what foodstuffs do you carry?

[shutupthepunx]

hey

don't have a dehydrater, can't afford a dehydrater. was just wondering what people do for food when out and about for a good few days. I head off on my bike (bicycle, not vroom vroom) quite often but i feel that i have at least one pannier full of food/snacks and id like to know what other people eat. As i would like to go more lightweight, both with my bike and when with my backpack.

Usually i carry a few foil packed curries like this

as they don't have to be heated so at the end of the day if im too tired/lazy to get a fire going i wont go hungry. plus a jar in peanut butter, a bag of dried dates. maybe some pre-boiled eggs. the usual nuts/seeds/dried fruit, flapjacks, etc.

A friend recommended me the Bachelors Beanfeast range veggie bolognese style stuff, which seems good - just add boiling water. I also recently picked up some small miso soup packets (MSG free) from morrisons, same thing, just add water. morrisons also do a 13p noodle range i think i am going to bring a few of those out with me next time. i was just wondering if all these just-add-boiling-water types are really all that light, if the weight we save is lost in having to bring along more water. maybe elsewhere where we can drink water from streams and rivers, but in the UK thats mostly not the case. so i was wondering if there's other food that people bring with them?

my cook kit at the moment consists of this

and this

(though soon to be swapped for a tatonka folding mug and the nalgene bottle).

thanks

 

[Satyr]

I go for easy prep stuff if I am walking lots (not got into the biking bit yet but planning on it) so that when I am tired you don't have to do much. I like cooking but after a days slog its not top of my list.

Stuff like Ainsley Harriets couscous as its just add water or look what we found pouches as they are boil in the bag. I am considering a dehydrator to have more control over what I eat but not this side of Christmas (pain as there was one on Groupon for not a lot a few weeks back). Other bits are Naked noodles or similar noodly type things, flapjacks, trail mix and cold pasta with tuna mayo for day one as stuff will keep ok in a bag for a few hours.

If I am base camping then I get more creative with pasta and make sauces with cartons of tomatoes and herbs, chorizo or similar salamis, my own couscous using dried fruit and onions, etc

 

[VANDEEN]

I always managed up to 4-5 days out hill walking on poridge & museli mixed for breakfast with added raisins and almonds & powdered milk. GORP mix with dried fruit throughout the day & the odd treat of squezzy cheese, biscuit, tracker bars flapjack etc.
Evening meal was carb rich, (pasta/noodles/rice) & or protein rich dried/smoked meat/soya meat meals, followed by marsbar custard & the like + a daily multivitamin/mineral.

Beyond a day or 2 now & maybe because I'm older I get serious veg withdrawal! Not that it matters as I don't head for the hills any more & can easily pack it in with me.

NB Try the bean feast meal at home at least once before heading out, they do funny things to some people's insides, they also easily burn on to pans & require a 15min simmer from boil, that's often a challenge with lightweight aluminium cookware over a real fire.

I personally cook with pot cosies these days & over a stove, simples

 

[Goatboy]

I must admit I'm relatively oldschool on my food. Oat's is a staple that I'm rarely without. I can make breakfast, oatcakes, pad out soups and stews with them (old Scottish housewives trick adding a handful of oats to the likes of mince to make it go further) and it adds a bit of a nutty flavour as well as being good slow release energy.

Noodles, cous cous, rice, bulgur wheat are all good too.

I keep some of the Maggi mini stock cubes in my possibles pouch as they're smaller than normal ones and add a bit of salt to my naturally low salt diet. They're tasty too. Can make a drink or add to the noodles etc for flavour base.


Dried veg/pulses are good too - nice to pad out stews/soups and if you put them in a Nalgene bottle at lunch time with some spare warm water then they're ready to just be heated at evening time.

Cheese, jerky and salami are great for storage and again adding to things to boost the calorific value.

I use those re-fillable squeeze tubes to allow me to cut down on amounts that need to be carried of things like sauces, butter and peanut butter etc. and again the latter is nice for a sneaky satay of South African dish.

There's a great wee book called Moveable Feasts LINK which is full of great weight saving tips and recipes.

 

[John Fenna]

Beanfeast is foul - and does terrible things to my digestion.
The worst of all the "fake meat" meal options IMHO

 

[shutupthepunx]

thanks everyone for the tips, some great suggestions.

 

[oldtimer]

Beanfeast is foul - and does terrible things to my digestion.
The worst of all the "fake meat" meal options IMHO

I agree. I can tolerate it if I'm hungry enough, but it did bad enough things to my wife's digestion to cause us to cut short a trip in the Pyrenees once. Yes, I know, "caught short to cause cut short".

