This summer CIM is producing a cooking show, “Cooking in Motion,” a series of video tutorials on how to cook a variety of recipes while camping in the outdoors. Each episode of the show features Sarah, the CIM Adventure Coordinator, and a CIM community member “guest chef,” cooking together in the outdoors while having open conversations about diabetes, as well as other topics near & dear to their hearts! Follow along on the CIM socials and blog to watch each episode and find the recipes we try!
On episode 1 of Cooking in Motion I was joined by CIM community member, experienced backcountry guide, and recently retired elementary school teacher, Michel Godbout, who showed me how to make his own special trip recipe: cinnamon rolls!
Michel invited us (Hank, our videography wizard, my younger sister Maddie, a recent film grad who was Hank’s assistant for the day, and myself), out to his beautiful property in rural Mono, Ontario where he and his wife Sue live with their tabby cat, go for hikes, keep a hive of honeybees, and make their own maple syrup.
Once we were all set up to cook together but separately, (as socially distanced as we could), Michel took the lead and I followed along as his sous-chef. We used Michel’s MSR dragonfly stove as well as his handy-dandy Outback Oven, a great tool for distributing heat that is perfect for making baked goods on trip.
Michel made his batch of cinnamon rolls with raisins and I made a batch without so we could try both kinds. At Michel’s suggestion, we also added a few strips of cooked bacon to each batch towards the end of the cooking time to add a delicious smokey bacon flavour to the cinnamon rolls.
As the rolls were cooking I did a mini-interview with Michel to ask him about his diagnosis story, how he discovered CIM, and the monthly T1D Men’s Mental Health support group he has spearheaded through CIM.
S: Michel tell me, how long have you had type 1 diabetes?
M: Well, this April was 42 years.
S: 42 years…WOW. And I know that you have kind of a wild diagnosis story, do you want to tell me about that?
M: Well first of all I was at school, and in Quebec you go to CEGEP after high school. I was doing a business degree, it was in April, exam time – I thought I was just getting stressed out over everything, I started losing weight, I started drinking water all the time, at night I’d dive into the ice cream. I was living with my sister at the time because I left home when I was 16, and I didn’t know anything about diabetes and one day at school I just blacked out and woke up in the hospital, and then them telling me that I have diabetes. And I knew nothing about that. I didn’t know anything about diabetes.
S: And how old were you then?
M: I was 17 years old. And then the doctor said ‘the first thing is, you’re going to have to find some kind of job that’s really low-stress, office job…’ and that totally turned me right off, and I rebelled. I did the total opposite.
S: Yeah you did, you did!
M: Yeah I ended up going to university at Lakehead, doing outdoor pursuits, got into canoe tripping, climbing, white-water kayaking. Total opposite of what they told me to do.
S: That’s amazing. How did you hear about CIM?
M: I was at the clinic in Orangeville and I’d been diabetic, well I’d been living in Orangeville for at least 25 years. And, I was sitting at the clinic and there was this little brochure that said ‘CIM, people wanna do outdoorsy stuff’, and I said ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve been doing this on my own for like over 20 years!’, I only knew one other diabetic person.
S: Oh my goodness, wow.
M: So I signed up for the Slipstream and then I showed up.
S: Yeah. So Ontario Slipstream was the first event you went to?
M: It was the one just outside of Bancroft.
S: Okay, and what year was that?
M: Well that was at least five years ago.
S: Wow that’s awesome. I remember actually at my first slipstream when I wasn’t even a participant, I was a camp staff, Michel was actually one of the first people I met. And I remember hearing your story and just all of the crazy adventures you’d been on and working your jobs, it really comforted me and like inspired me because I was coming from a similar, you know, backcountry guide background, and I was obviously concerned. But yeah, that’s so awesome and you continue to inspire the type 1 outdoors community.
S: So Michel, I know that you are a passionate outdoorsman in the type 1 community and you’ve also been passionate about advocating for men’s mental health. And at our most recent Virtual Slipstream, we had Dr. Mark Heyman, a diabetes psychologist, run a workshop for male-identifying people to discuss men’s men’s mental health in the type 1 community. And since then you’ve kind of spearheaded this group where you meet up on Zoom every month and have your own little men’s mental health support group, so tell me about that.
M: That’s correct. I remember talking to Jen [Hanson] all the time saying ‘We need more guys here, there’s not enough men’, or there are more men but they were all way younger than me. So I kept complaining and complaining and then eventually Jen said ‘Well, you have to do something about it!’ So, I suggested having a men’s mental health group and so she spearheaded in the virtual conference, in Zoom, getting Mark Heyman. And then since then I’ve been in touch with him- actually I was part of a podcast just like a week or two weeks ago, he interviewed me talking about sort of what we call the ‘Diabetes Desert’, where dealing with diabetes all on your own and how that can affect your mental health. And I remember my first twenty-some odd years of diabetes was all on my own. I didn’t know anybody…sure my wife was with me at the time, and she was – still is- my biggest support, but I had no other people to talk to. So it’s a lot of stuff that we just, especially men, we just bottle inside and we don’t talk about it.
S: Yeah for sure, that’s really important and I think what you’re doing with the meetup and the group is really important, and I obviously haven’t been to one of your sessions but I’ve heard amazing things. I really hope that it continues and that you guys continue to get support from each other.
M: Oh yeah, so do I and we are, we’ve had our inaugural meeting and our next meeting is Wednesday the 15th of July, so it’s usually always the third Wednesday of every month. There’s 24 men that have signed up so far so we had about 20 at the last meeting.
S: That’s great!
