ultralight food

“Hi I am new to this site but it seems like a good place to see what other ultra light backpackers use as food. I need some high calorie good tasting food combinations. Any contributions are welcome.

capnelson”

“clif bars
Gu
Mountain House Freeze Dried Food
Minute Rice & Dehydrated veggies w/boulion
Homemade Jerky
Knorr Soups
coffee
crackers
almond butter
cheddar cheese

I get dehydrated eggs from King Arthur Flour and mix with coffeemate, salt, pepper, precooked bacon and cheddar cheese.”

“get a dehydrator. the only thing bad about it for me so far is it doesn't really do cheese. im a freak for cheese.

easy cheese in a can works though”

“High calorie:
nuts
summer sausage
pre cooked bacon

those chocolate chip cookies I made today and ate all afternoon LOL-- signed, Chubby”

“I recently found Enertia Foods thanks to LeSubtil. Simply put, it’s the best food I’ve ever carried on the trail.

* They use whole milk and whole butter in their food for added calories as well as taste.
* Most meals have between 400-500 calories, anywhere from 50-90 gr. Carbs, and 8-27 gr. Protein.
* The meals are dehydrated AND shrink wrapped so they are very small and light, between 3.5 oz-5 oz.
* They are so damn easy to make, about half you can pour boiling water into the pouch and let sit, most others you simply soak the beans or whatever for 10 minutes, bring to a boil for 4 minutes and eat.
* Everything you need comes with the meal, a little salt pack, pepper, parmesan cheese, crushed red peppers.
* The meals are a bit smaller than say a Lipton Noodle packet but the difference of calories makes all the difference in the world. I’m never hungry after one of these meals. They are made extra saucy too so you can stir in your own meat.
* PRICE! These meals cost only $3.25 a piece. I end up spending that much buying at the store.
* The pleated boiling bags they use are great. I saved all mine for later use.
* There is very little trash. On a five day trip my trash fit in two of the used pouches.
* Free shipping!

My favorite meals were the Blue Mountain Bear Mush couscous breakfast, the Grand Canyon Cheesecake will make you cream your jeans, and the bars they sell are the best I’ve ever had (409 cals a piece and they are only $1.25!). Surprisingly out of some 12 meals I didn’t hit anything I didn’t like. They have a bunch of condiments and stuff that would be handy too (They even have dehydrated sour cream!). They have a special deal where you can get one of everything they sell for $48 (something like 14 meals, a cheese cake, a bar and samples of all there condiments). It’s a great deal. I bought 12 meals and 2 cheesecakes and paid $49. I should have gone for the case deal!

Enertia Foods ”

“Correction- The sampler case deal is $55 (16 meals and 10 snacks). They added two new meals.”

“Thanks, for your help I will add these to my list of foods that I bring with me and see if some of these can work for me too.

some of the foods I eat if you were woundering.

ramon noodles
oatmeal
beef jerky (dehydrators are great)
banana chips
apple chips
trail mix
granola bars

The best of all are these new trail mix granola bars. The have almonds peanuts dried cranbarries and rasins all in a granola bar but they are really low in calories 140.

Capnelson”

“Wow, that Enertia Foods stuff looks great! I think I'll order a sampler case.

Thanks!!!”

“I will do porridge with lashings of either maple syrup or rasberry jam and then a small (Aluminium) tin of "Two Fruits".

Lunch is multigrain biscuits with slices of tasty cheddar cheese, metwurst sausage, and sometimes tinned pate.

For dinner I start with a Miso Soup, then either red lentil and macaroni in a tomato sauce or a freeze-dri (I'm right into Soft Path Cuisine meals at the moment)
I'll do a desert of dark chocolate and a short black coffee.

Through out the day I will graze on nuts and the odd bit of dark chocky. Where possible I will attempt to drink between 15 to 20 cups of tea.”

“I am packing for my spring trip right now. I have to carry 11 days of food from the start, so I'm looking really hard at saving a few ounces/day. At the moment it's 24 oz a day for a total of 16 1/2 lbs. I've yet to count the calories, but it's over 3000/day, hopefully 4000.

I look for things over 100 cal per oz of weight. Cashews are 170 calories/oz. Ramen is 126. I have a text document someone gave my that lists a few hundred common bp'ing foods and their cal/oz. I could e-mail copies.

The Enertia stuff rocks. I just got a huge box from them. I eat their dinners exclusivly now.

I have heard a story of a round-the-world solo sailor who took almost all peanut butter to eat because of the cal/wt and cal/bulk ratios.

IMO food is often overlooked when cutting weight. No one wants to be hungry or underfed, but with some effort, you can find good, enjoyable, inexpensive, and LIGHT food. I still eat real well at 24 oz. a day.”

