Ration Packs

While in principle the idea of an MRE or an IMP is great (everything you need for one day in one package), the few I’ve had the chance to try have been soso at best. Some of the individual components I don’t really like, and quite often the meals taste more like preservatives than real food. I guess they’ve been getting better and more diversified over the years, but the ones I’ve tried haven’t been that thrilling. (Maybe that’s why they’ve gotten all sorts of pejorative nicknames over the years. Materials Resembling Edibles, Meals Rarely Edible, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, Meals Requiring Enemas, Meals Refusing to Excrete, or Massive Rectal Expulsions.) The other thing about them is that they produce a lot of garbage and they also contain all the moisture in the meals, making them a bit heavier.
 

What I did do though was to take the idea of all the food for one day in a package and make my own versions.

I’ve tried various freeze dried meals, and while some are great, some of them are just awful. I’d love to try them all out to see which ones are good and bad, but given their price, that becomes problematic. Their sizing is often a bit wonky too, as I find they’re a bit too big for one meal, and not really enough for two people. Making my own by preparing a meal and then dehydrating it, allows me to more accurately measure out a portion that suits me. 

I can control the calories, the salt, the fat, the portion, the taste. On a winter trip I might want to have more calories or fat, but on a hike on a hot and humid summer day, not so much. Making my own meals, allows me to set them up exactly as I like them. And if you’re making meals with stuff you grew or foraged or hunted – even better!

(Although in these photos I have a meal from MaryJanesFarms. I bought a whole bunch of them at one point, and I’m just using up the last of them. Of all the ones I’ve tried, these have been my favourites. As much as I like them, I doubt I’ll buy any in future since I’m committed to making my own, but if you’re so inclined, they’re good.) 

I have at least a week of these ready to go, and try to have at least two weeks ready to go. The older ones are at the front of a RubberMaid bin and I can grab them, stuff them in my pack and be off. I use these often enough that they rotate out fairly quickly, so expiry isn’t such a big deal. The only thing I’ve ever had go bad in them was some commercial beef jerky. The stuff I’ve made myself has been fine though. 

Each bag contains breakfast (in a freezer bag), hot drinks – my own hot chocolate mix (way better than any of that commercial hot chocolate mix) or tea with sugar packets), snacks, dinner, dessert.

1. Bison Pemmican
2. Cashew Larabar
3. PC Fruit&Nut Mixed Berry & Almond Granola Bar
4. Vector Chocolate Chip Bar
5. PC Fruit&Nut Apple & Almond Granola Bar
6. Clif Oatmeal & Raisin Bar
7. MaryJanesFarm Curried Lentil Bisque
8. Beef Jerky
9. Vanilla Pudding (pudding powder and milk powder)
10. Schuttelaars Salmiak Brokken (Dutch liquorice candies)
11. Fruit & Nut Couscous
12. Hot Cocoa (milk powder, real dutch cocoa, maple sugar)
13. Tissue Packet w/ Antiseptic Wipes
14. Fruit Leather
15. Mixed Nuts
16. Vegetable Curry
17. Vega Food Supplement
18. Multi Vitamin

Now, MREs have a fancy heater bag - you put the meal in the bag, add some water, close it up, some mad science exo-thermic reaction takes place and it heats up your meal. I just use one of the stoves I’ve made, boil up some water and add it to the meal.

In the morning I take out a bag, get out the stuff for breakfast, boil water, pour it in the bag, put it in the cozy, make hot chocolate, fill a thermos with hot water, and put the days snacks in the cargo pockets of my pants (all I ever use them for). I set off after drinking the hot chocolate. An hour or two later I stop and have the breakfast. I eat the snacks as the day progresses. I may stop at lunch time and use the hot water in the thermos to make some tea or prepare a soup if it’s cold. At dinner time the meal is prepared by adding hot water to the freezer bag and put in the cozy and allowed to simmer for a while. Sometimes I’ll have pudding that I prepare with cold water in a bag and leave for a time in a stream or a lake to have for dessert. While that is happening, a bit of exploration, hammock set up, photography, whatever can be done. Later, the food is eaten, usually another yummy hot chocolate is drank, the garbage is packed in the large zip loc bag. While this obviously still produces garbage, it isn’t as much as the MREs produce, and the ziploc bags can be rinsed out and used for something else if need be.

