Eating Well on the Trail with Mamoo’s Camp Kitchen

The following is a manuscript of the interview Tony and Joey had with Paul from Mamoo’s Camp Kitchen talking about the mediocrity among freeze dried food and how Mamoo’s is changing the game.

WEBSITE = www.mamooscampkitchen.com

Listen to the PODCAST HERE – MAMOO’S CAMP KITCHEN

WATCH the PODCAST HERE – MAMOO’S CAMP KITCHEN

Joey – hey! we’re live yeah! it’s time it’s time!  We’re here and hopefully people start joining us here in a minute but for everybody who’s out there you want to join us and those who will be listening to us on THE overland podcast when it’s live on all the podcast platforms thank you for joining us!  We are we’re here with Tony. Tony looks different. You don’t have a hat on tonight.

Tony – Man, I’ve got a bad headache. I came in here. I tried to wear my hat.

Joey – Just looking at you is giving me a headache.

Tony – It’s all this forehead right here.

Joey – You’ve got lots of forehead.

Tony – I guess I could just set it up high.

Joey – Yeah, you could look like one of the seventh graders that I have.

Tony – Well, I’d have to flatten it out then, wouldn’t I?

Joey – Yeah, you would. Yeah. Let’s go without it. I mean, you look good. You’re like, how much weight have you lost now?

Tony – Forty-five pounds, forty-six pounds.

Joey – Good for you. Well, your head’s not quite as big as it used to be.

Tony – My blood pressure’s down real good. I feel like I’m getting close to shedding my blood pressure medicine.

Joey – That’s good. You’ve had to buy all new clothes?

Tony – Mm-hmm. Yeah? A lot of them, yeah.

Joey – I’ve been there, done that. Twice.

Tony – I just got rid of like thirty pair of pants.

Joey – Goodness gracious. Who owns that many pairs of pants to begin with?

Tony – I mean, that was a slight exaggeration, but if it wasn’t thirty, it was twenty, twenty-five. Hello, Semper Gumby. Thank you for being on here. I figured he would be on here. He’s a big fan of the Mamoos. Well, thank you for joining the Overland Podcast. We’re here. We’re live. We have done quite a few different shows here lately. We’ve had some backpacking people on. We’ve had some gear people on. And tonight, we’re going to have some food, some food fellas on here. And if there’s one thing we like to talk about, it’s food. Cause you know, no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re backpacking, walking or overlanding or whatever you’re doing, you’re going to be eating. So, this is applicable to everybody. So tonight, we have on with us, Paul Murray from Mamoos Camp Kitchen. Paul, thank you for joining us.

Paul – Hey, thanks guys. Appreciate it. You know, Tony, sometimes I get nervous about when, when people come on here because I don’t feel like I know them very well. You know, it might be hard to talk to, but I don’t feel that way tonight. I think now the first time we walked up and met Paul; it was just like we had known each other for years. It was cool. And he handed us food.

Paul – That’s what it is.

Joey – You know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

Tony – That’s right. It’s been nice visiting with Paul several times and getting to know him a little bit better.

Joey – Sometimes I wonder how the conversations will go when we get on here, but I’m not that way tonight. I think this is going to be pretty laid back and informative and probably make me hungry. I just ate, but I suddenly feel hungry. But anyway, it kind of feels like we’re a family around the Thanksgiving table tonight. So that’s going to be great. My wife is on here. Thank you for joining us. Hey, Jim. So, Paul, you are from Louisiana.

Paul – That’s correct, right?

Joey – You said something about Arklamiss?

Paul – Yeah, I grew up in the Arklamiss. I grew up in the corner of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. I was within five miles. I could have stood in all three states. Now, for the last thirty years, I’ve lived in the center of the upper part of Louisiana. So, we’re about I guess we’re about ten or fifteen miles from the Arkansas line, right smack dab in the center of the state.

Joey – I love it. Well, you know, Louisiana, some places you go to it. Robbie, thank you for being on here from Overland of America. That is actually we’ll talk about that here in just a minute. That is where we met Paul for the first time. But Louisiana is … sometimes you go down there and it’s a whole different world depending on where you go. You know, the farther south you go, the people talk different. It’s you know, they’re crazy. They hunt alligators down there. They don’t do that everywhere. You know, they’ve even made TV shows out of some people down there. You know, the swamp things like that Duck Commander is pretty close to you…

Paul – yeah, we’re right next to the Duck Commanders!

Joey – yeah oh that’s awesome.  I’ve watched their show…good people, good Christian people and love how they’ve always ended their show around the kitchen table yeah and that seems like the way to do it.  You know we my family always got together was around the table and that was one of the things that that growing up that we just did.  But anyway, food is a big deal coming out of Louisiana and it’s pretty cool how you have your own food.  You know growing up in Arkansas, we had we had food that we ate pretty much all the time. You know, I grew up on beans and cornbread and, things like that, but that was, that’s just flavor of the South, but Louisiana has its own food, has Cajun food. And that’s kind of what you specialize in. Is that something that you, that you grew up on?

