Suggestions for meals while winter backpacking

Hi Everyone,

I've got a lot of experience being outside in the woods during all times of the year, 13 years as an Army Infantry Officer, Airborne, Ranger, Air Assault Training, and five\six years of hiking and backpacking in NE during all 4 seasons.

But as the winter approaches I've been wondering what others pack for meals while backpacking for several days in the White Mountains during the winter.

Any suggestions?

1) Buy one of these:

http://www.foodsaver.com/category.aspx?cid=87

2) Make a home-cooked meal, something 'saucy'.

3) Line a bowl with plastic wrap.

4) Make sure your bowl will fit easily inside the pot you use to boil water in (there must be enough room to completely cover your frozen meal with boiling water).

5) Pour your meal inside the plastic wrap, and wrap it up completely.

6) Freeze until it's not longer viscous, or too soupy. (This step may not be necessary if your meal isn't too soupy to begin with.

7) Take your meal out of the bowl, slide it into one of the plastic bags from t the FoodSaver, and remove the plastic wrap that it was in the freezer with.

8) Vacuum seal your meal.

9) Shape the meal into a round, flat 'ball" (see step #4 above) and put in a bowl. You are better to make two smaller meals than one big one, otherwise, it will take too long at cooking time.

10) Freeze the item.

When at camp:

1) Boil water.

2) Put your meal in the boiling water

3) In approximately ten minutes time, remove your meal from the water, and cut the top off.

4) Eat right out of the bag.

5) Laugh at your partner who is muddling his way through a carboard MountainHouse crap meal while you are enjoying a nice salmon and dijon cream sauce with green beans.

6) Lick spoon clean.

7) Use previously boiled water for herbal tea.

8) Pack up bowl and cleaned spoon.

9) Throw your plastic bag in the garbage (they are reusable, if you are so inclined)

10) Laugh at your other partner who is now cleaning up his fry pan and pots and pans in -10 degree weather with freezing fingertips.

11) Warm sake on the stove

Breakfast:

Fry up hash browns and sausages.

As long as it stays freezing, you can make one of these for each day. They can be heavy, but the tastes far exceed the weight.

dug, you are to funny! That is Great advice.

Thanks

Mary Jane's Outpost:http://www.backcountryfood.org/shop/default.asp

Quality ingredients and simple cooking instructions: 1. Boil water, 2. Soak. 3. Eat. A bit pricey, but choosing the bulk option saves a bit AND enables you to determine portion size. I used MJ's pastas almost exclusively on Denali and never tired of it (lost only 1-2 lbs. over 2+ weeks at altitude).

Instant mashed potatoes are always a yummy option, too.

Prescliced pepperoni and precubed/sliced cheese (sharp cheddar, etc.). Both great snacks w/protein, calorie dense, and can be added to any hot dinner for an added touch.

Ramen is not something I carry much but Ramen with a few tablespoons of peanut butter and/or some nuts is all of a sudden a Thai dinner. Suprisingly good.

I tend to go with those pasta meals that cook in under 10 minutes (presoak the noodles cold in the water for 10 minutes before cooking if you need to conserve fuel - they cook faster). I always add something to them though (see above).

Lots of nuts, raisins, and sugary chocolate, (raisins have as much potassium as bananas and help with cramping).

Tea, coffee bags and cocoa. I like hot drinks at night.

Dug - that's a great idea...

dug said:

They can be heavy, but the tastes far exceed the weight.

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You can save quite a bit of weight and volume for a long trip by doing pretty much what you said but putting the original gloppy stew or whatever (not too soupy) onto a dehydrator (on a net tray and catching the leakage on a "fruit leather" solid tray below) and taking a lot of the moisture out before freezing. At camp you add enough water to compensate. I'm not talking about fully drying to preserve, the freezing cold takes care of that, just extracting a lot of the water.

nice thing about winter is if you don't mind the extra pack weight, you can carry frozen/fresh real foods pretty safely for a few days. at least i have. and i lived.

