of your social media. You can find us there too. We're on all the social media and we would love if you subscribe to us on YouTube and we will talk to you again soon. If you would like to talk to us, please do email us at hi at supergoodcamping.com. That's hi at supergoodcamping.com. We'll talk to you again soon.

UNKNOWN: 48:49

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 48:49

Bye. Bye. Thank you.