Paul – It is, you know, food was the thing that always brought people together. My mom, taught school most of my life. And, she is the wife of a farmer. And so, my dad farmed all the time and people would just stop by. The farmers that were farming in the fields around our house would just stop by about lunch and shut the tractors down and pile up in the yard. And mom would fix lunch for everybody. So that was just something that growing up, she always did. She fed the community. I mean, she’s in her eighties now and pretty much wheelchair bound. And I called her the other day. I said, mom, what you doing? She said, oh, so-and-so is down and sick. And so, I’m cooking a meal and, and she’s, I was up at three o’clock this morning, making a pan of dressing. I’m like, really mom? So, I mean, that’s, that’s her ministry has always been serving people. I just grew up around great, great cooks. My grandmother was a great cook. Both of my grandmothers were great cooks. and that’s just food was what we did …

Joey – that’s cool what oh there’s one thing that that takes me back you know every time I smell something every time, I smell gravy every time I make you know either bacon gravy or sausage gravy it takes me back to a time when I would wake up at my granny’s house and she would be making breakfast… it’s the smells just the taste that really create a lot of memories.  I was reading on your website when you talk about “the about us” and “how we started” and all this other stuff what a great story that you have on there about your mom and how she was a school teacher and quit doing that to be a stay at home farmer’s wife. And, and she just became known all around there as, as a cook and people would just show up wanting to know what’s for lunch. You know, what a great story that is.

Paul – Right.

Joey – I just love that. Well, I have ordered so much food from Louisiana. I’m a huge fan. Way back in the late nineties, I was working for a trucking company. I was a recruiter for a truck. We had all these truckers that would go everywhere. Well, we had one that would go way down in Louisiana quite a bit. And he came and he brought me this, this weird looking stuff. I had never seen it before in my life. And he said, you have to eat some of this. This is some of the best stuff. And, and he said, just put it in the microwave for about thirty seconds and then take it out and you can eat it. Well, it was boudin. I had never seen, heard of boudin. I was in my mid-twenties. And I just, I was like, what in the world? I’d never seen anything like this before in my life. And so, I have really loved boudin. My whole life. And I’ve ordered it from I don’t know how many places down there, anywhere I can find that’s highly rated. I want to know your recommendation. Where do I need to look for some high quality? And you got to be careful because people will put like coon meat and all kinds of stuff.

Paul – You got to be careful where you get it from. The further south you go, you got to be really careful.

Joey – Yeah. So, I’ve heard that, you know, it may have some mystery meat in there. You just never know. So, give me your recommendation. Where can I get some good boudin at?

Paul – Man, you know, I’m too far north to give you a good recommendation. When I go down, there’s a grocery store down there called Rouse’s. And I usually buy boudin from Rouse’s. And I know there’s a couple of places and I’ve got some in my store. I can’t, somebody brought me not too long ago. I can’t think of the name of it. It’s pretty good. It’s hot. It’s really hot in the smoke.

Joey – I had some one time that that they had put like whole shrimp in and it was just so good. And I can’t for the life of me remember where that was. And I’ve been searching for it. It seems like it was at a convenience store. Yeah, they made it. There’s a lot of convenience stores that have grocery stores or something real small grocery stores that make it.

Paul – Dude, down south, the gas stations is the best place to get anything down there. Yeah, true. We were at a men’s retreat down below Alexandria one time, and they were having a boudin cook-off. Dude, you just, you don’t even want to know some of the, they had Nutri-Rat in one of them. They were doing beaver. They were doing, it was just like, I’m good guys.

Tony – I’m out on the Nutri-Rat.

Joey – Yeah. I’ve been, I’ve been to some foreign countries. I made some crazy stuff, but you know, if I have a choice and I don’t have to eat it, then I’m probably not, not going to, there’s so many more good things out there to eat.

Tony – Yeah. I got some fat I need to get rid of first. Thank you, though.

Joey – No, thank you. I can fast for a few days before I do that. The pretty cool thing about Louisiana is… you have your own food. You’ve got the boudin, you’ve got the Creole, the red beans and rice, jambalaya, crawfish bowls, gumbo, etouffee, dirty rice, po’ boys. All of it has come from Louisiana. So, your kind of known for food down there. And I love it. And, for somebody who grew up on Spam and macaroni and cheese, you know, and later in life when I figure out all these different foods and I’ve came to love different foods, I have to experience some of this. And, just getting down there and, and, experiencing some of it has been pretty cool. But you apparently love to cook. I also love to cook, but it did not come later until later in life when I, learned to cook and love to cook. So, when did you discover that you love to cook?

Paul – You know, I’ve done a lot of things. I was for years a college professor at Louisiana Tech. And when I was at Tech teaching every year during homecoming, they would have big tailgate parties and tailgate sessions. And so, every department would tailgate and they would cook and they would have different cook offs for, you know, they would have judges that would come around and judge food. and it got to where we were winning it, you know, quite often. And, I was like, I think I could do this. And, so after I left Louisiana tech, I was a principal at a Christian school for seven years. And, at that point, I just kind of got to be where I just, I had to make a change in life to keep my sanity. And, my wife was like, why don’t you just open up a business? I was like, I think I could do that. And so, we started a catering business and we started a gourmet food line. And it’s really taken off and done well. Now, most of the stuff I’ve learned, I’ve learned the hard way. And, you know, I’ve messed up probably more than I’ve gotten right over the years. But, yeah, eventually you get enough stuff together that it all kind of works. And so that’s cool.

Joey – Well, that’s neat, and we’ll also see from your social media that you love the outdoors. You’ve got a really nice Jeep, a four-runner. You’ve actually built some of it out. You did a battery box that you posted on there, and you love to get outside, and obviously you love to hunt. That’s pretty cool. Has that always been pretty much a way of life for you?

