Thread: Bush tucker - what do you carry in?

If I’m living out of my pack it’s,
Breakfast is Porridge, milk powder with raisins/cranberries & coffee.
Lunch is crackers, tuna/salami, cheese, capsicum, Mandarin, nuts, sometimes an instant soup.
Mid arvo snack is a protein bar or lately have been trying the Pics peanut butter slugs
Dinner is a dehy Meal, cup of tea and some dark chocolate

Plus a few jet planes if I need a short boost.

If I’m flying, driving or boating to camp then it’s just normal food

@outdoorlad, you pretty much described my backpacking menu.

I usually bring in a few pies from a bakery on the way and then a lot of protein bars, quick oats and tuna/rice

I like the Go Native boil in a bag meals and sometimes add the mash spud mix - sit better than di-hy meals.
carry a few OSM bars mainly as emergency food as they arent flash to eat but keep well in your pack and arent to heavy.
Some sort of energy dense snack - fruit/nut or bumper bar stix are good options.

normally grab some of what ever baking the wife has done.

essential coffee - quite like the Dog and Gunn coffee
summer at least I carry a bit of "replace" powder

Google 'ramen bomb'

Basically noodles, potato flakes, tuna, some chopped veg. Very light to carry, very tasty, very filling.

Coffee
Coffee
Coffee

Miso soup is also good as a quick warm up in winter.

Watties boil in bag pastas. Less than $5 each at countdown and once cooked you have water left over for more....coffee

Originally Posted by SPEARONZ

Coffee
Coffee
Coffee

Miso soup is also good as a quick warm up in winter.

Watties boil in bag pastas. Less than $5 each at countdown and once cooked you have water left over for more....coffee

Carry coffee in my day bag just in case it becomes an overnight bag, nothing worse than the headache brought on by coffee addiction in the morning, really stuffs up the thinking when thinking is needed.

+1 for Miso! A blob of miso paste in a small container weighs nothing, doesn't leak, and make a very satisfying instant soup.

This is my food journey…
I started down the food rationalisation and lightweight gear rabbit hole a while back, from which I have learnt a lot.
But firstly, a bit of background. I primarily head into the hills for five days at a time, and where I generally hunt entails a gruelling steep 6-hour walk in, of which the first 1.5-2 hours is particularly brutal, and then once up top, typically requires a good 3-4 hours per day walking to get to the right areas depending on the weather.
Note that I'm not paleo, keto or follow any particular diet and that I don't have a sweet tooth, and lean toward the savoury spectrum. I'm a middle-aged man weighing in at 85kg who enjoys his food and trying to find solutions to problems.
Long story short, I wanted to know what my daily energy requirements were, so I could better tailor my food carriage and therefore reduce pack weight. So I approached my colleague, who is a subject matter expert on nutrition and human performance, hoping she had had some trusted information relating to activity, age etc., and the required XXXXkCal per day, and provide a quick answer to my question. But what I opened was a can of worms that I knew existed and was trying to avoid. Anyway, after our discussion around what I actually needed per day, energy-wise is a very open-ended question and specific to each individual. However, the two main points I came away with were: try and reduce the amount of food needed by training my body to operate on less, and secondly, up the energy-dense foods carried, something which I was doing, but with a couple of alternatives thrown in the mix. So, after talking to her, I began teaching my body to operate on less fuel to reduce the amount of food I needed to carry, in conjunction with increasing the energy density of the food I was carrying.
One of my goals was to cut 1 of my meals from my day, which over 5 days is nearly a reduction of 2 days food weight, essentially going from taking 15 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) down to 10 meals.
I am a great believer in trying things out well in advance of heading for the hills, particularly if it can impact your health, safety or enjoyment/comfort.
Now I never used to eat breakfast, so firstly, I tried dropping breakfast from my daily routine. My weekdays start at 5 am until usually around 10 – 11 pm, but I also get in 45 – 1 hour of exercise each day. Weekends are similar but usually get up at 7 am. I have an active job, but generally not overly physical. What I found was that after about 5 days, my body got used to missing breakfast, though my cognitive function did initially suffer but bounced back started after ~7-10 days, and I suppose what I was doing here is what people call intermittent fasting. However, what I did find was that when I got up and went out and had a physically demanding morning, I faded fast, really fast, fatiguing mentally and physically. I put this down to my body not being "trained" for this effort, and here lies my point of trying things out before heading out. If I had just assumed that because I was able to drop breakfast during my typical day, I would have put myself in a terrible position on the hills from the get-go.
So, to get around this, I reinstated breakfast, though I did push it out, though I have never liked eating as soon as I get up, I'm not much of a morning person. What works for me is a coffee or two, then breakfast when I can, usually between 7.30-9 am, depending on how hangry I'm getting. The breakfast I eat each day is the same I take in my pack, again, so my body is used to what I'm putting in it, and I know how it affects me. Now breakfast consists of quick oats, milk powder (if away from milk), nuts, dried fruit and dark chocolate, so all I need to add is hot or cold water if using milk powder, and bam breakfast. One thing I would say, though, is to be aware of how big you make your breakfast, as the weight can ramp up quickly, trial quantities to find out works for you in both taste and fuel. All up breakfast is my heaviest meal coming in at around 200g each. But with more tweaking and experimenting, I'm looking at bringing this down too.
I am tired of the freeze-dried and dehydrated meals offered in NZ, and their price point is horrendous. The Radix meals nutrition-wise are ok, but their meal options have plummeted in my opinion, Back Country nutrition-wise are rubbish, and I find the Go Native portions too small and heavy. To this end, I have borrowed a dehydrator off a friend and begun experimenting and making my own dehydrated meals, which I must say have been fantastic, reducing my dinner weight down to around 75-100g for a decent sized main meal, but this is just the "meaty" portion, i.e. dehydrated, curry, savoury mince, chilli-con-carne etc. not including a carb portion. For dinner carbs I have begun eating potato flakes, very quick to prep (just add hot water), filling and weigh next to nothing. Another one is couscous, which I tend to bulk out with added dried nuts and fruit, again add hot water, done. You can also dehydrate rice and just add water before eating, but I find this too much effort and a waste of time and energy to dehydrate at home and boiling rice is in the bush, a waste of fuel in my opinion. I have looked at the Uncle Ben pre-cooked rice packs, but they are too heavy for my liking, coming in at 250g each. Depending on the time of year, I also carry either a small amount of olive oil or butter to add to meals. Both are excellent energy-dense foods that your body readily converts to fuel and keeps you feeling fuller for longer without causing a blood sugar crash.
Now for snacks. For all meals, I have been trying to cut down the amount of complex carbs, i.e. wheat etc., and simple carbs, i.e. sugars, from my diet, and replace them with fats in natural forms, i.e. oils, butter and meat fats. So to this end, my snacks consist of dried nuts, high cocoa dark chocolate, peanut butter, homemade jerky and biltong, which is cheap and easy to make, and you can control the flavour and ingredients. I portion jerky and biltong out at 50g per day.
The next cab off the rank to try out as a snack food is pemmican containing dried fruit and nuts, an experiment I'm planning to get underway in the next week or two. For those of you who don't know what pemmican is, it's an energy-dense old fashioned survival food, based on beef dripping and dried meat, to which you can add stuff such as dried fruits and nuts from all accounts to make it more palatable.
Anyway, after all of this, I have got my entire daily meals down to around 500-600g per day (including tea, coffee, cuppa soups etc.), which I'm pretty pleased with. These meals give me all the energy I need, satisfy my hunger, taste better than those currently on the market and are far kinder on my wallet.
If you are interested, I will also add my 10c to the “Ultralight Hunting Gear List” discussion thread in the next day or so too.

