Lightweightish Lidl/Aldi menu for 5 days

Van-Wild

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Feb 17, 2018
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Food for 5 days.

Not including coffee!

What do others do?

(Idea is packing all food in a canoe bag, carried in my rucksack)

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5 days of food? Thats tricky.

Generally go dry as much as possible in order to reduce weight but for that to work you must have a constant supply of water. Carry extra water and you outweigh the advantages of carrying dry.

Stick with high carb and high protein foods so you get all the goodness and energy you'll need but in smaller quantities. Your pic looks good in that respect.

I'd be looking for options to stop along my route to re-stock if it were me. If I was stopping in one place for 5 days I'd just suck it up and take on the extra kg for the route in.

I don't shop in aldi or lidl so can't offer advice on specific food they sell but I hope thats useful.

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//probably typed on mobile so please excuse typos!
 

Van-Wild

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Oh good point.....

Breakfast:

Large size quick cook oatmeal with golden syrup

Lunch:

Crackers
Tuna
Cheese

Dinner:

Dried pasta meal

Snacks/drinks

Coffee
Sweetened evaporated milk
Hazelnut chocolate
Trail mix (nuts and dried fruit)
Sweets (wine gums, haribo)

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punkrockcaveman

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I've done a couple of 3 night/4 days, but they have been supplemented with protein from fishing and foraging, with a fresh water supply near camp.

Rice
Porridge oats
Sugar
Peanuts
Dried fruit
Chicken stock
Spices
Teabags

That's the usual list. Going to change up the rice for thin dry noodles and dry bannock mix (baking powder, self raising flour, salt) for variety. In this instance I could make sweet or savoury bannock.
 

Bishop

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Jan 25, 2014
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Basic menu: for short lightweight trips
Instant porridge
cheese,crackers, sausage of some sort.. chorizo/Peparami/Polony
Magi Noodles, Cup-a-Soup
Shortbread biscuits
Brew kit tea/coffee
 

Erbswurst

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Mar 5, 2018
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I eat at first bread and hard cheese.
Afterwards bread and Salami.
In between nuts -dried fruit mix.

If water is accessible you could cook noodles with Knorr sauce, on the German market they are the best dehydrated soups and sauces.

I hate cooking and washing up, so I continue with bread, cheese and salami, and the nuts - fruit mix.

Chocolate in cold conditions.

I like Haribo and English wine gums but don't eat them in the woods. Usually the packages are simply too large.

Fruit sugar tabs are OK.
Biscuits too, if in small packages.

Muesli with water and sugar is a powerful option.
The expensive Muesli bars you can eat in the bivvy bag.

Fish tins I only eat on touristic camping grounds and nearly right in front of supermarkets I came along.
Of course there you can eat all what you don't want to carry around.

Currently here is mushroom time.
I would make an exception and carry a few onions and bacon.

Tea bags, little sugar bags from the bakers shop, salt and pepper.

Instant coffee works with cold water too. I am used to it. If my coffee is warm, it's usually just warm water from a tap. Yes, I am lazy. Very lazy.
 
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Erbswurst

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Tins and green vegetables aren't light.
They are incredible heavy and have a low amount of energy in them.
Hikers collect wild edible plants or pick an apple somewhere on the way, or buy fruits in shops and eat them immediately.

Knorr sells well tasting dehydrated tomato sauce. There is no reason to carry a full tin around and to have afterwards the pleasure to carry the muddy empty tin in the rucksack.

I avoid sauces in underpants and sleeping gear.
 

punkrockcaveman

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Guys, you all look a little light of vegetables. If you are having pasta or noodles, you could take a tin of tomatoes at least for 1 of your 5 a day.

Super heavy though! Does anyone know if dehydrated peas and the like hold their nutritional value?

Last couple of trips was supplemented with seaweeds and wood sorrel, plus pine needle tea.
 

Van-Wild

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I carry multivitamins when I'm adventuring. Will supplement with adhoc foraging when the opportunity arises. A small packet of spirulina could be a good idea though....

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Van-Wild

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So not even an apple or a banana?
Fresh fruit and veg bruise easily in a 25kg pack when its dropped on the ground or used as a seat! also, I'm allergic to bananas! (But thats going off thread and we really should guard against that!)

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TLM

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Nov 16, 2019
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All lists very low on fats, no problem in the warm seasons but fats are still the most concentrated form of energy for the cool and cold season. I am lucky in the sense that fat burning kicks in almost automatically when in cool weather and aerobic exercise. It took some figuring what happened when met the first time. "Native" Americans used pemmican, it had a lot of fat. Esquimaux eat/ate a lot of fat. It might not be all bad if you use it for energy on the fly.
 

Van-Wild

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All lists very low on fats, no problem in the warm seasons but fats are still the most concentrated form of energy for the cool and cold season. I am lucky in the sense that fat burning kicks in almost automatically when in cool weather and aerobic exercise. It took some figuring what happened when met the first time. "Native" Americans used pemmican, it had a lot of fat. Esquimaux eat/ate a lot of fat. It might not be all bad if you use it for energy on the fly.
Cheese = fats
Nuts = fats
Chocolate = fats
Chorizo = fats

All the above are carried in such quantities that they will suffice.



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TLM

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Nov 16, 2019
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Cheese = fats
Nuts = fats
Chocolate = fats
Chorizo = fats
As a side point Lidl has a lot of very low fat cheese, I like nuts but allergy for them is fairly common, chocolate is ok but for some reason I get thirsty when eating it, sausages fit the need otherwise but tend to be loaded with preservatives I am trying to avoid if possible.

But you are right, there is hidden fat in your list. I have sometimes just used olive oil for spicing the food and when warm it is not that bad. In fact rice takes it up very fast and you hardly notice it.
 

Erbswurst

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Rice is ok over wood fires but needs too much of carried fuel.

In my experience the washing up is the lowest problem if noodles are cooked in a big amount of salt water.
Such a noodle soup is exactly what the body needs and I tend to eat cheese and sausage separately to keep the fat away from the pot.

Afterwards you can simply dry and polish your pot with toilet paper inside and it's done.

I admit that this can become pretty boring if one is on a several weeks hiking tour but for short trips that's simply the best for hiking.

In a static camp with water source you can do of course a lot more. And also if there are streams and lakes in the area.

Apples I pick on the way in autum. I pick just one and eat it immediatly.

I do not steal half the tree and throw them away 800 steps later because my rucksack is overloaded. I just steal one, and if I am able to ask the owner I take not more than three of them.

No experianced hiker would put them into his rucksack. That's a juice in a bad container, no food!

And a banana in the rucksack would be a provoked disaster!

Such city food simply doesn't belong into a hiking equipment, and NO, we also do not carry yoghurt and tofu around.

We carry hard cheese, hard sausage like salami, dried meet, bread, noodles, dehydrated sauces and soups, salt and pepper, dried fruits, nuts and muesli, muesli bars, cookies perhaps,

In cold conditions chocolate, some carry a bit sugar, some carry olive oil or something similar. And that's it!

No kiwis, no bananas, no potatoes, no ananas, no potato chips, no marshmallows or whatever.
Beginners might do that, experienced people don't do that.

Bushcrafters know the wild salads, they know the berries and other edible plants and get vitamins like that. They don't buy green salad in a supermarket and stuff it into the rucksack.

And for just a week green plants are not necessary anyway.
 
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TLM

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Nov 16, 2019
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V-W's list is really quite similar to mine except I eat less pasta and more rice, fairly minor difference though. Lately I have been experimenting with vegetable proteins in exchange for tuna and so far seems ok.
 

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