Organizing and counting food...

[Becca]

Starting to try and get ready for hunting season around here, and since we have most of our gear pretty well dialed in, one of the biggest tasks is food prep. I count/portion out all the food Luke and I will need for each trip in advance, and try to have it prestaged to accommodate short turn around times during hunting season. In the past I have relied heavily on prepackaged and pre-portioned foods because it made the process simpler, but I am trying hard to eat less processed junk these days so I have been doing a lot of measuring we still do commercially dehydrated entrees from Mt House, Natural high, BP pantry etc for dinner because I just can't undertake dehydrating the volume of meals we would need, but most of the rest of what we are eating I am striving to be "real food" or a close as I can get.

Today I portioned out a bunch of snack mixes I bought in bulk at Costco.



The three bags ended up making 42 single servings, approx 250 calories each. Probably took me about 45 minutes to package it all up. I had some other snacks already packed up in our gear room, as well as breakfasts (we do granola with powdered milk most of the time). So I will likely start the "counting" in earnest tomorrow.

For July and Aug, I need food packed for the two of us for an 8 day backpacking trip, an 8 day sheep hunt, and a 5 day caribou hunt. More trips upcoming in September, but I will have a few days in between to hopefully regroup for those

What are the rest of you doing to pack/plan food for the season?

 

[Bonedalien]

i hit the REI Mountain House sale pretty hard. im set for dinners for the season. now im going into full jerky making mode with most of last years deer and elk.funny things about good elk or deer jerky is how fast it disappears in camp,and how no one ever minds packing a extra bag or two of it in for you.

 

[Snowcrest6]

I have the luxury of hunting from a base camp and have a camp cook (dad). Been trying out new recipes...tonight was skillet bread. all dry ingredients in a ziplock, just add water. cooks fast, and tastes pretty darn good.

http://www.food.com/recipe/cow-camp-pan-bread-r-hanging-lazy-a-robert-h-arps-162580

 

[Becca]

I have the luxury of hunting from a base camp and have a camp cook (dad). Been trying out new recipes...tonight was skillet bread. all dry ingredients in a ziplock, just add water. cooks fast, and tastes pretty darn good.

http://www.food.com/recipe/cow-camp-pan-bread-r-hanging-lazy-a-robert-h-arps-162580

That sounds awesome, may have to give that a try sometime....wonder if I could use white whole wheat flour? Might give it a shot to keep it whole grain.

We will likely have a trip or two via boat or atv this season where I can bring a decent cook stove and cooler. Because we often hunt late, and because I am usually the designated cook, I like having food already made that simply needs to be reheated at dinner time. I have made ahead, vacuum sealed and frozen a few meals already with plans to do more in the coming weeks. Some of our favorites are chili, spaghetti, fajitas and jambalaya.

Here is some fajitas I made ahead for a winter camping trip last spring:

 

[orionsbrother]

Here's a summertime one for when you aren't packing in; Take three tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, a teaspoon of sesame oil and a tablespoon of sugar and mix them in a small bowl. Shake in a half teaspoon or so of crushed red pepper flakes and stir. Let it set while you peel and slice a cucumber or two. Pour the mixture over the sliced cucumber in a larger bowl and gently stir it around a couple of times.

It's great. It's fast and simple. We just had some. Recipe courtesy of a third grader.

 

[Justin Crossley]

Nice work Becca. It's sure nice to have everything ready so you can just grab and go. I usually procrastinate and end up just digging through my food totes last minute and hoping I have all the snacks I need in there. I have been trying to use a lot more real food though instead of all the processed crap.

 

[Becca]

So I worked on phase two of the food packing this afternoon, since I got most of the snacks parceled out yesterday it was mostly a counting game. We have a pretty jam packed agenda between now and September (October? November?), so I am grateful to have at least three trips counted out. Also helps me know what I need to order or buy more of to get us through the rest of the season.


Counting out the cheese sticks, those stay in a bag in the fridge until go time. I have started setting a reminder on my phone for the morning we leave so I don't forget to grab it before we head out.



Counting and more counting. This is all the food for the two of us for a 4 night/ 5 day trip.



After I count out everything for a given trip, I box it up with a label reminding me how many days I packed for. Sometimes our projected schedule changes, and it makes it easier to adjust quantities on the fly...



Here's the three trips I got packed for today. That will get us through the end of August. I still have Sept and October trips to pack for, but at least it's a start

The boxes for each trip will fit nicely under the folding table in our gear room, and we can just grab them as we pack up for each trip.



