Backpacking Cooking and Food
What makes good backpacking food?
Fundamentally, whatever serves your purpose for a given trip is the right
food to take. There are some qualities that usually describe good backpacking food:
* nutritious
* easy to fix
* quick
* lightweight
* tasty
* compact and sturdy
* not too costly
* non-perishable
Those make sense. BUT...there are no hard-and fast rules about creative
trail cooking! On some of your trips you can completely ignore certain "ideal"
food qualities because the structure and purpose of the adventure allows it.
There are times when one or two of the basic qualities listed above are
the deciding factors in your menu planning. In cold weather camping you are traveling in a
huge refrigerator and can enjoy the luxury of many foods that would be to perishable on
summer treks (such as fresh eggs, fruits and vegetables).
Sometimes you will want the food to be one of the highlights of a trip, as
when you are base-camping and setting a more leisurely pace, with time for plant study or
lolling in the sun. At other times you may look at food mainly as adequate fuel for
prolonged, strenuous activity, and so forgo a luxury food that takes more pack space or
preparation time. (On the other hand, your spirits may need that luxury now and then!)
If variety is so important to you that you would feel bored and oppressed
by repeating the same main dish every night for a week, then you'll probably do something
about it. What you'll do is invest a considerable amount of ingenuity and some advance
effort so that variety will be the result. In the process you'll be rewarded by an
increasing level of resourcefulness and a lot of pure fun.
On backpacking trips everyone will be responsible for his or her own food,
cooking and eating utensils. You may choose to cook and eat together with several other
Pathfinders. Keep it simple. Don't bring canned foods, these are heavy, and the empty cans
must be carried back out. There are plenty of dehydrated foods available in the grocery
stores. Examples: cooked cereals, soups, pasta and rice dishes. You may wish to put all of
the food for each meal into individual zip lock bags, this is a good way to be organized.
Please
note: many dehydrated foods, such as individually packed hot chocolate, have foil linings
to keep them fresh. These also must be packed out and not thrown in a fire.
For those campers who get hungry a lot, it would be a good idea to bring
trail mix to snack on while hiking, this way it is not necessary to stop and eat. This can
be purchased or made yourself. It can contain whatever you want: nuts, raisins, dried
fruits, coconut, m & m's, chocolate chips, sunflower seeds, etc.
When buying cooking utensils you have a number of options, one is to get a
mess kit which can be used for both cooking and eating. But you would be better off
getting your Pathfinder a small Teflon frying pan and a small pot. Mess kits are just
exactly that - a MESS - because it takes a lot of skill and patience to cook on uncoated
aluminum. Nothing will turn a Pathfinder off quicker than the frustration of having all
his or her food stick to the pan and burn when they are tired, hungry, and away from home.
Have your Pathfinder use their camping equipment and practice cooking their meals at home
on a weekend. This way, they will already know what they like and how to fix it.
An insulated mug with a lid helps keeps hot drinks, hot, and insects out.
They also help prevent losing the whole drink if it tips over.
All water must be purified. Therefore it is suggested that each person
bring a container to hold the purified water in. One suggestion is an empty 1/2 gallon
milk jug. This can easily be tied to the outside of the backpack, and weighs almost
nothing when empty.
A simple way to package the meals is to put all the dry ingredients for
one recipe in a plastic bag (some recipes require two bags), label it, and add liquids in
camp. We like to use the "zip-locking" type of plastic bags since they close
airtight, taking up less volume in the pack and keeping the food fresher. Wide-mouth
plastic bottles are good for liquids and condiments such as oil, peanut butter, and honey;
you can also use the plastic, soft drink bottles, they are free! Plastic tubes are
suitable for packing liquids, butters, and pastes. To organize the food in your pack , put
all the suppers in one stuff bag, breakfasts in another, and lunches in a third, leaving
the condiments in a fourth bag by themselves. Save the ketchup, mayonnaise that you get at
fast food restaurants for camping.
Put packets of antimicrobial wet wipes with each meal. This way you'll be
able to wash your hands before you eat even if there's no water immediately available.
