packing light meals

[IdahoNancy]

That is Patrick. The Kifaru tipi he created is awsome. I have the 12 man tipi and his wood stove. His tents are light weight, durable, and spacious. The wood stoves are 9 lbs and keep the tipi toasty warm and are great to cook on. All of the Kifaru stuff is great for goatpacking. Patrick has about 10 goats on his fly fishing trip. They look like they bring the kitchen sink.

[Huckleberry]

Yeah, once me and my husband watched that video we were sold on the wood stove! We ended up going with the Seek Outside tipi and stove and it's great. Nothing like good food and a warm tipi in bad weather A must for hunting season.

[joecool911]

I've got a goofy tee pee style tent that has 4 side poles as well. Had it made with the 4 sides that zip out. So I can use it almost as a fly or all closed up. It's made out of light weight fly material. Very waterproof, but sweats a bit. It's 14x14 square. Weighs like 12# and you can cut poles for it in the woods. One 10' center and four 5' side poles. It'll make a good goat packing tent. I like my wall tent woodstove, but it weighs 65#. Not good for packing. But it will hold a fire all night. I'm getting old and my bones need heat. Lol.

[Wordman]

I'm a bit of an extremist and dumpster a lot of apples and veggies and dehydrate them. I dehydrate deer meat too for jerky. Did a deer heart of a large whitetail buck my dad killed-marinated in sweet teriyaki, was deeeelicious. For the woods and traveling dehydrated apples are good and oatmeal obviously. Dehydrated milk too. I read about making dehydrated eggs too yourself, would be nice to have back in. Rice as well. I see those little packets of dehydrated potato meals but their absolutely full of preservatives

[AACmama]

We aren't packing with our goats now (ours are carters-in-the-pasture), but my hubby and I backpacked quite a bit in our pre-kid days. Love the dehydrator! We dried veggies for stir-fry (they rehydrate and spring back to life most amazingly to make a crunchy dish on the trail), spaghetti sauce w/ meat (tip: crumble the hamburger into small bits as you brown it at home before adding to the sauce), and pretty much anything non-oily. Fruit leather and dried fruits are a given, of course.

Barbara Beach shared this recipe at a packers' cooking class back in June 1980. It is a scrumptious trail snack (too many calories to eat when you aren't hiking, pooh!).

CREAM CHEESE TRAIL SNACKS
8 oz. pkg cream chees
1/4-1/2 c. honey
vanilla to taste
1 c. chopped dates
1 c. chopped walnuts
Mix all ingredients and dry on Teflon sheets in the dehydrator. Eat out of hand on the trail. Barbara suggests adding assorted dried fruit and covering with boiling water for a warm "fruit and cream" breakfast food.

Yes, I heartily second the suggestion about backpackingchef.com. Isn't gourmet eating the whole reason for hiking??

[deschutes dawn]

Oh, yumm! I certainly need to try that. Thanks.

[joecool911]

My hunting buddy takes MRE's everywhere we go. He was in the infantry and ate 2 a day and one hot meal. It is an option though and shelf life is like that of a Twinkie.

[Charlie Horse]

You know I've heard that the modern MRE is not that long lasting. The military figured they could make them as needed and make them taste better if they stopped the focus on the 15 year shelf life. The military used to hoard equipment and supplies and now seem to have the same last-minute restocking plan that Walmart has. Frankly I think they've purposefully redesigned the military to lose but hey, at least the contractors are making bank!

This last camping trip was car camping. I decided to do an experiment and only brought food that did not need to be cooled via ice in a cooler. While not light weight, its nice to not have to deal with the ice chest and the water and such. I did the soup with bread sticks idea, granola bars and apples. Yes. Soup for breakfast. I just heated and ate without any need to really cook because I was in no mood for that aspect of camping this time. Plus it was cheap to buy a few cans of soup. Next time I think I'm going to go nuts and do pancakes and the works.

[IdahoNancy]

I bring dehydrated Vermont maple syrup crystals for my pancakes. Get the pancake mix that you just add water. Pre-measure it in a gallon ziploc bag and mix it in the bag. You can even get bacon in can these days.