food help on first trip

Questions about equipment and supplies to bring on a trip (including reviews).

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Bill Spears
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Bill Spears »

Regarding MREs...

We purhased a couple cases of civilian-versions of MREs at ~$5 a piece + S&H:

http://www.readymeal.com/

On our August '08 Isle Royale trip, we each packed 1 MRE per day for 6 days. There were pros and cons I'd like to share, to kick in my $0.02 as it were.

Pros:

-As stated previously in this thread, the calorie count was phenomenal. Was something like 1300 calories. Kept us nourished and energetic.

-No Fuss. No need to boil water, and no need to wash dishes after. After a long day, this was ideal for camp.

Cons:

-HEAVY. These suckers weighed in around 1.5 lbs each IIRC. For A canoe/kayak trip, no problem, but in a backpack, ugh. This was by far the biggest detriment. For a 3-4 day hike, the weight would be acceptable to me, but for 6+ days in the backcountry, those pounds add up quickly indeed. I personally would pack only 3 MREs for another 6 day hike, for example.

-Much trash to pack out. The packaging is really wasteful, and it's just dead weight and bulk to be carried out. Additionally, the heating sleeve is full of Magnesium filings I believe (or possibly iron??), and besides being environmentally wasteful IMHO, it smells bad in your pack. Think burning metal odor.

-Thin on variety. I know it's not supposed to be a 5-star restaurant, and soldiers in the field live off of these for longer, but after 6 days the menu got a little tedious. Minor complaint.


TLDR version: I suppose I would pack them for my next backpacking trip, but there is definitely a weight and bulk tradeoff for the convenience.
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Nick
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Nick »

If you e-mail privately at plainwelllaw at cs.com, I'll send you my 14 day meal planner along with an inventory of meals you can pre-make at home with a bunch of baggies and a dehydrator. I started doing dehydrated and health foods last year and it beats the heck out of the freeze dried stuff. Only problem is JohnH showed up. Once you feed him....

PS--anybody else who wants the inventory and meals, just let me know.

Nick
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Backpacker534 »

I was going to add my "two cents" on the whole meal "thing" the other day but never got around to it.

My buddy and I normally have a mix of things for meals. We have had a couple different dinner-type Mountain House meals over the years and they have always been tasty, so I normally pick up one or two of those. On top of that we also take along some homemade food. My buddy has a food dehydrator so he usually cooks up a pound of hamburger, adds the taco seasoning mix and then dries it out on the dehydrator. For the tacos we bring along some flour tortilla shells, a bag of shredded Cheddar cheese and a few packets of taco sauce from Taco Bell, and presto, it's Mexican night at Lane Cove! We've also had spaghetti several times. He has taken a pound of hamburger and mixed it with a jar of spaghetti sauce. The whole concoction goes into the dehydrator and comes out looking like a nasty, giant fruit roll-up ( Here's a picture: http://briansplace.ynt1.com/backpack/20 ... _17_bg.jpg ). The nice thing is, however, we just put it into a pot of boiling water and it rehydrates just fine...add some cooked bow-tie pasta and we're eating like kings!

We normally put the block of Cheddar cheese and the bag of shredded Cheddar cheese in the freezer before we leave. It then gets packed away in the middle of the backpack and it stays nice and cool for at least a day or two.

For breakfast I usually take some packets of instant oatmeal. For lunch we snack on cheddar cheese and salami sticks that we roll up into flour tortilla shells (we normally take along small packs of Dijon mustard to add a bit more flavor). We also pack granola bars, Pop Tarts, gorp, and mini bagels and packs of peanut butter.

Heck, one year we even had tuna helper. I took the seasoning packs out of the box and took along a foil packet of tuna fish. We've also taken fettuccine and Velveeta shells and cheese.

Needless to say, we are never hungry, but a good portion of the weight of our backpacks is the food we bring.

Hope this gives youy some ideas. :D
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Backpacker534 »

Well, I just realized that HotlLink protection is enabled on my website so you can't see the picture referenced in the link above. So, here is a working link to a photo of the dehydrated spaghetti sauce.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y205/s ... _17_bg.jpg
Don_P
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Don_P »

Brian - nice site. Trip reports are very good.