Paul – It has been. Grew up hunting. Now, most of the Overland stuff, my son, like the battery box, then the Jeep, that belongs to my son. My son is actually the one that got me into Overlanding. Okay, nice. A couple of years ago, he traded in a Tesla and bought a Jeep. And he started, he bought, was already outfitted with, it didn’t have the rooftop tent, but it had a soft cover and the rack on the back of it. And he started overlanding. He’s like, Dad, you got to get into this. So, we started going to the Ozarks and doing a little trail riding and got addicted to it, man. I had no idea that was even a thing.

Tony – It doesn’t take long to get hooked.

Paul – Yeah. It does not.

Tony – My wife got me into it.

Paul – Now between hunting and overlanding, I have no money for anything. It will take all your money.

Tony – It sure will.

Joey – You know, you kind of have to find a happy medium there because you have to work to make money to buy all the stuff, but then the more you work, the less time you have to go. I know. It’s a situation we’re all in.

Paul – I really want to retire, but I owe too much, and I’m not quite there to the point to where I can.

Joey – Yeah, I agree with that. So, share with us, how did Mamoo’s Kitchen get its start? Now, we’ve already talked about your mom, and she was known as Mamoo by all her grandchildren. That’s correct. You told the story about that, but where did the catering business and all that start? When did you decide to start that, and how did all that start?

Paul – In 2012, I left being principal at the Christian school and just jumped both feet into a catering business. We started out, I bought a sixteen, no, twenty-seven-foot catering trailer, had a full commercial kitchen in the trailer. And so, we started out in that and I had a commercial kitchen in my shop behind my house. And so, we, we started out with that, just doing a little catering on weekends and kind of getting our name out there. And it began to kind of grow and grow and grow. And so, we were actually able to buy, an old Fox’s pizza here in town. A guy had built it. It was a fairly new building and, um, he was looking to get out from under it and made me a deal that I could not refuse. And, I bought it and we started catering and doing lunches and, we did a frozen food line then at that point. And both of those took off pretty well. And in fact, the catering man is just, we cater almost seven days a week. And I had no idea there was that much demand in this area for catering, but we stay busy, busy, busy catering.

Tony – It’s probably a big demand for y’all’s catering.

Joey – Yeah. Food has to be good before it’s in high demand.

Paul – But I mean, you know, I’m fifty-five years old. I’m getting to the point where I can’t lift like I used to. My knees are bad. My shoulders are bad. And so, I’m physically just getting to the point where I just can’t cater like I used to without a lot of a lot of help. And so, Lord blessed us. We came up with it with the freeze-dried food line. And that’s really taken off as well. We’re kind of beginning to shift the entire business model over to the freeze-dried line to accommodate customers, that division of it.

Joey – so when you’re talking about frozen food, you would make dishes, freeze them and people could come by them and then just put them in the oven heat them up or whatever?

Paul – yep! they were you know we keep them we keep about three or four big freezers full and they just come in and shop and buy a frozen casserole take it home take the lid off put tinfoil over it and stick it in the oven for an hour and a half and voila you got supper, but man, freeze dry is much better.

Joey – Well, yeah, I agree. It’s a lot, lot less work and you can do it anywhere. But I looked over your catering menu on your, on your website and that is a legit menu. On your catering menu you’ve got a lot of stuff available!

Paul – yeah, we do a lot of barbecues. We do a lot of brisket uh we do a lot of pork tenderloin.  We do a lot of boudin stuffed pork loin that’s it that’s all that sounds so good that sounds so good it is it’s really good.

Joey – You do box lunches. You do fried turkeys. In fact, while we were off the air, I asked you about Thanksgiving next week. Y’all are doing a ton of turkeys.

Paul – Yeah, we’ll do somewhere between a hundred and two hundred turkeys between now and Christmas. That’s a lot of fried turkeys. I get sick of looking at naked turkeys.

Tony – That’s a lot of oil, too.

Joey – Holy cow. Yeah, you need to switch your vehicles over to run off used oil, and you would never have to buy gas again. What made you think about getting into the freeze-dried? What sparked that?

Paul – That was actually an accident. I watch a good friend of mine on YouTube, the do-it-yourself hunter, Jeremy Aaron. Jeremy goes out of state and does a lot of out of state hunting. And I had been out of hunting for several years, probably back around, I don’t know, the late 2000’s. I was in a big deer lease over in Mississippi and we lost our deer lease. And after we lost our deer lease, I just kind of, my kids were coming up, they were playing sports and doing this, that, and the other. And I just didn’t have time for it. So I just kind of got out of hunting and like, grown now and kind of out of the house and so I said you know I’m going to pick cutting back up again so I got to watching his channel and I didn’t really have a lease I said you know I can do this out-of-state hunting thing so I put in to draw out of Kansas and drew a tag in Kansas and I went to Kansas last year bow hunting and stayed out there about a week and I carried a bunch of freeze-dried meals with me because I you know I’m living out of a hotel. So, I was like, that’s something I can do in the hotel and eat. And so, I just bought a bunch of commercially available, freeze-dried meals and took them with me and ate them. And I ate them, but that’s all. I mean, they weren’t good. Good. And so, I was like, you know, how hard could this be? I’ve already got a frozen food line. And so, I got to doing a little research and bought a freeze dryer and began to try to adapt my frozen casserole line to be freeze dried. And lo and behold, most of what we were already doing worked really well. We had to tweak a few things, make a few changes to increase the shelf life of it and the rehydration rate of it. But I mean, for the most part, it was a fairly simple process to switch over to what we were already doing to freeze dry. And so now we’re running two, hopefully for too long, three machines and we can’t hardly keep up.

