Ideas for a tasty and lightweight meals?

[theneuhauser]

If youve got a decent recipe for some lightweight meals (breakfast, lunch or dinner) please share them on this thread.

Were getting ready for a seven night backpacker, last time I did that I nearly killed some small furry animals just to get some variety into the mealplan!


Ill contribute one:
Dried chili
fast cook noodles(like macaroni)
TVP
dried tomatoes
tabasco sauce
parmesan cheese (on top)

[hikeaz]

In response to theneuhauser's reply:

Lipton Sides with TVP ( I presume that you're a Veggie?) O/W freeze-dried chicken.
Dehydrated refried black beans by Fantastic, add green chilis w/TVP or chicken on flour tortillas.
Dry b-fast cereal with Nido premixed in - add water & dried strawberries/bananas or blueberries.
Dried mango, already-shelled pistashios etc. make good on-the-go snacks.

[Sredfield]

Yup, Lipton cooks-in-8-min sides with some packet or can of meat or tuna. Oatmeal for the AM, lunch is always an issue, cheese, pepperoni, salami, bagels, jam, snack crackers. It doesn't hurt to loose a few pounds on a hike. I loved redskin peanuts on trips also-salt and oil-two necessities.

[Shi]

Breakfast: Oatmeal, hashbrowns (grocery style brands, if you soak in hot water for 10 minutes, the potatoes rehydrate and you just add flavorings of your choice), or Mash potatoes, this has become my favorite as it is very light weight and filling, they also come in several different flavors. Great carbs for a long day hiking.

Lunch: Dried fruits, real fruit, fresh veggies (not exactly light weight, but tasty), honey and peanut butter, tuna packets, in pocket bread/bagel/tortilla. I think that honey and peanut butter can carry you a long ways. Sometimes, I'll just eat that straight.

Snacks: Nuts, dried fruit, protein bars. I also like to bring high salt snacks for long trips and chocolate (spoken from a woman who generally does not like chocolate).

Dinner: Instant mashed potatoes, tuna/crabmeat/chicken packets, grocery style hashbrowns with seasonings to meet my taste, or other type packaged potatoes, they are only rehydrated and not baked, but they are still tasty. I really like the Select brand cup of soups or the noodle bowls and I'll add tuna or chicken to those. Lipton's select noodles and rice packets. I've discovered that if I empty the packet in a FREEZER ziplock bag, I just add boiling water and allow to sit 10-15 minutes in a cozy, I don't have to cook the dish, they just cook on their own in the freezer bag.

I still have a box full of freeze dried meals, but I tend to do most of my backpacking shopping out of the grocery store.

Trader Joe's, Sprouts and henrys seem to spark my interest when I'm walking up and down the isles. I will buy something new, test it at home and if I like it, it goes into my pantry for those last minute trips.

Instant (dried) hummus, instant (dried) black beans are great for appetizers and for sharing with a group. Bring a couple packets of olive oil from Subway and you have a very light weight great snack.

Mary

[Ace4]

http://freezerbagcooking.com/ is a pretty good source for a variety of lightweight recipes. We took a lot of ideas from that site on our 7 day Alaska hike. We got our food down to 12-14 lbs per person for the entire trip, including snacks. Everything was cooked by boiling water and pouring it into the freezer bag with the meal, and letting it sit. It worked well, and made cleanup easy (no dirty pots). Don't bother with the bag coozies that the site talks about, you don't need them. Usually if it was cold out, we would put all 4 bags together inside a camp towel to help them stay warm, but I don't see the need to bring the extra weight of any specific bag insulator. Instant oatmeal or cream of wheat for breakfast every day, lunch was often peanut butter/honey/raisin wraps (soft tortilla wraps store well in bearvaults, but tend to stick together), or tacos (wraps, refried bean mix, cheese, diced onion). Since we were in colder weather, the cheese block was fine for the trip. Fresh diced onion makes a huge difference when you're out hiking, and it keeps well. Dinner we had spaghetti (noodles, dried veggies, and made a "leather" out of the sauce), and various other noodle-based meals, couscous works extremely well, as it soaks up a lot of water and is very filling, if you have some sauce mix to throw in before you pour the water in, the noodles soak up the flavor (like soy sauce packets).

Using meals like that, we managed 23 meals and 25 snacks per person, in 12-14 lbs. Most meals were prepared individually, but a few were 1 community bag that the 4 of us shared eating out of. The portions of the meals were slightly smaller than I might have liked, but having 3 snacks set aside a day made up for it. Snacks varied from bars, candy bars, cookies, dried fruit, and trail mix. We were well nourished on the trip. The food on this trip was several calibers above our last trip, where we all used the Mountain House freeze dried meals (yuck) from REI. This was a *lot* cheaper as well, although more setup effort in drying the food and preparing all the bagging.

