Gear

After following advice about stoves I have ordered a MSR Rocket.
What about carrying food packs....dehydated or others. What do you (the experts) do? Can you recommend any nutritional packs that must taste good.

Cheers

Howdy!

I'm no expert, but I do eat in the hills :)

If you like food, there's a lot to be said for buying a dehydrator and making your own camping rats. If that's of any interest at all then just say and peeps will be able to direct you to several threads.

Otherwise, I tend to buy individual things from the supermarket rather than commercially produced camping rations. There's loads you can do with things like easy cook rice and pasta and cous cous, Smash, Beanfeast, dried veggies etc etc.

I reckon dehydrated is best if you're covering any distance because it's so much lighter than the non-dehydrated stuff. On the other hand, the other stuff is quicker to heat, and some of them can be heated up in their own packaging so you don't have any washing up to do.

I can't recommend any makes because I don't use the rat packs, but I'm sure others will be along soon.

Good luck with it - learning to make nice food in the hills is very rewarding!

Cheers peeps.
Would like to know more about the dehydrator so if you can direct me I would be grateful.

www.backpackinglight.co.uk ;0)

OMW,
The link below has a few different options on food packs (biol in the bag, rehydrate, cook in the pan etc), not used any myself yet but they have quite a good selection including vegetarian: http://www.expeditionfoods.com/shop

I've used the "cook in the bag" and "cook in the pot" dehydrated meals from expedition foods and I prefer the "cook in the bag" ones, both for the taste and the convenience. Coupled with a cup-a-soup type soup they mean no need to clean your saucepan. Great.

Yes, cook in the bag meals are the way to go if you are away for more than a day or two, heavy on the wallet though light in your pack!

They don't have to be heavy on the wallet. Using a dehydrator means you can make your own high quality food by simply cooking a little extra when you make your favourite food at home. Pack the dehydrated food in boil-in-the-bag bags from Lakeland and seal them using a home vacuum sealer and you have a perfect solution. You save valuable pack weight and volume, get additive and preservative food you like, and simply rehydrate the food while walking then boil in the bag it's packed in. It takes about 30 meals to recover the cost of the dehydrator when compared to buying pre-packed dehydrated expedition food.

Depends what you want out of food... apart from a full stomach and the energy to keep going.

I'm a great fan of 'real' food and 'local' food, so if my travels allow me the opportunity to sample 'real local food', then I'm a very happy camper. The major plus point is that you should be able to pick up plenty of decent food while you're walking, unless it's a complete wilderness trail. Dehydrated lightweight food is all well and good, but if someone's selling real heavyweight food at the point when I'm hungry, then they've got themselves a sale and I get something decent to eat.

I've written this before, and I'll keep writing it until food manufacturers stop trying to poison us... but if your food contains monosodium glutamate... throw it away. This additive is often termed a 'taste enhancer', because of the burning sensation it induces in tastebuds. Manufacturers add it to stuff that tastes like cardboard, in the hope it will taste like burning cardboard instead. It gets everywhere, polluting every foodstuff it comes into contact with... but there's a more serious drawback. Monosodium glutamate also induces a thirst, which is your body's reaction to the poison. You need to drink a lot of water to get rid of it. Monosodium glutamate was an early additive in complimentary peanuts in bars, so that the poor punter would have to order more drink to get rid of the thirst it generated. It was originally a 'thirst enhancer' before it became a 'taste enhancer'. Unless you want to carry huge amounts of excess water, or plan to camp next to a guaranteed water supply, monosodium glutamate has no place in your pack.

Food manufacturers... get a life... and stop trying to poison us!

I am getting tired of that NZ advert. There I was quietly stealing a read of Paddy's article and 'sidle' out it comes.

Who will rid us of this meddlesome advert?

MSG, bad, very bad. Real food, good.

There's a simple solution to the NZ advert... and indeed... to all the other migraine/epilepsy-inducing ads on the right-hand side. Pull in the frame of your window to exclude them completely. My window just has all the posts and the 'static' links and ads on the left. The ones on the right are too distracting.

On the minus side... for all I know... I could be missing bargains galore... but I can live with that!

As for New Zealand... I'll go there one day... and I'd really like to spend months walking there... but please DON'T annoy me with silly ads or you might put me off!

Duncan

Re. the NZ ad - if you're using Adblock with Firefox, add this string to the list of items to block:

http://bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/adServer.bs?cn
=rb&c=22&pli=196920&pi=0&w=120&h=600&ord=[timestamp]

(all in one line, without the return that I had to put in to get it to wrap)

That should kill it.

At work just now (ahem) so no control over browser. Pulling in the frame means I, the customer, have to work to stop something that annoys me. Ah, the teething troubles with new media - just like being 'pestered' by sales assistants in shops.
:)

BG, I'll add in the string to FF when get home, thanks.

Anyway...back on topic. I hope tchibo get some more dehydrators in stock. Having paid the same money for food packs, I'm annoyed at myself for not bothering before. Of course, I'd then have to do some cooking (eye of newt, wing of toad, foot of baby, etc)
;-)

"That should kill it."

It does, ta :o)

struth bruce, that's done it. Thanks, BG (twice in one day, too)

ive got a dehydrater and swear by it especially on tuesday morning when i discovered it was broken and i had nearly lost my thai chicken massaman curry luckly the oven came to the rescue.i also use dried food from the supermarket and i buy locally if i come across good local produce ie proper sausages,eggs from farmers etc.

I'll be ordering one up for the summer.

We aim to please...
but often miss.

Maybe I should have kept quiet about re-sizing the window to exclude the "flashy" ads on the right-hand side. See how "tech support" struck back by narrowing the posting area?

It's like this guys... if you hash me off enough... I'll clear off... and I won't see ANY of the ads on this site!

For the time being... I've narrowed the window some more to exclude the ads yet again. If you squeeze the posting area enough, no-one will be able to read anything, and they'll ALL go away!

Hmm in Firefox, I just right click on one of the ads and choose "Block All Images from www.outdoorsmagic.com".

Its means having to turn it back on again when reading a review, but hey ho, one mouse click I can cope with.