Eating Out in the Woods

This fall break, I had the chance to go on a backpacking adventure with outdoor education. It wasn't simply a regular backpacking trip, but a lightweight backpacking adventure! According to my outdoor education leader, that meant packing our bags efficiently in terms of food, clothes, and sleeping materials. We would carry less clothes, less food related materials (such as spoons, pots, etc.), and use a tarp instead of a tent. Because of this, lightweight backpacking decreased the amount of weight we had to carry significantly than the usual backpacking trips.

Food consisted significant amount of weight for all of us. To limit as much weight as possible, lightweight backpackers prefer carrying dehydrated food rather than hydrated food. With the food dehydrated, it is easier to pack and lighter to pack. So, this meant dehydrated chicken, hummus, peanut butter, potato etc. If I wanted to hydrate my food for a meal, I would have to get water from a nearby lake, boil it using our alcohol fuel, and then dump my food into the bowl. For pastes such as hummus and peanut butter, they were given to us as powders in the beginning of the trip. We would then put lake water that was "iodinized" and then spread it on our wheat tortillas.

When I asked my leader how these food were dehydrated, he noted that there is no change in the way people dehydrate food now and the past. The food would be placed in an open(?) container that has a fan (or some sort of cooling device) installed underneath. The fan then would then rotate for hours to allow the water to evaporate from the food. It was fascinating to hear how people have creatively dehydrated various foods (such as chicken!) but the method of dehydration have stayed the same.

Overall, it was quite amazing to see how food was changed and modified in a way that I have never seen before. Usually when I go hiking or camping, I would take hydrated food (e.g. potato that is hydrated and mashed) and canned food. I always thought that hydrated food in small quantities and canned food were the lightest and most efficient way of packing and carrying food. However, lightweight backpacking has taught me that we are capable of changing and modifying food even further for various purposes.