How much does your food cost (and weigh)?

I'm looking at every aspect of my backpacking. Some things I've already changed. Got rid of 7 pounds of weight thanks to a postage scale and various suggestions. Other things, I'll keep the same.

On the last trip, I didn't pay much attention to cost. A simple solution is to buy a bunch of Mountain House stuff and go. Once or twice a year, that is fine. But to get 3,000 calories a day costs about $36. Multiply that by 2 and it's $72. For that, I could stay home and take up eating in good restaurants for a hobby.

I set a goal of eating 3,000 calories for less than $5.00 a day and having it weigh 1.5 pounds. I can cut it more just by getting rid of the three convenience items. $3.00 a day is in easy reach.

I'm trying to get rid of all convenience items so I can buy in bulk. Plus it makes the menu scalable. Surprisingly, I'm finding I actually LIKE eating this way and I'm eating a lot of it at home and saving money there, too.

I've written an excel program to plan meals which makes it alot simpler. I just have a list of items and doubleclick on the one I want to add to a meal. I plan it for 3,000 calories, and then click a button to change the measurements to however may calories I want.

I don't worry about the cost very much because I like to use whole grains and, if possible, organic products. I also try to add in veggies which means that in most cases I buy them freeze-dried.

I do buy stuff in bulk when possible and try to do most of my dehydrating in the winter (who wants to heat up the house with a dehydrator when it's 95*F outside?). I did a lot of price comparison this year among several purveyors of freeze dried food. In nearly all cases, Just Tomatoes came out the winner for fruits and veggies, and Packit Gourmet for freeze-dried meats. In fact, I found that the prices for the large containers of Packit Gourmet beef and chicken were basically the same as buying canned chicken (non-pressure-cooked chicken usually becomes chicken jerky in the dehydrator) or extra-low-fat ground beef and dehydrating them--and a lot less work!

I cook rice (the brown variety) and other grains in broth (chicken, beef or, mostly, vegetable) before dehydrating them, which enhances their flavor. Both cheaper and a lot better-tasting than "Minute" or "Uncle Ben's."

I also cook bean and lentil dishes and dehydrate them. I also put together meals of cous-cous (no precooking-dehydration needed), freeze-dried veggies, TVP and plenty of seasoning. These can be thrown together at the last minute.

I use a lot of nuts and dried fruit for snacks/lunch. For trips of a week or more, I use freeze-dried fruit to save weight. For shorter trips, I get bulk regular dried fruit such as sold in the health food sections of many supermarkets.

IMHO, it's most important that your food taste good. If it doesn't, you won't eat it. Uneaten rehydrated food in your garbage weighs more than the dehydrated food you've carried in! Variety is important also, for this very reason. Eating the same thing every day will pall on you by Day 3 or 4!

I have just returned from a section hike of the PCT from Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass. I carried roughly 2500 calories per day and relied on my reserve tank (pot belly) to cover any calorie deficit. My mistake on this trip was being over optimistic on my daily mileage and on my tolerance of a boring diet.

I'm starting to be an old guy, in my mid 70's, and age is catching up with me regarding how far I can go in a day. On this most recent trip, I would finish the day with no appetite whatsoever: Mostly fatigue I am sure. I don't think that I actually ate more than 1500 calories per day for the first three days even though the food was available. Even when my appetite was coming back, my repetitious menu brought forth my gag-reflex. Even though I was a bit hungry, nothing I had brought to eat had any appeal to me at all. I had to force-feed myself.

Take home message? Plan for a lot of food variety for any extended trip and worry less about calories than you do about flavor. Most of us can miss a few meals or supplement a few low-calorie days from our adipose tissue. Ramen for six days straight is not a winner and, for me, Mountain House causes extreme flatulence.

Thumbs up on tasting good. That's one reason I want to make more of my own.

My son and I were talking this evening and realized we can remember every cooked meal from backpacking this summer. What we ate and where we ate it. I think it's worth making them more memorable.

I came up with a recipe which we cooked together on the deck this evening as it got dark. It's Banana Cobbler. It's best to cook as night falls, the air starts to cool and you are digging out your fleece. A fire is nice, too. At night, you can see the warm, red hot glow of the burner on the Svea 123R stove.

Dehydrate the bananas for about 1 1/2 hours before cooking.
Bring to a boil and then simmer until the water thickens. Chop the bananas with a spoon and stir as it cooks.

Add remaining ingredients after the bananas are ready and stir.

This sort of tastes like the toppings on a drumstick ice cream cone and hot apples.

It's a whopping 593 calories. It only costs $0.87 to make.

Substitute blackberries, raspberries, blueberries or apples for variety. (These will likely be lower calorie.)

I learned something here. Freeze dried is lighter than dried. It also lightens the wallet by quite a bit. Which just reminded me to weigh my wallet which ends up in my pack. 126 grams. Reduce that to a credit card, a retired military ID, COSAR card and it's down to 11 grams. That's a savings of 115 grams right there, or a little over 1/4 pound. This led to me weighing my car key and remote control. 40 grams. So just this morning, I've saved 155 grams. I can hide the key on the car. It's an extra one anyway. This is getting obsessive.

Weight weenie.

uhhhh... what are the remaining ingredients?

That is what makes it so S U L.

I rehydrate the bananas by themselves. Then after they are cooked, add the peanuts, carob, etc.

Maybe I'll make a video tonight.