Don
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Backpacker534 »

Thanks, Don. I appreciate the compliment. I don't get out hiking very often, but I do enjoy posting my trip journals and photos. It's a fulfilling hobby.
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by rainelde »

best suggestions I can give:
oatmeal and hot chocolate
foil pack tuna, save mayo and relish packets. Pita bread travels awesome.
cheese and dried jerky
Now, Mountain house meals are good. With our party of 3, we got by. You can enjoy them, and can bring other things like tortillas to toast on stove.
we take tons of drink packets to mix with water.
Biggest of all, dont forget your favorite candy. It comes in handy when you are killin time in your tent at night playing poker.
Don't forget, each day your pack will get lighter, so put a little thought into your meal ideas. Sometimes its worth the little extra weight right off the bat to enjoy yourself.
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by rainelde »

HI
Here is my 2 cents on food.
Oatmeal and poptarts, bring some dried strawberries, they weigh nothing. small baggie of brown sugar.
Tuna in foil packs and save your mayo packets from fast food restaurants.
Pita bread
string cheese
granola
jerky or summer sausage
hard cheese
*now suppers*
we found that the mountain house was just fine and with salt and pepper pretty good when you are hungry and tired. The one for 4 fed 3 plenty
we took the new already cooked bbq chicken breasts in foil pkgs, instant potaotes easy to heat
we also took pasta and spaghetti sauce and tortillas pre spread with butter and garlic salt, roasted them on a aluminum plate we brought, used the gerber tool to act like a handle and the ranger thought that was the best supper he had ever had.
DONT buy THE HOT DOGS ON THE ISLAND. THEY ARE HORRIBLE AND NOT SURE WHAT IS IN THEM.
Fruit roll ups are excellent especially of you make your own.
we took lots and lots of the individual drink mixes to add to water and hot chocolate and instant coffee.
The biggest thing to remember is your favorite munchie candy, you need this to get thru the card games at night when you can't sleep.
hope this helps
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by JCoburn »

The mountain house meals are great and always tasty! I am also partial to the cheap, lightweight, and always (ok, sometimes) yummy ramen noodles. Brings me back to the days when I was much poorer! lol. A must for me are twizzlers. Easy to grab on the trail, the package always gives the weight, & they are the greatest snack on the planet. Cant go wrong there. Gushers fruit snacks are also a trail favorite!
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by ScoutDad »

A ziplock bag filled w/cereal and a measured amount of carnation instant milk is a breakfast favorite of mine...quick and no cleanup except your spoon. Write the amount of water you need to add to hydrate the milk on the bag with a sharpie pen.

For lunch, a hard cheese like parmesean (stays good for a long time) and a wrapper of ritz crackers. I bought a poster tube from the post office and cut it to size and store the crackers in that to keep 'em crumble free.
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Don_P
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by Don_P »

We just finished packing the meals for our late August trip. Takes a while but it's nice to know what's in the meals (and the planning is fun). I'll post menu / itinerary under trip reports later.

We relied heavily on two sources:

http://www.trailcooking.com/
http://onepanwonders.com/
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DonNewcomb
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Re: food help on first trip

Post by DonNewcomb »

First, you have to adapt to what the folks in your group eat. Some people don't eat meat, others may be alergic to certain foods. My brother does not care for most freeze dried foods, particularly prepackaged dishes, so we make most stuff from scratch and dehydrate a lot ourselves.

This helps when we camp on barrier islands where the ground-water is somewhat salty. If you leave all the salt out of the food and cook with brackish water you don't get salt overload.

One thing we do with home-dehydrated food to add some water to the upcoming night's meal when we stop for lunch. This gives it a few hours head-start on rehydrating. Dehydrated ground beef needs a bit of soaking.

Normally the only cooked meal is dinner. We boil water for tea, cocoa and oatmeal at breakfast but don't dirty the cook-pans with food. We may, or may not, boil water for lunch.

Some foods we always carry include:
Nutella
Fresh onion and garlic which is chopped and added to the pot
Parmesan cheese which was freshly grated just before the trip.
A small bottle of olive oil.
You might think we are Italians if you wandered into our camp at meal time.
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