Reusable plastic food bags?

http://www.traildesigns.com/accessories/trail-foods/freezer-bag-clear

You mean like this?

How difficult are those traildesigns heavy duty bags to clean? Will food bits get stuck in the corners?

I will admit that usually I am too lazy to clean out all these "yucky" zip loc bags when I get home, and they get thrown away. I feel guilty about doing that.

I just ordered several 23oz HDPE wide-mouth containers from US Plastics (item #2608). It looks like the container and screw-top lid will weigh 2oz, and being made of HDPE, should hold up to boiling water reasonably well. The milk-white Nalgene 32oz bottles are HDPE and while they get soft, I've never had a problem holding boiling water in those.

If I make a cozy for this 23oz container, it would follow the design that Mike Clelland documents in his UL book for re-hydrating and eating from. It would be easier to keep clean. I can always dump more hot water and some tang or cocoa mix into the container to finish off the dregs "LNT" style. Trying to "clean" a zip-loc bag in the field by adding water & cocoa mix kinda sucks. Drinking the resulting hot cocoa liquid fro the tilted corner of a zip-loc is a risky process, and I dread dribbling stuff onto my clothing.

If re-hydrating and eating out of the container works well, it would also allow me to use cheaper (and lighter) bags for dried food storage.

Jeff,

I like that idea. Let us know how it works out.

Throwing away zip lock bags doesn't bother me as much as it should, but carrying around the used bags does. I get them as clean as I can by trying to eat every last bit, but there's always some residue and it starts to stink before long (even double bagged in gallon size zip locks).

I take two Smartwater bottles; one of these could substitute for one of them, so it adds minimal weight and, perhaps more importantly, bulk. This will work, provided the caps make a good seal.

I think I may have to give this a try.

Jim – I hadn't thought of using it as a 2nd water container during the day – assuming the cap is water tight.

Good idea!

Use these. I've reused these in the past. They're more heavy duty that a normal ziplock freezer bags.

http://www.packitgourmet.com/Packaging-c76.html

I am tending to pack bulk bags of muesli, drink powders, bean mixes, potato mixes, veggies rather than single servings- eliminates a lot of bags.
I use two old sealable mountain house bags as my mixing and eating containers.
My new cook and aqua system: one 700 ml titanium pot for boiling; the two mountain house bags for food mixing and eating; one liter smartwarter bottle for day drinking, one 2-lter platy that mostly lives in the pack, and one Talenti Gelato container with a lid and cozy. The Talenti Gelato container with lid allowed prolonged hydrating while hiking; kept coffee hot forever, kept snow cones frozen for hours inside the pack, and allowed for easy mixing of Tang and other sugar and electrolyte drinks, so it lived outside on the other side of the pack as my other day drinking container. It did slightly deform with one very hot boil, but is reasonable leak-proof. It seems good at not retaining odors too. It replaced my fairly underused titanium cup, and is large enough at 473 ml to be used for the Steripen Freedom, so I don't need to pull out the 700 ml pot for water prep. I will keep fiddling with these different elements as I am moving towards a stoveless setup- I just can't give up shaving, hot coffee and miso soup just yet.

474 ml. Talenti container next to 400 ml. Snow Peak cup

Talenti next to 700 ml. Snow Peak pot, both with cozies

Talent with cozy neatly fits inside 700 ml. Snow Peak pot
I ended up not ever storing the Talenti container inside the pot, but it gets style points nevertheless-
Oh yeah, the Snow Peak cup is 2 oz. and the Talenti container is only 1.9 oz.

You could use those produce bags and just twist them shut. Recycle. You're not doing FBC. What do you tend to pack in bags?

You could always reuse a bag from a freeze dried meal.

Not cheap but come with a free meal :)

The bags that packit gourmet uses for its meals are apparently reusable. I just got some of their meals and planned on washing out the bags and saving them while on the trail. I figured this will cut down on smell.

I'm still a little skeptical how well they will hold up after repeated use but they are pretty burly.

They sell the bags if you don't want to buy the food from them.
http://www.packitgourmet.com/CookIn-Bags.html

Sorry, somehow I forgot that I posted this thread.
Thank you for all of the suggestions, some good options there.
The pack-it gourmet ones look good.

I don't do freezer bag cooking, these are just to package the food. So if the bag gets a tiny hole in it, I won't have water spilling out.

When I get food at the grocery store it often doesn't come in resealable bags so I have to repackage it. For example, a pouch of instant mash potatoes or a knorr pasta side is too much for me to eat in once meal, so I need to put it in a resealable bag.