Bushwalk Australia

What did you eat last walk. Crackers with cheese? porridge? wraps? buiscuits with spreads? trail mix?

Im getting rather bored of these options and looking for something less stereotypical, I've worked out dinner as everything from stew to stir fry is dehydratable. Are there any suggestions?

Thanks, Cameron

Ha! I'm dull. Coffee, muesli for breakfast; crackers, cheese, salami, capsicum , cucumber and chilli jam every day for lunch even on 10 day trips - variance is provided by order on which they are placed on cracker! On shorter trips I'll have wraps, but I'm sorry I can't offer anything else. My food excitement tends to be the evenings on shorter trips, when I would do anything from hamburgers/Peking duck wraps/curry etc. longer trips tend to be fly fishing in NZ, so we go back to routine of fish (variation 1-4), and maybe 2 minute noodles each night. I'm one of those people who could eat the same thing every day, and still get excited!

A

For me it is usually muesli for breakfast and occasionally porridge, but it is lunches I continue to wrestle with. On my last walk to Frenchmans Cap I took instant noodles and had a hot lunch rather than the usual biscuits, cheese, salami etc. Over five days the instant noodles paled a little so I think I will try a mix of noodles and biscuits and cheese etc. I also want to trial having two small lunches at around 11 and 2 rather than a single larger one at 12:30.

I find that for most of my trips, I'm distracted by whatever I'm doing, so I'm now more in favour of the "snacking" approach during the day. After a ski run or two on Bogong, I'd like a snack (11ish), and again mid arvo. On longer NZ backcountry flyfishing trips, we often "forget" about lunch until 3-4pm, as the fishing is so good.

I remember reading a food blog from Roman Dial, or Andrew Skurka, where they seemed to snack on almond butter and Pringles during the day. Seemed unusual, but a nice concept. I have more residual fat reserves than either of them though!

Breakfast is a starter for me, aimed at providing some energy for the day - coffee, muesli.

Dinner is the fun meal, and, again it depends on what you're doing. Mid winter ski touring when it's dark at 5pm, dinner becomes a big time filling operation to try to fill in the evening. Summer fly fishing in NZ, when it gets dark at 10pm, dinner becomes a bit of a nuisance, as it impacts on sleep, so kept short as possible. Burgers, Peking duck wraps etc are winter ski touring meals.

During the day, I think snacks are best.

A

Here it is..,

http://packrafting.blogspot.com.au/2009 ... ecret.html

A

And Andrew Skurka's stuff

http://andrewskurka.com/2014/week-of-ba ... breakdown/

We are have worked up a menu that eventually we are all happy with as a family (ages 12-47). Whole oat porridge with sultanas/dates or muesli for breakfast.
Vita wheat biscuits with hummus, cheese, tinned tuna for lunch
Dinner is dehy meals for long trips such as spaghetti Bol or fried rice or casserole/curry etc etc. shorter trips is fortified instant pasta where we had dehy peas and chop chop chicken.

We have just come up with a dessert. Rehydrate dried mango and add hot or cold custard. Yumm
Snacks include nuts/scroggin, dehy bananas and apple, chocolate.


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Isn't porridge just a PITA to clean up? I quite like muesli soaked in rehydrated milk powder overnight - almost Burchen style. And easier to clean.

A

A few menu items from our last trip.
Brekkie:

Smoothies or Jamaican Peanut Porridge from Packit-It-Gourmet
Porridge Supreme, Cooked Breakfast or Three Fruits Cheesecake from Back Country Cuisine

Lunch / snacks:

Many Bean salad, Cheese Spread, Black Bean & Corn Salad or Fajita Chicken burritos from Packit-It-Gourmet
Cold Black Bean Salad, cold pasta salad or cold Potato salad from Backpacker Pantry

We only carry a small JetBoil for hot water and we always have a few meals that can be prepared with cold water (in case we have no time or no gas). Packit-Gourmet ships to Australia, Back Country is widely available and Backpackers Pantry is available from Campsaver.

Links:
http://backcountrycuisine.co.nz
http://www.packitgourmet.com
http://www.backpackerspantry.com
http://www.campsaver.com/camp-hike/camp-kitchen/food/freeze-dried-food

I did one 5-day hike where every lunch was salmon and Saladas. By the end of it I was desperate for anything else!

Note that you can sometimes find salmon in foil sachets which are much lighter than cans.


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I struggle with lunch ideas too, but mostly end up just snacking during the day anyway. I dehydrate all our dinners and try to have something relatively substantial for breakfast. When I first started overnight walking I thought we needed three meals a day but now I find that lunch is time consuming and takes up valuable walking time.

andrewa wrote:Isn't porridge just a PITA to clean up? I quite like muesli soaked in rehydrated milk powder overnight - almost Burchen style. And easier to clean.

A

Only if you burn it! . Seriously though...