Wow @steadwah you are quite the story writer. What a great amount of info you have shared. Thanks, you have inspired me to look into some of your menu ideas. I'm mid 40s, 80kg and also like eating a lot of food which is OK at home but as you say adds up in the pack. I often have one of my sons with me and end up carrying some of his gear and food too.

Originally Posted by RUMPY

Wow @steadwah you are quite the story writer. What a great amount of info you have shared. Thanks, you have inspired me to look into some of your menu ideas. I'm mid 40s, 80kg and also like eating a lot of food which is OK at home but as you say adds up in the pack. I often have one of my sons with me and end up carrying some of his gear and food too.

he has a day bag now mate...NO EXCUSES....
for me its usually a dehy meal,bulked out with 2 minute noodles for main meal.
dingos breakfast...a piss and a look around
snacky stuff during day,chocolate and maybe boston bun buttered and icing on the inside eg flip the top over and squash together.
normally only do day trips.... bag of potato chips and chocolate ,water bottle gets carried now....

I've hunted with a guy who carried caffeine pills with him, he had to take a couple about lunchtime or he got bad headaches.

Back when I smoked, breakfast was a Port Royal rollie and a coffee. Two coffees if I felt like a big breakfast!
I couldn't handle food straight after getting up, I've been like that since my teens. About 9am or so I would feel like eating, but often by then I was nowhere near the house.
Nowadays my medications decide my routine - first thing I take the pills that have to be on an empty stomach, have a coffee while checking the forum, and half to one hour later take the pills to be taken with food and eat some breakfast.
Heading bush for more than a daytrip I used to always take rolled oats, a packet of bacon and a frozen loaf of bread. The bacon lasts a few days without refrigeration. Surprise dried peas are good too.

Lately I've been chucking leftovers from dinner into a bag and vacuum sealing it. Lasts forever in the freezer and easy to dump the bag in the billy to re heat, I double seal it to make sure it dosent leak. A hot curry and rice from the local indian goes bloody well when freezing your arse off on the tops too. Oh and dont make them too big for your jetboil...

A significantly cheaper option for those that use the Go Native meals is the MTR curry range. Ready to eat, just heat (or not), bloody tasty, larger portions (300 vs 250g), most supermarkets carry them in the international section for around $4 each, though if you keep an eye out you can pick up 2 for $5 on special. Go Native retail for around $13 each.
https://shop.countdown.co.nz/shop/pr...B&gclsrc=aw.ds

The is an alternative range made by Ashoka, but I have yet to try them out.