Tony – And so that’s a horrible place to be in when the demand is so high. So how do you, do you run everything on all of your machines or do you have one machine for one type of food and then one for like all the freeze-dried ice cream or?

Paul – No, we pretty much run everything on everything. Because what we do is we’ll create, because we create the casseroles. Some of them we have to pre-cook after we do them. And then we have to freeze them. And so, we usually keep a couple of weeks of frozen stuff ahead. So, we’ve got tons and tons of trays that fit into the freeze dryer. So, we’ll make two or three weeks’ worth of batches in having our big walk-in freezer. Then we just pull them out and pop them in the machine so we can keep the machines running twenty-four seven. It takes about four days to run a batch through a machine. Get it out dry so we can do almost two batches a week. And so, we can do somewhere around two hundred packages of food a week.

Joey – Now, when you made your first batch after you had gone to Kansas, you tried the other stuff. When you made your first batch, took it out, rehydrated it, ate it, were you surprised at how good it was?

Paul – I was. I was like, holy crap. I was like, it’s got to be harder than this. I was. Now, the first batch of stuff I ran, we’re not even doing the first thing I ran. The first thing I ran, we did a Chicken Alfredo. And the Alfredo sauce was really good. And it did great. But I’ve yet to come up with a pasta that I’m pleased with for the Alfredo that rehydrates correctly. Because in our catering business, we do a lot of chicken Alfredo. So, we make all of our Alfredo sauce from scratch. And the sauce was good, but we use bow tie pasta. And so, the bow tie pasta, even the smallest ones I could find would not rehydrate without being crunchy in the center. We’re still kind of looking for a, a pasta that I’m, I’m okay with, for the Alfredo, but that was the first thing I ran. And it was, and it was, like I said, it was really good other than the texture was a little off, but we’re still working on it.

Joey – Well, we met in jay Oklahoma we mentioned that earlier Overland of America.  You had your booth set up and I think that was one of the first events that you had done.  You persevered it was hot y’all left there with a sunburn.  You worked hard but we walked up and you handed us a small cup of what you had made. And to be honest, one taste and I was hooked. I was hooked. I was skeptical at first because I have eaten a lot of freeze-dried meals in my day. I mean, a lot. And if I could show you my closet over there, my wife and I stay stocked up because when they would put a sale on when they first came out a few years ago and said, hey, this stuff is no longer good for like five or ten years like we thought.  It’s good for thirty years. You know, they were like, OK, it lasts a whole lot longer than what we originally thought when they would put a sale on because it’s expensive now. It went from five or six dollars for a bag all the way up to like fifteen dollars within just a couple years and when they would put a sale, we would just stock up so I’ve got a humongous box of even that stuff that tastes like grass clippings.  But one thing that they all have in common, most of them have in common, is they’re not great. They’re not good. And one of the big things that they can’t get over is, like you talked about, trying to find the possess, the texture. The texture in a lot of them is not good. And so, we try new ones all the time, trying to figure out what will be good, because you don’t want to be a hundred miles from nowhere, walking twenty miles with a twenty-pound pack, only have one hot meal that day, and your stuff tastes like grass clippings. And you’re just like, what in the world? And that actually happened to my wife and I in February of this year. We had taken some. We rehydrated. We were pretty excited. And it was a jambalaya. And I swear it tastes like grass clippings. And it was absolutely awful. So, when I tried your samples, I was blown away. I bet I’ve tried fifty different brands. Seems like of and most of them are just not that good. Some of them are decent, but yours were different. They were actually really, really good. And the ones that we tried were not even in the bag. They had been sitting out on the on the table for I don’t know how long. But I mean, I just I could eat every one of them. They were good! So what do you think what do you think the difference is between what you’re doing and what the other companies are doing that makes it taste better is it recipes or what?

Paul – no it’s ingredients. Our stuff is fairly expensive we’ll run anywhere from thirteen to fifteen dollars a bag but there’s no fillers I mean it’s fresh good quality ingredients and that that’s one of the things my mother always said she said you know she said I’d love to own a restaurant people couldn’t afford to eat it because you know good food is not cheap food.  So, the difference is most of those companies you know their main focus is on profit margin and don’t get me wrong I need as much profit margin as I can get of course but I’ll take less profit margin to have a better-quality product because my names on the product and my mother’s name is on the product.  And so, we always said Mamoo’s table and eat with my family I’m not going to put it out there for sale for you to eat with your family. Yeah, that’s the difference. Now, if you’re looking for something to do with all those extras that you bought, Simper Gumby had a good idea. They really work well for leveling your vehicle.

Joey – Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I can think about that, you know, because they are hard. As long as you don’t rehydrate them, they will stay pretty hard. Tony? You don’t have… as much experience as I’ve had with, with freeze dried meals. But yet when you tried it, you were highly impressed with how good it was.

Tony – Oh yeah. I mean, I was blown away. I mean, there there’s, like you said, you know, I’ve not tried near as many as you have, but I was just blown away. I mean, I, Arla and I love seafood, you know, so the Blend of the Bayou is our favorite. And, you know, for us, you know, a lot of times the, these free dries me free dried meals, they’re like a, kind of a you know a get to camp late and don’t want to cook you know type of meal but these are these are what I plan now I mean this is my planned meal for when I go to camp early yeah like it’s changed everything.