Although porridge is a little more tedious to clean up than just boiling water it's really no trouble. It's just one pot (and one licked-clean spoon). The residue comes off quite easily by just by filling the pot with water and rubbing it off with the fingers. Certainly not enough trouble to rule it out for many of of us, and a hot hearty breakfast is great on icy-cold mornings.

I enjoy food. Real food. Sometimes I'll carry heavy fresh food on short walks just because compromising on food reduces my enjoyment of a walk.

But I've also got some good light-weight meals that I've figured out (or copied from others, including from people's posts on this site) that I'll use for long walks or if I decide to pack light for a short walk.

Dinners are my main challenge. I have enough breakfasts and lunches on my menu, but only a handful of light-weight dinner options that I'm really happy with.

Here are some of the non-dinner meals that I use...

Breakfasts:

• Porridge (real porridge, not the quick rubbish, ie, proper oats, butter, salt) – sometimes with dried fruit
• Honey Oat Bars (home made oat-based bars - sooooo good!)
• Pancakes with lemon & sugar (powdered pancake mix + actual lemon & sugar)
• Weet Bix (or any other highly compressed cereal) - not my favourite as I'm not keen on the powdered milk taste, but for long walks, this turns out to be a great change to add into the mix, just for variety
• Bacon and Eggs (short walks only, of course - sometimes on a muffin or bun)

Lunches:

• Wraps with wide variety of fillings - See below for some fillings options and for some tips to keep this interesting
• Ryvitas or Vita Weat with wide variety of fillings - See below for some fillings options and for some tips to keep this interesting
• hot noodles (not just the normal ones - there are some amazing varieties available - I like the super hot ones - can't remember the brand, but they blow your sinuses out)
• sushi (short walks only) - My wife makes this herself and it packs up really well - dense, lots of energy
• pork pies (short walks only)
• home made savoury pies (bacon, eggs, cheese, tomato, etc - short walks only)

Extras:

• Real yeast-based fresh bread (mix up the flour, salt, yeast at home in a freezer bag, out bush add water & kneed, keep warm in pocket so yeast remains active, wait, kneed, wait, boil in freezer bag, remove and toast a crust directly on the flame (gas not metho!) - tastes amazing - uses a bit of fuel though)
• Apple crumble (rehydrate dried stewed apple, serve in a cup, top with smashed buscuits of your choice - anzacs or ginger nut snaps both work very well - add UHT cream if you don't mind a little extra weight - you can even whip the cream if you have a LOT of patience with shaking it in a container)
• Stewed fruit salad and custard (rehydrate any stewed fruit, and use powdered custard)
• Old Jamaican custard (or whatever variety of chocolate you like added to powdered custard)

Lunch wrap/bickie fillings:

• Butter (I layer this on, not just smear it on - it makes anything taste better, and has lots of long lasting energy)
• vegemite (you can buy it in a squeeze-tube)
• home-dried tomatoes with basil & oregano
• peanut butter
• cream cheese
• cheddar
• salami
• cucumber
• snow peas
• carrot

(some of these ideas are not suitable for hot weather, but we don't get much of that in Tasmania - my butter has only started to melt once)

Tips for lunch wrap/bickie fillings...

• Including some fresh veges on at least some days is the key. Makes it taste so real and good. Something with a fresh crunch feels amazing after a day or two of less interesting meals. Cucumber is one of the best for this. It will last for a couple of weeks, and you only need a small amount on each wrap to make it seem deliciously fresh. Snow peas and carrots can be good for this too.
• Make sure that you can have at least 3 different combinations of fillings for wraps/dried biscuit lunches, and that fresh veges is available for at least one of these combinations. After two weeks, I don't feel like I'm getting sick of them when I manage it this way.
• alternate between wraps and dried bickies (eg ryvita) - variety is important to keep it interesting
• both wraps (eg, tortillas, or mountain bread) and dried biscuits needs careful packaging if you don't want them destroyed by compression in a backpack - I use hard plastic containers these days, but before that I used to just pack them carefully on top of the pack and avoided jamming other stuff on/around them

Lots of great tips there, Son. Off to the shops to pick up some supplies for the weekend.


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Some excellent suggestions there. A couple more - I've carried cherry tomatoes for a week in warmish weather, eating 2-3 each lunch, a real treat and they travel pretty well. Even a week in they were still intact and tasty.

On breakfast, I tend away from porridge because of the mess and time, but I have done it successfully as a boil in a bag, adding water to a porridge and powdered milk mix and boiling for several minutes in a multix medium size freezer bag, then putting it in a large mug and opening the bag over the edges of the mug and eat it out of the bag. Another I like is powdered egg, bacon pieces (available dried in supermarkets) and dried chives and parmesan cheese. Add water and boil, the same as the porridge. It makes a cheese and bacon omelette, with no clean up.

dunamis wrote: shorter trips is fortified instant pasta where we had dehy peas and chop chop chicken.

Thanks for the lead on the Chop Chop Chicken. I had not seen that before.