Small backpacking meal producers don’t last long

Mountain House was a pioneer in freeze drying. They’ve scaled up production while lowering costs. Advertising has been dominated by resellers with cool sounding names.  I balked at the higher prices of the small brands, though it’s understandable. I’m starting to buy a few at a time. Storing them in a bear can. I’ll have them when I need them. As with all of our small business, use it or we lose it.

I can’t speak to the ones mentioned and it’s been a while since I tried other small companies, but the reasons I never stayed with any of the ones I’ve tried were basically (1) exorbitant cost (plus shipping because they ain’t in the store) and (2) too few calories.  It seemed I was paying double for half the food.  Some were pretty tasty, but…

I think there’s a definite relationship between the number of nights you’re able to spend on the trail and how much you’re willing/able to spend on backpacking food.  I’m lucky to get 6-8 nights out a year so enjoying my food is really important to me.  I typically pack in a nice steak meal for the first night (steak, par-baked potato, and blanched green beans in a foil pack) when I know we can have a fire (I have the Ti grill from Vargo Outdoors).  All of my other meals come from Packit Gourmet:

• Breakfast – $12 each – Usually their polenta with pork sausage or fruit smoothies (when they have them)
• Lunch – $15 each – Many Beans salad or one of the chicken salads (water added at my mid-morning break so it’s completely rehydrated at lunch time)
• Dinner – $15 each – Chili, Gumbo, or Tortilla Soup

Yes – On a weekend trip where I bring steak for Friday dinner, I’m bringing 3 meals on Saturday and just breakfast on Sunday, so I’m spending about $65 ($54 plus shipping) on dehydrated foods, but it’s worth it for me.  The food is amazing and it makes eating on the trail a joy, not a chore.  It might be different for me if I was able to spend 30-40 nights a year on the trail – but maybe not.

The Mountain House meals run $10-$12 at our local Dicks Sporting Goods so my premium on a weekend to have great food from Packit Gourmet is at most $5 per meal (because of shipping)…I’ll always go with Packit Gourmet!

Edit Note – Some of my dollar signs disappeared when it posted…Sorry!

Yeah, I love Packit Gourmet’s stuff. My only complaint with any of their meals is that I didn’t read instructions before preparing and some things take a loooong time to rehydrate! The corn and beans salad, for example. Ideally that one would be started in the morning for a lunch, or at lunch for a dinner. Cold soak and either eat cold or warm up on the stove later.  But that’s user error. The chicken salads are amazing, the tortilla soup was so good. The Tuscan beef stew incredible. I can’t make myself eat it every day on trail due to cost, but every once in a while it’s so nice after days of ramen and mashed potatoes.

There’s a bug in the software.  If you put a /$, then sometimes everything after is in italics.

For example $ everything after

Nope, that’s not it, but something like that.

I keep forgetting the pattern, maybe $with no space after it?

Nope, that’s not it either.

I used to buy dehydrated vegetables from pactitgourmet.  Now they only sell meals.

Now I buy the dehydrated veges from harmony house.

I dehydrate some myself. I had more bell peppers and tomatoes from my garden than I could eat, so I dehydrated some.  A lot of work.  A lot easier to just buy them.

Food for the Sole was amazing. Their biscuits and gravy was stupidly tasty. I liked it as a dinner. I also loved their very high calorie Triple Peanut Slaw. 178 cal/ounce

https://www.foodforthesole.co/products/triple-peanut-slaw

Use

HungryCamper

For 10% off Packit Gourmet.

Packitgourmet hit 16 this past year. They are solid.

One reason so many fail is it’s boom and bust during the year. MH has gone after the hunting and prepper crowd before hikers. And…the cost of ingredients + the custom mylar bags is so much more now.