This summer was a new experience for me, and I learned a lot. However, one area where things generally worked out pretty well for me was in menu planning and cooking. A few thoughts on food here:
1. The food dehydrator was a life-saver. My menu was really enriched by cooking hearty one pot meals and sauces at home, then drying in my home dehydrator. I found recipes that I liked for chili, spaghetti sauce, beef stroganoff, turkey tagine, chicken jambalaya, and other meals, cooked big batches at home, ate half for dinners and lunches and dried half in the food dryer. Where recipes called for beef, I would generally use ground turkey or ground chicken (easier to rehydrate). Turkey pepperoni was another common substitution. I also spent a lot of time drying fruits and vegetables which I mixed in with my breakfasts and dinners and sometimes ate as snacks. Frozen corn, broccoli, peas, peppers, and mixed veggies dry up very well and rehydrate easily.
2. A soup thermos was also very useful. I carried two vacuum bottles all summer. The first was a coffee thermos that I would fill up every morning and drink throughout the day--very nice on cold, rainy Southeast Alaska afternoons. The second was a wide-mouth soup thermos. I started off with a 16 oz. wide-mouth, then switched to a somewhat larger (18 oz.) container half way through. Typically, I would use the vacuum bottle to rehydrate my dehydrated dinner, placing the ziplock bag of dehydrated food (chili, stroganoff, whatever) in the container in the morning, and filling the bag part way with boiling water as I cooked my breakfast. I would then seal the bag, close the bottle, and stow for the day. In some cases, I would also partially fill the thermos with cous cous or rice as a base for the meal, add the stroganoff (or whatever) and water, and seal. By dinnertime, the food would be completely rehydrated, and often still warm. Sometimes I would reheat dinner on my stove, but I would often eat it straight from the thermos or the bag without reheating, even when it was lukewarm (I was usually hungry!) This approach saved a lot of cooking time and no doubt a fair bit of stove fuel.
3. My MSR Dragonfly was a great companion. I spent a lot of time before the trip agonizing about what stove to bring. I've been spending time in the outdoors for a long time and have accumulated a lot of gear over the years--I considered using an old MSR Simmerlite for the trip, a Jetboil I inherited, an alcohol-burning Trangia, a wood-burning Emberlit and even a stove I made myself out of old pop cans. All of these alternatives had advantages and disadvantages. I picked the Dragonfly mostly because it was the newest of my stoves and I thought it was the least likely to let me down halfway. I found that the Dragonfly's ability to easily simmer at low temperatures was a great advantage on a trip of this length--I believe it saved me a great deal of fuel which ultimately lightened my load, (especially towards the end of the trip, once I had a good handle on how much fuel I was using). This despite the fact that the Dragonfly is among the heaviest of my stoves. For whatever reason, I continue to spend a lot of time weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different types of stoves for paddling, and still want to try out one of those home made soda can stoves on a longish trip, but experiments aside, I had a very good experience with the Dragonfly and will use it again.
4. Breakfast burritos are great. Medium sized tortillas are just about the right size to sit efficiently in the bottom of a bear keg, and a single-serving package of ova easy powdered eggs (the best kind, despite the terrible/wonderful pun of a name) makes a great dinner. I would add instant hash browns, dried vegetables of all kinds, mushrooms, whatever to about a cup of water, bring to a boil, then add eggs and a package of bacon bits, turn off the stove and stir. Put chunks of cheese in the mix to melt for a minute before eating your burrito with a little salt and hot sauce (in my case, both probably stolen from Taco Bell). Carl and I often wondered if we could skip the salt and just cook with ocean water, but never tried it. Maybe next time. I also have inherited several boxes of freeze dried refried beans that will be part of my repertoire the next time I take a long paddle.
5. The bear can fits in the cockpit. Or, at least, my bear can fits in my cockpit, just afore my foot pegs (and my foot pegs held it in place in case of a wet exit). I would double-bag the food in the bear can with trash bags, which seemed to keep everything dry, even on the couple of occasions I got a lot of water in the kayak (fortunately always from having waves break into the cockpit on a launch or landing--I never unintentionally capsized). This freed up a lot of space that I could use elsewhere in the boat. I also carried an ursack that fit right astern of the cockpit, in the stern compartment. Putting too much weight in the bear can up there towards the bow tended to contribute to weathercocking in a tailwind, so I would consider using two ursacks in the stern and figuring out another way to use the cockpit space. I did have to bear bag food a few times, and I paddled with partners who bear-bagged the whole time, but hanging your food is such a pain and takes so much time--bear cans and ursacks are much easier and work fine.
Other meals that I really enjoyed included dehydrated mashed potatoes (actually served with chili), fettuccine carbonara, and mac and cheese. These last two I would also use packaged "real" bacon bits, and I added peppers to the mac and cheese where I could (should have dried a bunch of jalapeños before the trip but didn't think of it). Also used powdered whole milk ("Nido").
On the other hand, I planned to eat a fair bit of curry (with Japanese-style curry blocks) served with noodles or rice, cashews and dried veggies, but got tired of that pretty quickly. Also brought a little spice jar of fish rub which I never used. Didn't spend enough time fishing, though on a trip with a more relaxed itinerary, that might come in handy.
Of course, everybody's tastes are a little different, and the things that I really enjoyed eating might not be very good for other people. The trick for me has been to gradually build up a repertoire of eight or ten meals that I really like and can cook easily in the backcountry. That's plenty of variety, even for a long trip. I've stolen a lot of ideas from paddling partners!
With regard to gear for cooking, most of my setup was pretty traditional. I used a small (1.5 qt.) pot that fit my stove, though I generally prefer a somewhat smaller coffee-pot, which I find useful for pouring and draining pasta. My coffee pots don't fit my stove well, though (where I generally store the stove) or don't fit in small dry bags, and I've had bad luck getting salt water and sand in the stove fuel line if I don't dry bag it up. I also brought a folding backpackers grille, but mailed it home fairly quickly, and carried a folding saw all summer but almost never used it. I have been on kayak trips in the past when I regretted not carrying a saw, and In retrospect, I might still carry one, but would probably carry a small handheld folding model, rather than the homemade bucksaw I used. Maybe even just a folding knife with a saw blade. Though I contend that my bucksaw (made it myself!) was much cooler. Only made fires a few times, and generally on dry evenings when there was plenty of appropriately-sized driftwood about.
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