winter is a good time for hearty meals. a smokey kelbasa simmered in water then finished with powdered mashed potatoes hits the spot. especially the "loaded skins" variety powdered smashers.

annie's mac and cheese with tuna is another.

pre-baked mashed potatoes wrapped in foil and rewarmed in the campfire, slathered with beans and cheese.

lipton cup of soup packets -- for winter backpacking, i like to make a hot cup of soup FIRST THING when i find my camp for the night. get warmed, rehydrated and salts replaced -- then get to work on setting up camp. definitely helps stave off fatigue that can make a cold dark night less enjoyable.

things that don't travel well in winter:

hard boiled eggs-trust me, having had no choice but to eat frozen hard boiled eggs (gag), this is one mistake i will never make again!

bagels or bread- they freeze. yuck.


have fun, winter is a cozy time to be in a tent, warm and dry after a tough day of trail breaking! winter backpacking is the time for eating unhealthy fat laden crap. you are cold, you are tired. you want something warm, stick to your ribs and rich tasting. shop the inner aisles for stuff that has a lot of msg. you will want to be in a food coma, you are going to spend 12 - 14 hours in your little tent!

You might find the following previous thread worth reading:
Winter backpacking FOOD!!!!!!!
http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=26039

Doug

Pre-making food and putting it into boil-to-heat bags is an awesome idea; however, do not make the mistake I once did ... Keep the bag(s) small enough to be completely, or almost completely, immersed in the pot, and be able to squeeze to mix up the contents. Don't use a tupperware container. Otherwise it will take forever to thaw. This happened to me with pre made Mac and cheese with mini keilbasas in it, and I was only able to eat the thawed edges a bit at a time.

Combine two threads - get to your campsite and tramp it down with your snowshoes. It will settle and harden afterward, waiting for that's the perfect time for the aforementioned hot cup o soup.

pasta salad

My favorite winter trail meal! The night before I boil cheese tortellini add pesto add onions add green peas and slices of sharp cheese and slices of pepperoni. doesn't take up much room, stays refridge cool, and is pure fuel! I couple this with odwalla bars, trail mix, some candy, beef jerky and assrt. of bevys. Chicken salad is great too! so many more and better options in the winter for pre-making food!

This is a bit of a thread drift, but relatively related...

Make sure you have a partner that is willing to work cohesively with you. The person I usually go with and I work very well together. Depending on who's tent we bring, when arriving camp we work to ensure the camp is comfortable, and functional.

While one person digs out the tent and starts to assemble, the other is tramping out an area with the tent (either with their snowshoes or skis still on). This can be the worst part, as more than likely, you are gassed and now have to spent 30 minutes hopping up and down packing down the snow.

As soon as that is ready, the tent owner assembles the tent and throws their gear/bag in there and gets changed. The other will move to constructing the kitchen. Generally, this entails digging down about 4' of snow, keeping a bench on one side while piling the snow on the other. Your bench should be about 2' wide, the "trough" you have just dug out is about the same, and the piled up are is probably a bit wider. Depending on the number of people in your party, plan in it being about 4' per person.

Take time to shape the bench, working with right angles, and if you wish, build a seat back as well. The piled up area is then shaped into a cooking surface area, and a "backsplash" behind it acts as a windbreak.

Bring some closed cell foam pads to sit on, and stand on. I usually have a Ridge-Rest, which I have cut into a 1/3 piece and a 2/3 piece. The 2/3 piece goes on the bench, the 1/3 pieces goes on the floor of the trough to stand on. This makes a HUGE difference in keeping warm.

About the time that is done, your partner is changed, bag laid out, and he comes out of the tent while you pile in, and do your thang. They will then switch to getting boiling water going. You will now be coming down from your exhaustion, so you will want some warm fluids in you ASAP. We usually stick to herbal teas at night.

Now that you have changed, you climb out of the tent, hot tea is waiting for you, and then you can each get started on dinner. One thing to add, when you are building your kitchen, kick some kicksteps into your counter area, so when you stand, your feet dig into it and you can stand closer to your counter. Stick a ski pole in the middle, and hang a candle lantern down so you don't need to always be blinding each other with your headlamps all night.