Joey – oh it’s changed everything.  Yeah if it changes your pack out you don’t have to load up as much food if you keep a box of these you know a dry box you know you just throw it in the truck and you’ve got all you need for days well the great thing about them is the shelf life they last a long time all you need is hot water they’re easy to cook easy to clean up you can cook them right in the bag if you want to um they’re easy to pack You can always keep them in your rig for just in case, or like you said, to plan them out, but you can always keep them in there. You don’t have to worry about them going bad or, or, uh, run in or stinking or anything like that. Like normal food does.

Tony – Yeah. Arla was out of work or out of town for work like last week. Don’t tell her I said this and she’s probably watching anyway, but I had the Blend of the Bayou for dinner one night.

Joey – Oh, you ate one without her?

Tony – I did.

Joey – Oh, you’re going to be in trouble.

Tony – I sure did.

Joey – You’re going to be in trouble.

Tony – It’s so good.

Joey – I mean, it’s just easy, you know, and when you’re Well, one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that sometimes you can’t predict the weather. And I have found myself in a predicament where I’ve taken only food that has to be cooked and it ends up being hot. And when it’s hot outside, you don’t want to slave over a hot stove. But yet you’re still hungry for that meal. And if you don’t have anything, if you’ve got one of these, it only takes a minute, minute and a half on a jet boil to get hot water and you’re done. And that’s one thing that I love about it is it’s good in any type of those situations, because a lot of times you just you just don’t want to cook. You don’t feel like it. It’s too hot. And all you got to do is get the bowl out in a minute, minute and a half. You’ve got hot water and then just sit around for about fifteen minutes and it’s done.

Paul – Yeah. Well, my wife travels a lot. And last week she was in Germany. And I think my son actually posted some pictures of she carried some of our meals with her to Germany. And, you know, she’s not big on she’s not big on exotic food. And so, you know, she was in Germany. At least she could have something that she knew what was what the ingredients were, you know. And they travel well, you know, in her luggage on the plane. So, she was posting from Germany all the places we will go, you know, the Dr. Seuss book. And so, she was posting pictures of Mamoo’s packets in Germany and all the places that she was traveling.

Joey – Oh, that’s awesome. That’s great. Well, my wife and I do a lot of backpacking and I’ve been talking to several of the guys that are going on the trip and told them to stock up because I will have some of this and I don’t want them to attack me and take my food from me. So don’t be jealous of my food. You know, I was telling them, I don’t know what you’re bringing, but this is what I’m bringing. So, you better place an order now. It is just, it’s just one of those things we take and we, we just eat like bars and stuff for lunch, you know, because I don’t want to get stoves and stuff out, you know, and then have to pack everything up and walk another ten miles. But at the end of the day, when I’m, when I’m sitting down, when I’m relaxing, I want to have a good hot meal. It makes me sleep better. It makes me rest better. And there’s one of the guys right there, Richard. He said, I got mine. I was like, good, good, because I’m not good at sharing. So anyway, that’s just that’s just one of the things that I love. And so, after having your meals and knowing that I can have a really good quality meal for the same price as what I would pay for one that tastes like grass clippings. It has changed my life so much. I love it. And, you know, I’m like Tony. Some days we come home and my wife said, what do you want to have for dinner? I said, well, in about fifteen minutes we could have a Mamoo’s Kitchen. All I got to do is start up and get some hot water and it’s done. And she’s like, that works. That’s great. So, it’s not just… The freeze-dried meals are not just for a last resort anymore. They’re not just for backpacking or camping anymore. You can have them at home and enjoy.

Paul – One of the ways that I use it is that I do a lot of saddle hunting out of the free saddle. And the way I hunt, when I get up in a deer stand, I like to stay there from daylight till dark. I’ll sit all day in a tree. And one of the beauties of the freeze-dried meal is I can pack my jet ball in my backpack. I can pack a freeze-dried meal in my backpack. I always got a bottle or two of water in my backpack and I never have to come out of the tree. You know, I can sit there and swing in the tree and could have a hot meal and never have to come down, never have to go back to the truck, you know, and I never leave the woods. And so. That was one of the things we were looking at whenever we came up with these things is, what can we do that we cannot have to leave the woods and stay in the woods and hunt all day. Yeah. And the, the freeze-dried meals just lend itself really well to that. We even tried some, some dehydrated stuff, but to me, the freeze dried is, is. hands above better than the dehydrated.

Joey – It really is. And it, and it lasts so much longer.

Paul – It’s, it’s a completely different. You’re looking at with dehydrated, you’re looking at five to five to ten years on the shelf life of dehydrated. The other sweet thing about freeze dried is the nutritional value. Your freeze-dried meals retain ninety five to ninety eight percent of their original nutritional value. as compared to dehydrated that has about seventy to seventy five percent of their original nutritional value.

Tony – So I didn’t know that.

Joey – I didn’t either. Interesting. How’s that work? I want to know the science behind that. I have to talk to my science teacher.

Paul – Yeah. The science behind the freeze dried is really it’s pretty amazing because you freeze the food to zero degrees. And then you put it in the freeze dryer and it pulls a vacuum on it and freezes it to negative twenty. And then it slowly begins to warm the trays back up. And so, as it warms the trays back up in that vacuum, it’s a process called sublimation. So, the water goes straight from ice to a vapor. It bypasses the liquid phase. And so the ice as it melts goes straight to vapor and sticks to the outside walls of the chamber of the of the freeze dryer and so what you end up with is you end up with your freeze-dried food and then this big wall of ice all the way around the outside of that chamber oh wow and so we usually when we put the food into the into the machine we put in uh pounds of food at a time and that pounds of food regardless of what your freeze drying will almost always pull out exactly five gallons of water. Fifty-six pounds of food. And so now the water smells like whatever it is you’re cooking. But it’s kind of weird.

