Simple food ideas (Edit)

By Steven Rowlandson
Published 10-Dec-06 07:07 PM

Food can make up the bulk of the weight we carry when hiking, and it is such an important item. Having the correct balance of nutritious food and compact lightweight, easy to prepare meals can take years of experience. Here we will divulge a few tips we have found along the way and how to balance taste, cooking time and weight.

Pre prepared meals.

Freeze dried or dehydrated meals are a simple item to carry. These small pouches can contain sufficient nutrition to keep you going, weight little and are fairly easy to prepare. The drawbacks are cost, availability and the issue of having to wait for them to re-hydrate.

Ready to eat meals are the newer generation of simple hike food. These 300gm boil in the bags are both tasty and nutritious. We picked up a 10 pack of Portion Pack foods 24 hour ration packs which contain these meals a year ago and so far are very impressed with these ready to eat meals. Simple scanning of the supermarket can uncover some simple and easy to obtain alternatives like tasty treats Indian range including dahl makanhi, Bombay potatoes etc. These can be purchase, often on special for under $4.00 and have a long shelf life.

Fresh food

For the first few days, it is often nice to have some fresh food along. Simple things like carrot, broccoli, zucchini, beans etc travel well and cook quickly. Apples / pears are another item that can be carried successfully to provide fresh food along the way and are best bought a little under ripe for long journeys to avoid discovering mush in your pack. Other items that can travel well are some cheeses, salamiÕs (whole).

Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta cooks in seconds and if vacuum sealed will last a few days in your pack. A simple sauce can be made with fresh salami, pitted olives, semi sundried tomatoes, tomato paste (that comes in a toothpaste type tube) and some dried herbs like oregano, basil etc. Dried herbs and spices should always be carried to give what can be a boring meal some kick and flavour.
Dried pasta is fine but can take a lot longer to cook, therefore using more fuel.

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