“Here's a clipping from a yahoogroup I belong to. This guy has the most impressive cal/wt ratio:

> but please enlighten us as to how you are getting 4600
calories out of 32oz. you gots a ton of fat in there or what? :
)
### Oh, you called it. Pretty much everything is 50% or better.

Breakfast: Little-Debbie-The-Hiker's-Friend Nutty Buddys (370)
Coffee: suckin' Folgers Crystals out of a (ironically) melatonin
bottle, swishin' and swallowing...

Second Breakfast: Slimfast and Milk double ration: (252)
(shaken into submission in a lexan Nalgene, worthy of having the
bejesus boiled out of it after slimcrud freezes solid on it.)

Gorp: 102oz for 10 days. This is a norm for warm weather, but
strikes me as too much considering how little I seam to care for
gorp when the weather cools...... Cashews, raisons, cherries,
Reeces pieces, M&M&Ms. (~1300)

Lunch: Liptons Knorr grits bulgar and a really neato two-cheese
asparagus dry soup mix ... typical summer dinner stuff. (~500)
Tea: caffienated, to swish out the pot, and keep me wide-eyed
and bushy-tailed through 20:00 hours

Dinner I,II,III: Pringles (480/half tin), PepperJack Cheese
400/4oz), summer sausage (400/4oz) (~1280)

Lessee, that makes 3700 so far....Oh, yeah:
Swiss cheese (400/4oz), jerky (84), and moose balls (400/4oz),
for a very inglorious, ungrand total of 4584/day.
”

“You wanna be careful eating only peanut butter. You'll be bound up tight as a drum, and eventually backing out something that feels like a house brick!”

“Before you get all excited about Enertia foods, I don't think they taste that great and being dehydrated instead of freeze dried the shelf life is only about a year.”

“What brand, if any, do you prefer bacpac?

I like the Mountain House stuff but I'm gonna give the Inertia stuff a try. Got a sampler coming.”

“here is a site which has bulk dried food ”

“Sorry for not checking with you first bacpac. IMHO freeze dried sux. I just can't stomach freeze dried. If you take food and cook it, super freeze it very fast, then cook it again, how much nutrition do you think it really retains? I might be better off eating the foil pouch they come in. The Enertia foods taste great to me.”

“I agree with Le Subtil's rule of thumb. I aim for about what his yahoo poster does... between 140 and 150 calories per ounce. This requires taking a lot of fat (which my nuttitionist friends say is reasonably OK for a backpack trip when you are burning up lots of calories - esp if its more than you take in).

Pure protein and pure carbs both yeild about 4 calories per gram. Pur fat yeilds about 8 calories per gram. Since its hard to get either in pure form, 110 calories per fat free ounce is great. So is 220 per ounce with very high fat.

Read nutrition labels when you shop, in order to stay calorie/weight efficient.

I don't take anything under 100 calories per ounce unless I either love it, or figure it contributes something important health-wise (for example dried fruit with vitamins and fiber).

There are tons of great suggestions above. I'd add hard salamis (some, but not all are great for this purpose), macadamia nuts (around 200 calories/ounce) and cooking oil as great things to take. Most beef jerky is not efficient in calorie/weight terms. Take it if you love it, but not to lighten your load.”

“2 things...Crisco(9+ cal. per gram) and Jack Daniels(7+ cal. per gram) Pour equal portions in your cookpot let Crisco melt..blend together..cool..then drink...Extremely filling...leaves the cold backpacker with a warm coated stomach...Plus, after 20 min or so it gives you this soft warm feeling..kinda like cuddling with a baby bear cub....”

“Another vote for Enerita Foods, as suggested by Le Subtil. Tried some on a "gear test" weekend a couple of weekends ago. I enjoyed the Max Patch and Cheese, Mountain Bulgar and others. I liked the powered maple surup. Did not like the power bar. I had the vanilla, yuk, but good calories for the size. I live in SE Michiagn, I placed my order on a Sunday night and it got to me by Tuesday afternoon via ground. Very impressive. The selection is a little limited, but a good cook could use this in rotation to keep full. I like the pouch eating as well. Anything I can eat in a pouch and just pack the garbage away while others are scrubing pans is fine with me.”

“Good ideas here, I'll have to try the Enerita Foods.

I know it's considered a staple, but Ramen is one of my main meals for going light..I throw a fresh bell pepper, some dehydrated stuff (turkey, onions, etc) in the pack and I can have a filling meal each night.”

“Nigal--I think you are wrong about the nutrition in freeze dried foods. Read the labels. There is an extraordinary amount of salt but other than that I think they are just about the same as canned things without the water.”

“I'm not real crazy about the taste of the freeze-dried meals I've tried. However, I have found that dehydrated meals taste the closest to homemade without actually preparing it and cooking it in the field.”