M: So it’s a good start. And I’m sure we’re going to expand and get more people to come in.
S: Yes, absolutely, that is so great. Thank you for talking about that.
M: Oh you’re very welcome.
Once the rolls were done cooking, we had special guest judge Kendra Dempsey, the CIM Communications Coordinator who lived nearby, help us taste-test the rolls.
The verdict? She preferred Michel’s raisin cinnamon rolls to my plain ones but I tried not to take it too hard!
I have rated this cinnamon rolls recipe in a few different categories to give an overall assessment of it for cooking while camping:
Level of Difficulty
Rated on a scale from 1-3 with 1 being very easy (beginner camp chef), and 3 being difficult (advanced camp chef).
Verdict: I rate this recipe a 1/3 for level of difficulty. It was a very simple recipe to follow, and the rolls were easy to prepare and cook!
Tastiness
Rated on a scale from 1-10 with 1 being not so delicious, and 10 being AMAAAZING.
Verdict: This recipe definitely gets a 10/10 on the tastiness scale! I really have nothing bad to say about these rolls, they were absolutely delicious and worth the insulin!
Camping Convenience Factor
Rated on a scale from 1-5 with 1 meaning the recipe is very inconvenient for camping (for example ingredients are not easy to pack, difficult to cook over a camp stove/fire, time consuming, etc.), and 5 meaning the recipe is very convenient for camping (ingredients are lightweight/easy to pack, easy to cook on a camp stove/fire, etc.)
Verdict: I rate this recipe a level 4/5 for camping convenience! The ingredients needed are mainly dry ingredients which are lightweight and easy to pack, and they will also keep for a long time so there is no worry of food going bad on longer camping trips.
These rolls also are very easy to make on a camp stove/fire as they only require a frying pan to cook. The only reason I didn’t rate these a 5/5 for convenience is because this recipe requires some sort of mixing bowl to make the dough, which is a bit too heavy/cumbersome to pack for extended hiking trips or ultra lightweight packing, but certainly isn’t an issue for car-camping and canoe trips.
Final Verdict
This is an amazing cinnamon rolls recipe for camping in the frontcountry, backcountry, or at the cottage and I will definitely be making them on my next canoe trip! Thank you Michel!
Check out Michel’s recipe below!
Michel’s Backcountry Cinnamon Rolls
Preparation Time: ~10 minutes
Cooking Time: ~ 20 minutes
Total Time: ~ 30 minutes
Equipment Needed:
1 mixing bowl & spoon
Measuring cups & spoons
A cutting board
A rolling pin (a water bottle works well!)
A frying pan
Ingredients
Baking Mix:
- 1 ½ cups of flour
- 1 Tbsp white sugar
- ½ Tsp baking powder
- ½ Tsp baking soda
- ½ Tsp salt
- ½ Cup powdered milk
- 4 Tbsp vegetable oil
Other ingredients:
- Water (about ½ cup, but use more or less as needed)
- ⅓ Cup brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp butter or margarine
- Cinnamon (ad lib)
- Raisins (optional, ad lib)
- ~3 Tbsp maple syrup (Michel’s secret ingredient!)
- 6 slices of cooked bacon (optional)
Directions
Combine baking mix ingredients in a bowl and add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Add in the water a little at a time, mixing as you go until the dough is sticky but not runny. Knead the dough with your hands (the fun part!). Once the dough is well mixed, roll it out onto a floured surface (a cutting board works well), and roll it out into a long rectangle.
*Pro tip: a water bottle (we used a Nalgene) makes a great rolling pin while camping!
Once you have your dough rolled out, spread the butter or margarine evenly over the dough. Sprinkle the brown sugar and some more cinnamon over the dough and then drizzle on the maple syrup. Top it off with a layer of raisins (if you wish), and then roll the dough lengthwise into a long tube shape.
Slice the dough tube into even pieces about 1.5 inches thick- my tube made 10 rolls. Fire up your camp stove or, build a cooking fire (nice hot coals with low flames). Preheat a frying pan with 1 tablespoon of butter and place the rolls in the frying pan spaced so that they are not touching if possible.
Cook covered over a low heat for about 20 minutes. The key is to check on them frequently to make sure they are cooking evenly and not burning. If needed you can flip the rolls halfway through the cooking time. Cook until baked all the way through and the rolls are a nice golden brown. Serve!
Optional: in the last five minutes of cooking time you can layer 6 pieces of cooked bacon overtop of the cinnamon rolls to give them a smoky bacon flavour that goes nicely with the maple syrup in the rolls!
Dietary Options
These cinnamon rolls are vegetarian (omit the bacon option), they can be made gluten-free by using your favourite gluten-free flour (almond flour works well), and they can be made vegan by using your favourite vegan margarine.
For Bolusing
The carb count for one cinnamon roll is approximately 28 grams of carbohydrate.
*If you are making these while camping/being active in the outdoors, keep in mind that you may need to reduce your basal or bolus insulin.
A Word on Covid-19
In the making of this series our CIM staff and wonderful “guest chefs” were very cautious in regards to COVID-19. All of the participants in these videos and our film team had been carefully isolating at home with minimal contact with others prior to filming, and we felt safe expanding our small social circles to include the few individuals involved in making Cooking in Motion. All participants took precautions before, during, and after cooking/filming, including hand washing and sanitizing, using separate cooking/eating plates and utensils, and maintaining 6 ft social distancing when possible. CIM staff have continued to remain at home and away from others as much as possible, and wear masks whenever in public places. We take our staff and community members’ health seriously and we will continue to monitor the situation, and take precautions throughout the production of this series.