Tony- You’re going to have to run that through the grail, Joey, if you want to drink that water.

Joey – Yeah, I guess so. I’d have to filter that before I drink that. I don’t know. It may taste good. I don’t know. Nutritional value. If you would come up with some protein water that tastes like Blend of the Bayou, I’d drink it. Well, let’s talk about some of the meals that you offer. I’ve had almost all these so far, except one. I have not had the breakfast scramble. I’ve got to try that.

Paul – Did I send you any of them?

Joey – I haven’t got any of the breakfast scramble.

Paul – I’ll send you some in your next pack.

Joey – That’s going to be the next one because breakfast is my thing. And I’ve noticed about in the history of me eating a lot of freeze-dried meals, the breakfast is usually one of the better ones. Usually the one of the ones that comes, I don’t know if it’s the, the eggs or the vegetables or whatever, that’s, that’s easier to do or whatever, but I know rub it in, rub it in. Uh, but what, what’s in the breakfast scramble? What can we, what can we expect when we look at that?

Paul – It’s got scrambled eggs. It’s got cheese. It’s got peppers. It’s got onions. It’s got hash browns. And it’s got sausage. The same sausage that’s in the jambalaya.

Joey – So it’s like a skillet.

Paul – Yeah, it’s like a breakfast bowl.

Joey – Oh, yeah. My goodness. I love how you put the amount of protein on there because, you know, that’s something that we always look at is the amount of protein that we’re getting. It’s really good. So… I’ve got to get some of that.

Paul – It’s also really good to take that breakfast scramble. If you’ve got some tortillas. Slather that on a tortilla with a little salsa. It’s a really good breakfast burrito.

Tony – Yep. I carried some of the zero tortillas with us. It’s good. Zero net tortillas.

Joey – Beefy enchilada. I love enchiladas. I love enchiladas. What you got in your enchiladas?

Paul – ground beef, it’s got enchilada sauce, uh, cheese. It’s got cream of mushroom soup and the soups we, we, uh, we make all the, all the cream of soups we also make from scratch. So, we make cream of mushroom soup. We make cream of celery soup. We make cream of chicken soup, a whole bunch of all the soups that are in, in all of our, our casseroles and our freeze-dried meals we make from scratch. So, you know, you asked earlier about the things that make them different. That’s one of the things that makes them different. Not only is the entire thing made from scratch, but even the ingredients as we can make from scratch. We make our own rubs, we make our own seasonings, we make our own soups that all go into our catering and into our freeze-dried meals.

Joey – Yeah, Tony mentioned earlier that one of his new favorite things is that, I don’t even know if I know how to pronounce it. Is it down to the bone? Down to the bone. Down to D’arbonne. We’re on Lake D’arbonne, the lake that we’re on. So, it’s kind of a play on words, down to D’arbonne, you know, because you put it on ribs and you go eat them down to D’arbonne.

Joey – Yeah. Well, that’s like the perfect name.

Paul – My wife came up with that. I can’t take credit for that. Well, I have used that on quite a few things myself, and I love it.

Joey – Cajun seasoning is one of my favorite seasonings, and it’s just outrageous good. But Tony is now addicted to it. And you put on there that it’s a beef and pork rub, but Tony’s been putting it on chicken.

Paul – It’s also really good if you fry some potatoes on French fries, and if you cut them real thin and fry them like potato chips, it’s really good on like potato chips.

Joey – Yeah. I think potatoes are her favorite food, so she’ll probably be trying that.

Tony – Yeah, I don’t eat much potatoes anymore, but I used to cut them up real thin like fries for McKenna and then fry them up and stuff.

Joey – One of my favorites is the cheesy chicken spaghetti. That’s one of my favorite foods in the whole world. Chicken, chicken spaghetti is like legit good.

Tony – That’s the one I haven’t tried yet.

Paul – Oh, it’s so good. That’s one of our best sellers, even the restaurant in the frozen food line and in the catering business. I mean, that’s, that’s just kind of one of our staples. We make, we make tons of that. We make tons of chicken and dressing, man. And maybe I should try that in a, in a freeze dry.

Joey  – I think you should do dressing.

Paul – We’ve made like six or eight hundred pounds in the last two weeks. And so, getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Joey – So, my goodness, dude, that’s one of my, one of the things I want to do before, um, before my mom gets too old is go spend a day at her house and have her teach me how to make her dressing. Because yeah, chicken dressing, turkey and dressing on. And, and the, the thing I hate about it is you only get it one time a year and dressing is just like a, it’s like a holiday food. You just don’t, you know, get it a whole lot. And I want to go spend some time with her because I spent some time with my Granny who taught me how to make cornbread and now I love to make cornbread and cornbread’s like a, Cornbread is like gravy. There’s an art to it. And you have to put cornbread and dressing. And dressing is like cornbread. Dressing is an art.

Paul – When we first started the catering business and first started doing the frozen food line, my mom, every year around, I don’t know, July or August, that’s when we would start making dressing for Thanksgiving. she would come over and she would help make the dressing. And so that’s how I learned to make dressing was after we started the business, she would come over and she would, spend a couple of days helping me make dressing. And I don’t know, it just, wouldn’t take anything for that time and those memories.