“I'd opt for dehydrated myself...Freeze Dried has a flavored styrofoam thin going on...It may have been food in another life..I think...”

“While I have my doubts about the nutritional value of freez dried I find I can go just as light, cook just as easily, keep it cheaper, and make it taste better with dehydrated food. Besides the sodium concerns, I have issues with the saw dusty quality, chemical additives and it's just not as appitizing to me. Just my preferences which I'm sure bacpac will be along any time now to try and corect my on.”

“Try this and save yourself heaps of money on buying freeze-dris.

1/2 cup red lentils
1/3 cup macaroni
1/4 cup tomato magic
1/2 teaspoon of dried garlic
1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder
1 chicken or vege stock cube
1 pinch of dried basil or majoram

Mix it all up in a zip lock bag, whack it into your pot.
Chuck in 4-5 cups of water.
Bring to boil.
Once boiling take it down to simmer and let it simmer until the lentils are ready.

Optional: Once cooked cover in freshly grated Pecorino Cheese.

This should feed to pretty hungry walkers.

Sometimes I reduce the amount of tomato magic and replace the basil with lots of dried coriander and add lemongrass.
It sort of makes it a bit Thai-ish.”

“What's tomato magic?”

“i don't see where bacpac corrected your opinion nigal. i do see where he offered his opinion, which happened to differ from yours, and offered information on shelf life. are you trying to rile him up?”

“Tomato magic = Powdered tomato granules.”

“"Before you get all excited about Enertia foods, I don't think they taste that great and being dehydrated instead of freeze dried the shelf life is only about a year."
bacpac
11:46:24 AM
04/28/02

I generally only get out for a week or two, so a shelf life greater than one year dosen't help me much.”

“LOL! bacpac's food has to be able to go from winter to winter cause he has to stay home in the summer.”

“Thanks for the Enertia info!”

“Nigal: How are the Enertia energy bars? I should have bought some to try. I'm tiring of the Cliff Bars.

If you say they are really good I might buy enough to get the free shipping. How much weight each?”

“JOSH, if you're going to carry a can of cheese food product why not just carry the real thing? Cheese does keep w/o refridgeration for several days. The harder the cheese the longer it keeps. Avoid soft cheeses after a couple of days or in extremem heat. I never leave homw without it;-)”

“Or go for a smoked cheese. Natural preservative.”

“I once meet a guy that was out for a 4 day hike. All he had for food was peanut butter, dry fruit and sourdough bread.”

“I keep a one month supply of freeze dried/canned food all the time. Shelf life is important to me.

Nigal is right. I won't be eating any more freeze dried foods till November. I don't carry Freeze dried foods exclusively, but I carry at least one or two on every trip. Saves weight and tastes good too.”

“Thebs are good and very filing. Haveyou ever had one of the oatmeal cookies in the MREs? They are kind of lik that only more moist. They weigh more than a Cliff Bar but hve nearly twice as much punch for 50 cents less.

Freeze dried has a fairly long shelf life doesn't it? I can keep dehydratd foods around for years depending upon how dry I got it. The Enertia foods would keep indefinitly I think because they are totally dry and vaccuum sealed so there's no moisture or air to cause spoilage.”

“I personally could live on the trail off of rice, broth, power bars and beef sticks. These Items are all fairly light, but they also take up little space and are not easily crushed. So you don't really have to worry about how you pack them.”

“Nigal
MREs them are some of teh heveyest foods I have ever carried. I cant belive how hard the granola bars are. They look like partical board. I think that MREs are just a little heavey for my liking but whatever works for you I guess.

capnelson”

“I don't carry MREs. I was making a comparison between the Enertia bars and the oatmeal cookies that come with some MREs. They are, as you said, too heavy and trashy.”

“I have heard that a "3lb" brick as they call it is a good food source.

this is a 1lb bread loaf that is made out of 1 lb of peanut butter and 1 lb of jelly. Then you smash them back into the bread bag and this is a nice source of high calorie light food.

3lbs for 4800 cal

nelson”

“Sweet Sue 7oz foil pack chicken
1/2 cup minute rice
1 serving knoor soup
1 cup water
chunk-of-cheese
hot sauce

= full belly + lots of calories

Crush up a baggie of potato chips and sprinkle on cooked dinners or add during boiling. It will thicken your dinner and your waistline.”

“Please know that I do not even consider Backpacker Mag experts in the area of hiking but I did see something interesting in the new issue. Page 33. They taste tested 12 meals from all differant makers. Anyone wanna guess what the #1 meal was?










Enertia's El Capitan 3 Bean Chilli! Yummy!”

“That actually sounds edible.”

“It apears that all the other meals were all freez dried too. Mabye it's just an unfair comparison?”

“My package from Enertia Foods arrived today. Oh, happy day! :)”