Also got a triple batch of ground mountain goat chili in the crock pot to freeze for a quick dinner some night between trips, or perhaps to reheat in the field if we end up doing a heavier camp at some point this season.

 

[husky390]

Nice work. How well do the cheese wheels keep in temps around 70-80 degrees?

After my wife and I got back from her first backpacking trip I laid out all of the food we had leftover on the table and suggested we not take as much food next time. She just gave me "the look" and said "don't mess with my food". Good thing I have a large stuff sack because I'm not going to win that argument.

 

[tttoadman]

I lean toward dry food only. I was pleased to see how much of my food bag materials I have left over from last year. I was also impressed with how good it all keeps. I am a huge fan of the small individual bags to make "meals" during the day. It helps me stay on a regiment.

Please keep up the posting. You guys probably have a lot of tricks some of us can use.

 

[Becca]

Nice work. How well do the cheese wheels keep in temps around 70-80 degrees?

We have had good luck keeping the individually packaged cheeses for up to 10 days, and while we have seen some 70-80 deg temps I don't think we ever sustained temps that high for the duration of a trip. Main thing I notice in warm temps is the string cheese in the plastic wrapper gets a little greasy looking and loses it's shape in warm weather. Purely cosmetic because it still tasted fine. I like the wax wrapped baby bel cheeses because the wax protects the cheese some from deformity and also mold I would imagine.

Have also had great success with the smoked cheese block you buy in the deli. I got the idea when I saw them for sale in the store unrefrigerated during the holidays. Only downside is they don't come in single servings so you have to cut it up to eat it, and we always feel like we need to hurry up and finish the block before it spoils. Not the end of the world, but I really like having stuff in single serving packages.

 

[husky390]

Thanks Becca. I'll have to give the cheese wheels a try. You guy's have a fun and safe trip.

 

[Becca]

I lean toward dry food only. I was pleased to see how much of my food bag materials I have left over from last year. I was also impressed with how good it all keeps. I am a huge fan of the small individual bags to make "meals" during the day. It helps me stay on a regiment.

Please keep up the posting. You guys probably have a lot of tricks some of us can use.

Definetely more than one way to do it, we don't pack a bag for each day, but rather use the small dry bags you see above (the blue ones in the tote in the last pic). One will have all the breakfast food for the whole trip and the other will have all the daytime snacks (we don't eat lunch, just alot 3 to 4 snacks per person each day, each in the 200-300 cal range). Entree pouches just go loose in my pack wherever there is space. In the morning I will pull out 4 snacks per person and put them in a waist belt pocket or top lid for easy access during the day.

We have a pretty good idea how much food we will eat, but I still typically throw in a little extra (like 4 snacks and one extra Mac and cheese entree--that one has 930 calories in one pouch!) and we almost always bring a little home. I am ok with that, as it gives us some extra calories along if we have a day or two packing heavier than normal loads. We also often have some flexibility in terms of trip duration, and in the event of bad weather I would hate to have to stop hunting once it cleared because we ran out of food.

 

[tipsntails7]

becca awesome stuff. the baby cheeses are great

 

[JPHuntingAUS]

I want to get into making full meals e.g. Pasta, stir fry, curry etc. and dehydrating them, heard of blokes doing them very successfully. Haven't been able to myself though.

Good stuff mate.

 

[chippewawarrior]

I too pack the meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) separately, but I found that prepackaging all of my lunches (sandwiches, snacks, etc.) individually before the trip works best for me. That way after breakfast, I grab a lunch bag and go. No thinking involved...

 

[mtnwrunner]

Man, you all are organized! I'm a last minute guy---you know---shopping on Christmas Eve. Becca, I should hire you to come and organize my reloading room............

Randy

 

[marc]

Wow your food looks awesome. I am more of a oatmeal, clif bar and ramen guy. Boring but it is all calories.

 

[ffparamedic]

Thanks Becca, that info and pics help newbies like myself out more than you know.

 

[charvey9]

I do something similar each spring, except I prepackage up a bunch of 2.5 day food bags that I can grab on my way out to the woods on my weekend trips. Unfortunately I only get one or two extended trips a year, so these cover most of my excursions.

 

[fulldraw1972]

Looks great Becca! I would have never thought about bringing cheese. I will have to give that a try this year.

I also hit up the REI sale they had. I have all MTN House meals bought and about half my snacks.
After next weekend I will make up my daily food bags for the first trip starting at the end of august.