Friday, April 4, 2014

What food to pack for backpacking with a child


  I'm hoping to take my daughter on a four night backpacking trip.  This will be our longest trip yet and she will have to carry some of the food.

Here is what I have packed for our trip:

14.5 pounds of foods for 4 nights out 3 breakfast 4 lunch and 3 dinners


On the top row lunch and snacks from L-R:
  two packages of wheat tortillas with a one pound of peanut butter sitting on top of them.   14 power bars for my daughter

Next row down is dinner and beverages from L-R:
coffee and cocoa powder in little bags, One pound of sugar, some random peanuts that I tossed it at the last minute.  Bottle of hot sauce, bottle of "olive oil",  Dinner number 1 dehydrated potato with home dehydrated ground beef and squash.  Dinner number 2 red coconut curry with chicken and beef and rice.  Dinner number 3 Green Bean threads with dehydrated tomato sauce, lentils and a tiny bit of meat.   I need to add more meat to it.

Bottom row: Breakfast and snacks, L-R Emergen C power, Ginger cookies for my daughter, 4 bags brown rice,  4 bags of Powdered whole milk, Power bars for me.  Breakfast will be instant brown rice with milk and sugar and dehydrated raspberries from my garden.  The raspberries are in the dehydrator right now.

I have not added up the calories here, but I'm shooting for about 3,000 per day for me and 3,500 per day for my daughter.  I expect that I will be giving her some of my power bars.

Olive oil will be added to all the dinners to boost the flavor and calories.  I will be adding hot sauce to all my dinners as well.  We will each have two cups of milk a day.  One cup will be in the breakfast and the second cup will be mixed with cocoa and sugar for hot chocolate.  I'll be having instant coffee mixed with cocoa, sugar and powedered milk in the morning and after noon.

I will be cooking 2-3 times per day.  Breakfast, dinner and hot drinks will be cooked, so I will need to bring a fair amount of stove fuel.  All cooking will be done on an alcohol stove with a titanium pot.  We will be eating out of metal pots too.  I am working to get away from using plastics, especially for hot food storage.  Next trip I may go back to storing all my uncooked food in paper bags.  We are expecting close to freezing temperatures for at least one night of the trip so hot food is needed.

The power bars were all purchased at the price of 4 for a dollar because they are slightly past their sell by date.  You can see that there are no commercial prepared "backpacking" foods in this picture.  I'm a thrifty mom  with MSG sensitivity, so I don't go for Mountain house or Pakit (MS)Gourmet.

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