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Food Items you like to buy at a grocery store?

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    • I went shopping for my upcoming 4 night hike at Isle Royale NP. I checked out a couple grocery stores to see what I could find.

      The 2.6 oz chicken foil pouches were on sale (buy 3, get one free), so I got one for each night. It's not dehydrated, but not too heavy. I tried dehydrating chicken last year with mixed results. I'll just use fresh this year, one pouch in each meal.

      Another thing that goes in each meal are a few spoonfuls of dehydrated diced soup veggies from the Dutch import store (carrots, parsnips, leeks, potatoes, onions - see pic).

      I also have a small plastic bottle of olive oil. I add a dollop to each meal.

      My typical recipe is about ~100 g of dry food and a dollop of olive oil, pouch of chicken, and seasonings in 2 cups of water. Bring to boil. Boil until the alcohol stove burns out (~60 sec), let sit in the pot cozy til rehydrate (~15 min).

      One meal I've used before and is ready to go: Red lentils, basmati rice, madras curry (from the Indian grocery store), turmeric, salt. All is mixed in a snack size zip bag.

      Another I tried today. Sapporo Ichiban instant Ramen with a half pouch of Conimex peanut Satay sauce mix (also from the Dutch store), chicken and veggies. The Dutch store has lots of interesting stuff, but you have to improvise as the labels are not in English. The sauce meat made a nice creamy peanut sauce for the noodles.

      I also found a box mix instant korean BBQ meal in the vegetarian section of the grocery store. It has a foil pouches of parboiled rice and pea protein crumbles (fake meat). I'll supplement with real chicken (teriaki flavor) and soup veggies. This is just the right size for a trail meal so I can't do a trial at home. I'll risk it.

      I will do a trial run on the last meal tomorrow using Alessi Cacio e pepe risotto. I'll use the lemon pepper chicken on this. Cacio e Pepe is a classic dish from Rome - pasta with Romano cheese and pepper, but this mix has parboiled risotto rice instead of pasta. I thought this sounded more interesting than Mac and cheese.

    • Great ideas! Thanks!

      On my recent trip,I was responsible for a dinner and bought several pouches of Backpackers Pantry mushroom stroganoff for my daughter and her friends (who ended up not going). She thought it was decent but I tried a bite and didn’t like it at all. It is so, so salty with that weird preservative taste… yuck! Hawk Vittles is much better.

      I’m a recent convert to ramen with a healthy broth and veggies or kimchi. You can’t go wrong with ramen.
      Lost in the right direction.
    • I tried the Cacio e Pepe risotto for lunch today. It tasted great. It had a nice peppery cheesy sauce. But the rice didn't fully cook. After steeping for 15 minutes it was still a bit firm. It was edible enough to make it the food bag. A good cheese sauce mix with basmati rice or buckwheat would be good.
    • An update on my attempt to improve backpackers Asian noodles.

      I used Conimex Peanut Satay Sauce Mix with a pack of instant ramen at Isle Royle. It was really good. Instead of being a noodle soup it was more like noodles in a thick peanut sauce. But I thought the Ramen seasoning package could be improved (it is mostly salt and msg with a little flavor). So at home I have tried substituting 1 Tbsp of Conimex Bami Goreng (Indonesian Fried Noodles) Sauce Mix for the raman flavor package. I cut back on the Satay mix to 2 Tbsp. At this rate, 1 package or each sauce mix is enough to make 4 meals (~$1.35 per meal). These sauce mixes contain mostly natural ingredients (dried vegetables, soy sauce, spices, peanuts, salt, etc). I also added 2 Tbsp of dried Dutch soup vegetables and 1 Tbsp of sesame seeds. On the trail I tend to add a dollop of olive oil to everything as a calorie boost. I don't know how well this recipe will work with Freezer Bag Cooking (add boiling water and steep). I cook in my pot so everything comes to a full boil for a few seconds before steeping which probably helps in thickening sauces and cooking the noodles.


      On Isle Royale I also added a single serving foil pouch of StarKist chicken to each of my dinners but decided I didn't like the taste or texture and the pouches added a lot of weight and bulk to the pack. So in the future I will either go vegetarian or use a Tbsp of bacon bits instead (OK, many 2 Tbsp of bacon bits).


      I have also looked into swapping ramen noodles for soba noodles. Soba are buckwheat noodles so have more protein and less fat vs Ramen noodles which are fried in saturated fat. Soba noodles are straight (vs curly for ramen) so they take up less room in the pack. But that does make them harder to eat with a spoon and I maybe like the taste and texture of ramen a bit better, but I will continue to experiment is soba and other noodles.

      My local store also sells these Dutch foods on-line.
      store.petersgourmetmarket.com/…ational/indonesian-foods/

      For Sesame seeds, you can by a little 1 oz jar in the spice section of the grocery store, or for about the same price you can buy a 1 lb bag in the Middle East ethnic food section (go figure).