On-board Food and Water

there a lot of blog sites for preparing backpacking food, particularly the current trend of "through hikers", to hike the pacific crest trail, or the Appalachian trail carrying only 8 to 10 lbs of gear plus food. The cost of buying freeze dried food is cheap if you get it in bulk cans (typically 2 to 5 lbs size) of the individual ingredients, and than you make up your own packets of mixed food seasoned to your taste. Packed in Zip lock bags or home vacuum seal bags. I checked on the price of a 5 lb can of freeze dried chicken meat, it was actually cheaper than buying raw chicken (that would be about 20 lbs of chicken).

The trend with the Through Hikers is to have meals that only require hot water, no cooking. Saves time and less utensils required (so it saves weight and volume as well).

I have not done a long cross county hike in many years, but short overnight trips, and have done this kind of home prepared means from stuff I can get at the supermarket. It is inexpensive and I get food flavored to my taste (I like lots of spices, packaged food is too bland, costly and you have to bring your own spices). Typically the packaged food is rather short of protein and full of rice, noodles or potatoes, at premium prices of course. I noticed that even the big box stores are now carrying "storage food", both Costco and Walmart locally have both packaged meals (costly and mostly full of starchy food), and bulk large cans of plain freeze dried chicken, beef, vegetables, etc. Too large for me to use in a reasonable amount of time, but I think would be perfect to repackage for long voyages, or other long duration trips to remote areas. No refrigeration required. I have also seen websites that sell it mail order, but watch the shipping costs, sometimes finding it in the local big box stores is much less costly.

Besides, when I did do long distance hiking trips in remote areas, you get pretty tired of the freeze dried packaged food. I have never grown tired of my own home made concoctions done to my own tastes using ingredients that I choose.

I think if you are cleaver you can rig your own freeze dryer at home, but why bother when you can buy bulk freeze dried ingredients for about as much or less than the raw ingredients?