 

[ammo]

Nuts, noodles, honey and porridge are my basic food supply. I can not remember the last time I stayed out, and didn't cook a curry or stew. I often get two days out of them and I really enjoy eating good food in great places.

 

[mousey]

Usually pasta/ rice and some stuff to make a sauce.

If I'm going out for an extended period I usually find a pub en route to pop into and have a nice meal and a couple of pints....

 

[rik_uk3]

Beanfeast is foul - and does terrible things to my digestion.
The worst of all the "fake meat" meal options IMHO

It is grim, you can put it in a bag all day and its still grim and still needs cooking. That said I've still a soft spot for Vesta Risotto... much be an age thing

 

[789987]

Usually pasta/ rice and some stuff to make a sauce.

If I'm going out for an extended period I usually find a pub en route to pop into and have a nice meal and a couple of pints....

+1 for planning in the pub

 

[VANDEEN]

John Fenna[/COLOR]] Beanfeast is foul - and does terrible things to my digestion.

It is grim, you can put it in a bag all day and its still grim and still needs cooking.

Am I the only one who eats beanfeasts on a regular basis then?
Probably once every 1-2 weeks I'll chop & fry up a couple of onions, whack in a Beanfeast of one sort or another & do some pasta or rice to go with it.

It may make me a bit windy for the next day, but so would any high protein meal. I suffer nowhere near the problems it seems to be causing you guys

Goatboy hadn't thought about pre-hydrating it before cooking, strange when it's something I often do to oats for porridge.

That said I've still a soft spot for Vesta Risotto... much be an age thing

You're a bad man Rik, just been to Asda for some veg & have bought the full trio of Vesta dishes that they do, Beef Curry, Paella, & Chow Mein;
Unfortunately they don't stock the Risotto

I'll dig out a a bottle of Babycham, a pair of paisley PJ's, & a "Morcambe & Wise" video, for starters with maybe a bit of "George & Mildred" to follow & finish off with some "Mind
your Language". Taking myself back to the Seventies one night soon Just need some Harp larger now!

 

[John Fenna]

We had BF issued as a staple on our Ghana exped - it was so foul that I had to avoid it completely which meant that I had very reduced rations.
I lost a stone in weight in 4 weeks.

 

[presterjohn]

I'm a bit lazy with food and favour things like malt loaf and flapjacks over probably far more sensible options.

 

[rik_uk3]

Am I the only one who eats beanfeasts on a regular basis then?
Probably once every 1-2 weeks I'll chop & fry up a couple of onions, whack in a Beanfeast of one sort or another & do some pasta or rice to go with it.

It may make me a bit windy for the next day, but so would any high protein meal. I suffer nowhere near the problems it seems to be causing you guys

Goatboy hadn't thought about pre-hydrating it before cooking, strange when it's something I often do to oats for porridge.



You're a bad man Rik, just been to Asda for some veg & have bought the full trio of Vesta dishes that they do, Beef Curry, Paella, & Chow Mein;
Unfortunately they don't stock the Risotto

I'll dig out a a bottle of Babycham, a pair of paisley PJ's, & a "Morcambe & Wise" video, for starters with maybe a bit of "George & Mildred" to follow & finish off with some "Mind
your Language". Taking myself back to the Seventies one night soon Just need some Harp larger now!

Been said before B&M and Poundstretchers sell the BR for £1 a time. When I was but a boy climbing and hill walking dried food was limited to the likes of:-

Vesta meals

Bachelors individual meals

Another I can't remember the name of but John Fenna mentioned them in the past, another individual meal

Bachelors bulk dried foods. Blacks and the YHA shops would sell them. The meals were actually catering packs of stuff like beef curry, farmhouse stew, chicken stew etc which made a gallon of food at a time. They also sold big catering size bags of dried peas, carrots, cabbage, onions and spuds. They were all considered really good back then and even now they'd be fine for a trip I think.

My first job was in a supermarket and before a trip I'd take my dried food and stuff like cheese and sugar into work, split them down to the required size and use the store vacuum packer to seal them up...bloody marvellous and happy days

 

[VANDEEN]

The 5 minute macaroni, "Butoni"? with a cup-a-soup stirred into the water was a regular for me, cream of asparagus being a particular favorite.

Or rice with a Maykway curry powder added & diced corned beef/spam/dried cured sausage.

Smash was another staple food, again with corned beef / spam / hot dogs / squirty Primula cheese.

We had a local delli which sold all manner of dehydrated fruit & veg, some quite exotic for that era, they were a godsend to enhance both breakfast & "trail mix", (can't remember what we actually called it back then? don't think we called it Trail mix?) with exotics such as dried Banana, apple, pineapple & mango to name a few.