The only downside to it, is you need to have water available for each meal, so a lot of the meals we had wouldn't work for backpacking in areas with little water.

[Hakatai]

Pesto Sauce Packet
olive oil
pine nuts
Pasta
Parm or romano cheese

and the piece de resistance:
a long baguette (rolled up in a ridge rest for transport)

make a little extra sauce to drizzle on the bread

[azbackpackr]

All of the above plus Mocha Clif Shots for those afternoons when you are starting to get a bit ragged!

[hari001]

The sauce has a nice zip to it, thanks to the barbecue sauce and the stuffing mix adds a nice flavor to the patties and helps to make this a quick fix dinner. To make this recipe even faster, substitute dehydrated onion flakes for the chopped onion. Ingredients: 1 ½ lb ground beef 1 package stuffing mix for chicken 1 ½ cup water, divided ¾ c chopped onion (or 1 tablespoon dehydrated onion flakes) 8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced ½ c barbecue sauce Directions: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together then ground beef, stuffing mix, 1 ¼ cup water and the onion. Pat into ½ inch thick oval shaped patties. Put in a large baking dish and bake for 25 minutes.
Jimmy

[te_wa]

web search for "freezerbagcooking"
your troubles are soon over my friends

[rushthezeppelin]

LOL nice avatar mike. But ya you can come up with some good tasting, light and cheap meals with freezerbag cooking. One that I usually do is Ramen with either tuna or salmon pouches thrown in after the noodles have cooked. It's surprisingly very tasty and you can also get packets for all sorts of meats....very packable very light and costs a little bit more than a buck a meal.

Not exactly freezerbag cooking but for breakfast I take cereal with powdered whole milk in a bag. Works great after a 40 degree night when the water is cold enough to make it seem like milk right out of the fridge. I use Nido brand powdered milk. This stuff is amazing and tastes much better than any other powdered milk I've ever seen. You can find it in the latino foods section usually and its cheap. Nothing like cold cereal to give you some carbs for the trail.

[dysfunction]

Just don't let your powdered milk sit too long without testing something from the box... Don't ask me know I found that out

I've taken to kashi 'insant' hot cereal for breakfast recently.. even if they say that just adding boiling water will not cook it completely, it leaves it just a bit chewy which is fine by me. Add some craisons or other dried fruit and it's a winner IMO

[rushthezeppelin]

You can actually make a freezerbag coozie that you can use to simmer for a while after you add the hot water. I've heard it does pretty well with noodles and such. They keep your stuff simmering for quite a while.

[aa7jc]

web search for "freezerbagcooking"
your troubles are soon over my friends

OK, Mike.. i just tried the classic mash potatoes and chicken bag meal..
I found those "Kroger" Chicken breast packets and I tied it with a packet of "Idahoan Butter & Herb" Mash potatoes
OMG! It was like thanksgiving!.. thousands of times better than I expected.

I am overwhelmed with all the exotic recipes at freezerbagcooking.com... Are there any other five star EASY (read: brain dead simple) meals like this that are in your (or anybody's) bag of tricks for novices like me?

[dysfunction]

I really like making 'pad thai' with some ramen, chicken, dried peppers and some peanut butter. Brain dead simple, filling and tasty. Also do red beans and rice in a coozie and eat it on a tortilla.. Takes a while so I boil up, pour water into the bag, toss it into the cozie, the cozie into the pack and go for about a half hour before checking it again.

[te_wa]

usually the Idahoan potatoes and chicken packet (7oz) feeds 2. add a half package of chicken gravy and some stuffing too! it can all be done in one freezer bag.

another great idea is spaghetti sauce in a pouch, Bertolli makes it. Pour it on fresh sliced french bread, add mozzerella string cheese, pepperoni and cook in foil over coals. PIZZA!

www.freezerbagcooking.com

[dysfunction]

You just made me hungry.

[fairweather8588]

In response to te-wa:
Squirrelock Holmes, 221b baker st, ahhh I finally get it....

[sirena]

Couscous that most stores sell in the pasta aisle is easy and you just add boiling water and some olive oil. They come in a variety of flavors.

[azbackpackr]

What's a coozie, cozie, or is it a cozy? Anyway, what is it? A "tea cozy" is something made of quilting or knitting that wraps around the teapot and keeps it hot and cozy--not something most people have in their kitchens any more, and SOMEHOW I think not what you're talking about. So...enlighten me, please!

Come to think of it, though, you could use your "buff" dew rag for a tea cozy, Te-wa! It would work perfectly. Google tea cozys, images. Very cute. Sew some ears and a tail on it and you'd be in business.

[dysfunction]

yea, it's very much like a tea cozy. Just an insulated something to keep the heat in, roughly bigger than a ziplock bag in my case.