Tony – Oh, that’s special. Maybe you should make a limited run, like a holiday run of stuff like that.

Joey – One of the ones that blew my mind, and this was one, you know, when my wife was saying, oh, we got to get this. We got to get this. We got to get this. She wanted the King Ranch chicken. And I had never had King Ranch chicken, I don’t guess. Or it was called something different when I had it. But we had it a few weeks ago when we went down camp. That was one of the things we ate, and it just blew my mind. The thing that blew my mind about it was good to begin with, but the texture was outstanding. It was so good. It was crunchy, and I could not figure out. The whole time I was eating it, I was like, how does he do this? How does he do this? How does he make it? It’s so good.

Paul – King Ranch chicken, when we did the frozen line, it originally had tortilla chips in it. But I don’t know, there’s no way to put tortilla chips into a casserole and cook it and it not be just like soggy, just mush. So, when we started the freeze-dried lime, we replaced that and the beefy enchilada, they both had tortilla chips in them. So, we replaced that with rice. And that has been a, that’s much better than tortilla chips with the rice instead of tortillas.

Joey – That’s what you did. Well, I was, I was sitting there eating. I was like, what is that? How does he do that? And the, the, the texture was, was getting me because it was just so absolutely incredible. And anyway, she’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know how he did, but it’s good.

Paul – Oh, yeah. We’ve tried several things that just didn’t work. When we first started, one of the things I really wanted to do was shrimp and grits. And I’ve yet to be able to do grits to where they’ll rehydrate. If you’ve had like, Mountain House biscuits and gravy, the biscuit and those things never rehydrates completely without it up into small pieces. Grits are the same way. You can’t unless you put the grits through like a food processor and grind them up after the rehab, after they’re freeze dried, they will not rehydrate. So, we’re still working on some of those things.

Tony – There’s a restaurant that we go to. Every time that Arla and I go to it, she gets shrimp and grits.

Paul – It’s so good. I bet that’d be good. I agree with Richard, too. Chicken dumplings. Yeah, when he mentioned that, I was like, oh, that’d be a good one. It really would. But I think, I think you’re running the same thing with the dumplings as you do with the biscuits and gravy.

Joey – the chicken sausage jambalaya, is that something that’s, that seems like one of your staples that you do pretty much for everything. Did you have to change any of that up to, uh, to freeze dry?

Paul – The only change we made to, jambalaya was we doubled the amount of meat that was in it in order to get protein up and we if you get it in in the restaurant or in the catering business we use coin cut sausage and so we had to talk to the company that makes our sausage and ask them if they would do a diced sausage with the same sausage and so they did they do a diced sausage for us just so we have little chunks so that the sausage would rehydrate Yeah, that’s good.

Joey – Tony’s favorite is probably my favorite as well. And it probably is your best seller. The blend of the Bayou is not like anything that I’ve ever had. I don’t think there’s any freeze dry company out there that makes anything close to that. It’s so unique.

Paul – And that one is exactly what’s in our favorites. In our frozen food line and in our catering business. I mean, it’s the exact same recipe. Nothing’s changed about that one. It just lent itself very well to freeze drying. The only thing we had to do was go to a smaller size shrimp just to be able to rehydrate. But other than that, it’s the same recipe. It’s so good.

Joey – And the one that blew my mind was Tony brought those out when we were at Rendezvous. He’s like, man, we got to try the ice cream sandwiches. And just totally blows my mind. I grew up on ice cream sandwiches. There was not a time when I went to my grandparents’ house that they did not have ice cream sandwich in the freezer. And so that’s like a staple at my house.

Tony – is it Mountain House that does the ice cream sandwich? I saw that one time and I was like; I don’t know about that. I’ve tried these. I love just the little bite-sized pieces.

Paul – Oh, they’re so good. We ran those just for fun. When we first got the freeze dryer, we ran a batch of Skittles just to try the candy. We ran some Jolly Ranchers and we ran a tray of Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches. And the Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches were just like out of this world. So, we’re like, well, we’ll keep that one. We’ll keep that one.

Joey – Oh, that’s so good. I love it. Tony, which one’s your favorite?

Tony – well, the blend of the Bayou, you know, that’s really, that’s, that really is what, you know, peaked my interest because you don’t see anybody that has any kind of, you know, meal like this with crab and shrimp and, you know, and we love both of those. Some of the best food that we’ve ever had has been, you know, a Cajun you know authentic Cajun Louisiana food and then you know after that pretty close second is the jambalaya.

Paul – I can’t wait probably next on our the next thing that probably be released we’re still like I said we’re still working on it it’s probably going to be a gumbo and I want to go back to the alfredo because the alfredo is too good not to try to do something with stroganoff yeah I’ve never really made stroganoff. I’ve had it and I love it, but we’ll probably do that only because everybody else does it too, just to have that something different. Yeah. And maybe a chili mac or something, but I mean, everybody does chili mac.

Joey – Chili mac, everybody does chili mac.

Tony – Or a Cajun version of a chili mac.

Joey – Here again, the food that you put out is so much better. And that is actually one of the ones that you can… You know, if you’re in a REI or somewhere and you’re looking at a thousand different freeze-dried meals, the one that you can bank on not sucking too bad is a Chili Mac. You know, it’s not going to be too bad. It’s really hard to mess that up, but you make things so much better than everybody else. I couldn’t imagine how much. Like a Cajun Chili Mac? Spicy. Spicy Chili Mac?

Paul – Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love where this is going.