Never had access to a vacuum sealer but dad had all sorts of sizes in zip-lock bags from when he used to deal with "Dow Chemicals" the first people who supplied them in the UK IIRC?
Everything was emptied out of tins & packed in them & then into a tupperware box or nested mess tins to stop squashing / leakage & the tins were then binned at home.

We never thought about cooking in the zip-locks though, maybe plastic packaging was just too new to trust with the heat. Birdseye boil in the bag fish portions were the first thing I ever saw cooked in plastic, that would probably be mid-late 70's.

Breakfast in a tin was another staple food, I'll have a look for that next time I'm in the shops, & chef Baked beans and sausages.

 

[copper_head]

I found that my dehydrator has paid for itself, cost forty odd quid.
But if your looking for something similar to those foil packed currys, I've used these 'Hooked on' meals a few times. Cheaper if you buy in bulk and certainly edible.

I put a thread up a while back about supermarket hiking food, might be of use.

 

[petrochemicals]

lecture.

Your body has about 10 days of energy reserves in it that will sustain it in a high activity, high respiration (cold air, body cell heat generation through cell respiration) situations. After that your body requires 5000+ calories a day just to sustain itself, whether you have fat reserves or not.
I do not get on with freeze dried food, never seems to fill me, and I do not get the callories from it. That is soya, noodles beans rice, all freeze dried, no good at all

Soya is over hyped too IMVHO

carbohydrates are difficult to process and are verry bulky, when you eat 12 dry pitta breads on the go (nice as they where)and still want more, you have to think your eating the wrong food.

Sugar is like a drug, mainline 8 choccy bars to top you up, but soon you will have the sugar headache and the hyperactivity for about an hour, before you have no energy once more. Sugar is easily used, but very short lasting.

Fat is brilliant but makes you very sleepy, also due to the energy required to process it and it takes a long time between ingestion to utilisation, so a big glut of this at night will top you up for the morning, with no problem of being sleepy, or famine state metabolism.I like atora added to anything at night. If you want to loose weight cut out the nightly fat and then your body will have time to process your fat reserves without shutting down (famine state).

Proetin is the ideal, low bulk, repairs the body,easily processed . Its why lions get to lie down all day.

Salty foods too leave you thirsty.

vegetables also seem to aid ingestion



As for my food preferences, I prefer fresh over freeze dried stuff. Proetin -Tinned high density meat (sardines, stewed steak, corned beefetc) cheese(not too much), eggs,(not too many). A bit of carbohydrate, fresh ie pitta breads in last for ever plastic bags, and . Fresh meat in supermarket packaging, lasts a while. some sugar as a pick me up, (I'm sure you can live off snickers bars), and some fat for the night, nuts are the highest callory food I have found.

I don't take dried pasta, freeze dried stuff, like smash and rice, as it never seems to feed properly, but takes room in the system.

Personally I want to try lentils and dried meat and dried rice, (beans take too much soaking) but this would require alot more cooking time, 1&1/2 hours, and thats alot of fuel in anyones book, so I will have to be content with fresh heavy stuff for the time being !

Edit.

Oh yeah, I find my tastes change. Example. Stewed steak and kidney, can't stand it at home, can't get enough of it when camping. AlsoI would like to try fresh vegetables once every two days, but again takes too much fuel.


Ham in packets and oats

 

[ebt.]

Personally I want to try lentils and dried meat and dried rice, (beans take too much soaking) but this would require alot more cooking time, 1&1/2 hours, and thats alot of fuel in anyones book, so I will have to be content with fresh heavy stuff for the time being !

Depends on which lentils you use, i use yellow and cook a mean dall on a trangia in <30 mins. Presoaking can reduce cooking time.

 

[Goatboy]

Something I meant to mention in my last post (but forgot - old age doesn't come on it's own) and I've posted it up else where is sprouting grains. When on longer trips/expeditions in the past when weight was a premium and food so valued for moral and energy we used to make a mini greenhouse out of a wide mouth Nalgene bottle. With smaller seeds you'd pop in a cloth, larger ones just put in the grains, wet them out and in a couple of days you'd have a bottle of sprouted grains/seeds strapped to the top of your rucksack. Sprouted grains have more nutrients and they're more available to the human body than hydrated grains/seeds. So they're good for you and add a nice flavour and texture to your diet which for some can be bland on big trips. Some info and ideas here. LINK

When you've been slogging up a high mountain route and forced to eat dehydrated pap due to weight having something fresh and crispy added or as a side is a great treat.