Hello everybody,

I reside in the central part of California and I have a strong desire to experience backpacking and the outdoor wilderness. My short term goal for the upcoming months is to get some basic experience in overnight wilderness trips specifically in areas of cooking and food planning.

I have done A good amount of day hikes and I do have some gear but food was always easy cause all I had to do was make it at home and take it with me for my day trips, water too. For trips involving several days I know it will be much more involved than that and that's where it concerns me.

I am not so concerned about GEAR as I am about FOOD. I'm actually rather intimidated by the subject as it appears to me that this will be quite a daunting task with all the planning of meals, proper foods, appropriate cooking equipment, worrying about running out of food and not having enough etc etc...

Since I am so inept at cooking, I'm planning to do only some short over-nighters in the hills of Livermore so that I can develop my outdoor cooking skills and also to find out what I'm really up against here because, eventually I want to spend days at a time in Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada's but I first need to understand the food requirements and what it takes to backpack. I understand there are a large variety of trail food to choose from, dehydrated foods such as fruit, noodles, milk, eggs, vegetables, meat etc etc... There's so much to choose from. How do I choose the best foods for me and how will I plan this and pack it for trips that last days at a time? How will I know how much to bring so I don't run out?

And gear: There's also a wide variety of stoves and cookware to choose from. Right now all I have is a small Svea stove, it has a very small little cup to cook on and I can't imagine cooking a full meal with this thing (it probably holds up to half a cup, probably less). I am willing to buy something better (bigger?). Will I need to? What kind of cookware should I be looking for?

And what about water? What do you do if there is no source of water on the trail? If there is, would you have to boil it or filter it? Bring your own water?