Joey – Tony and I are great beta testers. If you ever need anybody to test anything out, anything that you’re willing to try, we have sensitive palettes. We’re glad to help you out in any of that.

Tony – I will come and camp in your yard right outside your machine. And I will be there for you. Yeah. Same. Throwing that out there.

Paul – I’ll send you something. When we start coming up with some new deals, I’ll send y’all something. Because I do like to get feedback. I mean, when we first started this, we gave away probably the first twenty batches that we did. Just gave it, you know. Just to see if people like it. Hey, give me feedback. Tell me what you think. What you like, what you don’t like, what worked, what didn’t work. Um, you know, I got thick skin, but I need to know what, what’s wrong with it, to be able to fix it.

Joey – So, yeah. Well, you know, and it’s the, it’s that way with, with a lot of food, you know, that’s, you know, food has their own, TV channel because everybody likes different things and people make things that they think is good. And then they put it out there and to like, I love watching Gordon Ramsey just tear people apart because you think this is good. you show up, this is the one thing you’re going to make. And this is, you know, this is all you’ve got. And so that just rips them apart, you know? And, I love that, you know, I just get into that. But food is one thing that you’ve really got to put out there and get a lot of opinions on. Otherwise, everybody thinks their mom’s the greatest cook in the world, but you know, if it comes outside of your house, what do other people think? So, getting other people’s opinions has got to be a big deal in your business.

Paul – Yeah. Yeah.

Tony – So you guys got any trips planned? Any getting out?

Paul – Man, I wish I had time. Yeah. I’m taking the week off after Thanksgiving. And my brother and his kids, we’re going to Arkansas hunting. My son is going with Semper Gumby and a group up into the Ouachita Mountains, and they’re going to trail ride for a week.

Joey – Oh, nice. Cool. That’s only about thirty minutes from me.

Tony – Yeah. A little further from me, but I’m close to the Ouachitas. Any events?

Paul – The next event we’ve got coming up is going to be more in April. We’ll be MOORE. probably looking at… We sat down and tried to do our calendar for next year. We’re going to definitely do Overland of America again. Yeah. Had a great time there. They did a great job putting that thing together. And looking at Rendezvous in the Ozarks and maybe Expo East.

Tony – Well, there’s a good one coming up in March right up there in the Ozarks. The Jasper Jeep Jam. Cajun Kye put something on there. Cajun Kye. He was on here a little while ago. He’s like, man. March, 2025.

Joey – That’s in one of the that’s probably in the most beautiful county in Arkansas. It’s in Newton County in Jasper. It’s kind of in the middle north middle of the state so yeah, it’s the most beautiful county in the state I’ll just put that out there it’s so pretty.

Tony – you know kind of a small-town expo kind of kind of okay I mean I’ve heard of it I just I didn’t know if they had vendors or what well you know what the format of it was or anything they do this will be their second year so really looking forward to it it’ll be the first one for me next year.

Joey – Well, I saw where on your website, you’ve got people to sign up for, if they sign up for an email or something like that, they can save ten percent off their first order. You’ll send them a code. So just let everybody know. And we also have a code. Overlandpodcast10 saves you ten percent. You can use that. Free shipping over seventy-five dollars. So, visit www.mamooscampkitchen.com. You may have cut out on our code there a little bit.

Tony – What’s our code again?

Joey – Overlandpodcast10. There you go. Yeah. OverlandPodcast10. I’ll say it again. Instagram and Facebook. Make sure you give them a follow. And you’ve also started a Mamoo’s Camp Kitchen Adventures on Instagram.

Paul – That’s my, my son is kind of head spearheading that. My, my kids do my social media. I’ve got a PhD in information systems, but I’ve been out of it for so long. They’re like, dad, just please stay off the computer. Yeah.

Joey – You, you got it in like the Commodore sixty-four. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t be hating on that. That was my first. That was my first two. That was my first two. That was my first two. Dude, I played a lot of time on that now. Yep, and Dig Dug. What was the other one?

Paul – When I was in college, I came home and told my dad, I’ve got to have a computer. He’s like, son, I’m not buying you a video game. I’m like, no, really, dad. You can actually do work on it. Yeah, you can get an AOL account.

Joey – Yeah, and have a Myspace. Paul, we appreciate you greatly coming on the podcast thoroughly enjoyed learning a little bit more about you and getting to know you and your business so better I appreciate it I’ve had a great time appreciate you guys.

Tony – Come up and we’ll have to go hang out in the woods

Paul – that’d be nice that’d be really nice

Joey – We love you. We love your products and we love how we can work together and support you and a small business. And you put out some really great stuff and we love it.

Paul – I appreciate it. The Overland community has just been great to us. I’ve just been blown away by the acceptance of the Overland community. And I just appreciate you guys and what you do and appreciate your support.

Joey – And, you know, if there’s anything we can do, just please let us know.

Paul – And, if you’ve got suggestions, if you’ve got comments, if you’ve got critiques, you know, let us know because that’s the only way to make it better is to let us know what’s wrong. So that’s right. That’s right. Well, we really appreciate you being on here. Want to thank everybody for tuning in and listening to our conversation. I hope you’ve got as much out of this as we have. We all love food. This is one of our favorite topics and we can talk about this forever. All night. But anyway, we got to go. Hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening to the Overland Podcast. Look out for number one and don’t step in number two. We are out.

In the following, I have included the show notes for the show in case you want to know more how  the BRO’s do it and not the PRO’s.