At some point, you will need to tramp out a bathroom area. First one who has to go gets stuck with that chore.

After that, you have a few hours to party it up. Winter camping at this stage pretty much means feasting on every piece of garbage food you have in your arsenal. Block cheese, pepperoni, chocolate, nuts, soups, Ramen noodles. Keep 'em coming. Enjoy whatever substances you want to take the edge off.

natron said:

My favorite winter trail meal! The night before I boil cheese tortellini add pesto

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AWESOME food. Let's consider why - cheese is a protein source, tortellini is a carb source. But more important (in my mind) is the pesto. Particularly, the oil in the pesto. Fats are very important in winter hiking. I find that while carbs keep me going and proteins keep me strong, it's the fats that keep me warm (like a greasy egg-and-cheese sandwich to for breakfast).

Never forget that a hot stove will melt and sink into the snow, tipping over and spilling your dinner.

Go to a Trader Joe's and get some of their beef/turkey/buffalo jerky. It's probably the best jerky I've ever found. Absolutely delicious (assuming you like jerky - some people do not).

MichaelJ said:

Fats are very important in winter hiking. I find that while carbs keep me going and proteins keep me strong, it's the fats that keep me warm (like a greasy egg-and-cheese sandwich to for breakfast).

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A squeeze bottle of butter that can be added to dinners can add a lot of fat calories fast and easy. I did this for awhile, but the butter taste, in my case, began to get.....tiring.
Also, for the weight, fats provide more than twice the overall energy of carbs and protein:

1 gram fat = 9 cal
1 gram protein or carb = 4-4.5 cal

Great stuff!

I'm a regular fan of pepperoni stick and VT cheddar, year round. By the way, I've found that, even when you get whole sticks at the deli ("Margherita"?), there can be a lot of variation in freshness. I look for the newest ones I can find, and don't cut 'em 'til you're on the trail.

I also cook a couple pounds of bacon ahead of time, both for the trail and for everything else (goes great to add to dinner and gets breakfast off the ground). Use the leftover bacon fat for browning your next roast.

The $15/lb genuine Parmesan chunk cheese is killer and also adds to almost every meal. For full disclosure, add Snickers, hot chocolate mix, and maybe a couple little bottles: olive oil, fresh cream, Bushmills.

An insulated bottle helps get the dinner hour going without drinking frozen slushy water; gets breakfast going the same way. I use heavy card-board wrapped in heavy AL-foil as a stove-platform, atop the snow shelf.

I have yet to make the graduate level on dehydrating, but I do like the pre-made real food. Of course, all this adds significant weight. One must be fit for winter backpacking!

Lastly, I'd just add that everyone/anyone you camp with will be blown away by these measures when you pop them out at the appropriate time. Getting to camp in the waning light and hustling to get set up really adds to the wow factor when you break out the Parm and bacon. Good karma follows. Hold off on the Bushmills 'til the heavy lifting is done and dinner is pending! If you're actually way out there (and not, for example, at Hermit Lake with a whole community), I like to add a couple Fuente Short Stories or Partagas figurados after dinner. This would go well with a little pick-up hockey at Ethan Pond or maybe wandering above the Imp campsite by starlight.

Winter cuisine is the finest, no need to skimp!

Corn meal is a great food option too... in the morning it can be used to make a porridge with dried fruit, seeds & nuts... at dinner use it to thicken some soupy FD meals or make it into a cake; add some cheese cubes & pepperoni, dried tomatoes and saute in your pot; top with grated cheese a some tomato sauce; YUM!

Peanut Butter, Honey and M&M's....hands down this is the best trail food no matter what season it is!

-MEB

roadtripper said:

Go to a Trader Joe's and get some of their beef/turkey/buffalo jerky. It's probably the best jerky I've ever found. Absolutely delicious (assuming you like jerky - some people do not).

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UNLESS you sicken yourself by eating it day after day on a backpacking trip .... I can't even look at the stuff without gagging now!

I agree though, great price, and very fresh.