Camozy

For some time now I’ve been making my own backpacking meals, dehydrating them, putting them in freezer bags, and then when I get to where I’m going, boiling water to rehydrate them over some form of stove (alcohol or wood), and then letting it simmer in a cozy.

Can’t say enough good things about this approach.

I’ve tried it all – Quite often I'll just bring stuff I don't even have to cook - nuts, granola bars, jerky, flat bread, cheese, fresh veggies. Simple, and negates the need for a stove and fuel, but often times in shoulder seasons, a warm meal is a real morale booster. Indian boil in the bag curries. Convenient, but heavy, laden with salt and very oily. MREs and IMPs. Convenient - everything is right there for a day - but they’re heavy and are laden with preservatives. I’ve been on canoe trips with people who’ve taken the “we’ll just throw a bunch of stuff in a food barrel the night before and then we’ll try and figure it out when we get there and prepare gourmet meals from scratch over an open fire” approach. Which turns into a complete clustercopulation. Never again. Freeze dried meals are a step in the right direction and some are quite good, but some of them are profoundly awful. I don’t mean they aren’t that delicious, I mean they’re pretty much inedible. And I’m really not that picky an eater. They’re too pricey for me to be able to pick up one of each to try out before I head off somewhere. And the portion sizing is often kind of wonky – many of them are billed as feeding two people, but they’re too much for one person, and not enough for two people. Not to mention crazy amounts of packaging.

When I started to learn the potential of using a dehydrator – that I could do more with it than simply preserving fruit and making jerky, that I could do actual complete meals as well – there was no looking back. I make so much of my other stuff – stoves, pot stands, wind screens, pots, quilts, under quilts, stuff sacks, pouches, etc.) why not extend that DIY ethic to the food I’m lugging around as well. This way I know what I’m getting, I know I’ll be eating something I like. I can control the portion size. I can control the salt and fat level. I can keep the cost down. I can use ingredients that I have grown or foraged or hunted. I have a lot less packaging. All in all, I will never look back from this approach.

While the stove is obviously an important element of this, today we’re going to look at the cozy. Many alcohol stoves are light and simple and efficient, but they are pretty much just for boiling water. Simmering isn’t really an option. Some designs do allow for a sort of simmering, but then there is also the aspect of using up fuel. In days past, a straw or hay box was a familiar item in a kitchen. Wood stoves were also limited in their ability to adjust to a range of temperatures, so meals would be brought to a boil and then placed in a straw or hay lined box, straw or hay would be heaped over the pot and allowed to sit inside it for a period of time. A very low tech simmer. A cozy is pretty much the same idea. Boil the water, pour it in the bag, put it in the cozy and let it simmer in there for however long you like. And letting it simmer for an hour or so, makes a meal truly fantastic. Quite often what I’ll do is boil water as I’m packing up, put the water in the bag, put the bag in the cozy and set off. An hour or two later, I’ll have a break and eat my breakfast. In the evening it’s the reverse – I’ll boil water and all that as I set up for the night, have a schmoke break, enjoy the view for a while, then have dinner.

I had made a cozy from aluminized bubble wrap used to insulate pipes and the silver tape used to hold it in place. It worked, but it wasn’t really durable and there was also the aspect of it being silver. Given my proclivity to camp in out of the way places, I want to try and remain as visually low key as possible.

I had thirty yards of MarPat nylon, so I went out and got some Insul-Bright, the material used for oven mitts and tea cozies. Super simple sewing project and it was a fun afternoon of sewing with my mom. Contrary to the other one I made, this one can be folded, smushed, stuffed. It isn’t nearly as fragile.

Even the cat thinks it’s so cool she takes a break from hunting stuff to check it out.

The cozy is made to fit medium size freezer bags. No other size is needed.

I stopped buying any of the Mountain House or Backpacker’s Pantry meals years ago, but I still had a meal from Mary Jane Farms. It fits in there perfectly as well.  I suspect that some of the other commercial brands have packaging that’s too big to fit in this particular cozy, but these are really easy to make. Making one to fit a brand you happen to like and use wouldn’t be difficult. Or you can transfer the contents to a smaller freezer bag as well.

The other thing that is kinda neat about this cozy is that it serves as a rudimentary oven mitt  to grab hot pot handles.