I also use dehydrated and FD ingredients for my meals. My favorite are these:
- 10.2 oz. of dehydrated Bush’s beans + 4.9 Vienna sausages sliced thin and dehydrated (these must be pre-soaked for an hour to soften them up; the beans don’t take but a few minutes of simmering). Packaged weight is 4.2 oz. for 560 calories (135 cal/oz).
- Dehydrated full can of Stagg Silverado chili: 3.4 oz packaged weight, 463 calories (136 cal/oz).
- A full 2-serving pouch of Tasty Bites Jaipur vegetables, dehydrated + 0.7 oz. of Mountain House FD diced chicken: 2.8 oz, 453 cal (162 cal/oz).
- 2.4 oz of MH mac & cheese, 1/4 C FD peas, 0.7 oz. of FD diced chicken: 4.0 oz, 469 cal (117 cal/oz). The calories can be bumped up by replacing the chicken with dehydrated Spam (529 cal) or Mountain house FD burger (495 cal). The weight remains roughly the same.
The bummer with these meals is they average 1270 mg of salt each, which is OK if I am sweating in the heat all day long. But not so good if I am doing a zero day while reading, carving something out of wood, or just taking it easy while my buddy is pretending to catch fish. The calories largely come from higher than usual fat content. The Bush’s/Viennas isn’t too bad, with fat calories being ~ 31% of the total. But the others have a fat percentage of between 40-55% – quite high. The problem with the Bush’s beans is that it has 30 gm of sugar. But man, is it ever tasty!
Another disadvantage of the above meals is that I usually need to pre-soak some, or all, of the ingredients, as well as simmer things for maybe 5 minutes. Critters will take notice of the smells. I don’t have a problem doing this in Colorado, or even in Glacier where the campsites usually have several parties that share a common food prep area. But in Yellowstone, where I am totally alone at my campsite (therefore pretty vulnerable), I tend to simplify everything and just go with Mountain House Pro-Packs.
For breakfast, I’m into simplicity. I am a fan of Ensure powdered nutrition shakes, to which I might add some FD fruit. It is probably the most balanced of any I’ve found (expensive though). I don’t see how the Packit Gourmet Jump Start smoothies get so much love. They are even more expensive, and they are loaded with saturated fat and sugar. The main attribute is that they provide lots of protein. But if that’s what you’re after consider going with NutriBiotic’s ProZone (29% fat, 41% carbs, and 30% protein).
Lunches have always posed a problem for me. I usually am not terribly hungry during the day, but a guy’s gotta eat. So I tend to go with things that I like to eat, most of which isn’t very light (but high in calories) – sausage, cheese, a buttered tortilla, peanut butter on pilot crackers, nuts. Sometimes I will soak some dried fruit when hiking, so that it’s ready for lunch time. That’s pretty light, until I add the water to it.
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