View Full Version : Freeze Dried Dinner from Cans
I will be section hiking a 525 mile stretch from Springer to Marion VA soon. Getting my food drops ready. I plan to eat many freeze dried dinners. While shopping for the best price, I ran across the dinners packaged in #10 cans. The price of the cans is appealing. A dinner I like goes from $3 per serving to $1.81 per serving if I buy it in cans. My question: do any of you have experience splitting up the cans into servings? I can imagine it might be hard to get uniformity in the mixture. And I wonder about the food getting a little stale while sitting around in ziplock bags at various hostels and post offices. Experiences?
Ignore the servings. That information is arbitrary and almost completely worthless. They could divide the serving size in half and seemingly make it twice the "value".
Shake up the can real good. Not just up and down, but turn the can sideways and upside while you shake it. It won't be perfectly even, but I doubt that will make much of a difference. If anything, it adds some variety. If you're worried about it tasting a little stale, I suggest adding hot sauce to it. You can get hot sauce packets from www.minimus.biz.
fredmugs
03-29-2012, 07:35
You do need to bear in mind that each regular Mt House type pouch contains two servings. I haven't done it yet but I plan to do something similar when I hit the PCT this fall. I have some of the same concerns but it getting stale is not one of them. Make sure you use really good double closing zilock freezer bags.
If you can get free Amazon shipping you might want to just buy them as you go and have them shipped to wherever you need them. Make sure you have a P-38 or some other type of can opener.
peakbagger
03-29-2012, 07:48
A "seal a meal type rig" would take care of any freshness concerns. With regards to servings, I agree with the prior poster, they tend to be real optimisitic. They may work well for a sedentary person in a heated house, but someone on the trail in potentially cold conditions is going to brun a lot of extra calories.
Long ago we met a couple of folks down in Northern VA in april, they were just coming off a 4 week section. One of them planned the meals and followed the suggested servings, they both had lost a lot of weight and had some real issues keeping warm as they were burning more calories that they were eating and after 4 weeks they didnt have a lot of reserves. When they saw what we were eating, it was obvious that one partner wasnt very happy with the other.
Be aware that some folks cant tolerate eating the same meals for long stretches,, there is a chance that you will end up dumping your food in a hikers box and buying other stuff. Having a bag of a couple types of dehyrated veggies to add in at random helps.
Stir Fry
03-29-2012, 11:13
They split upe easy, it works better if you do it by weight then volume.
Creek Dancer
03-29-2012, 16:22
OMG! I thought the thread title read "Freeze Dried Dinner From Cats".
Stir Fry
03-29-2012, 16:29
Cats are good tool just add salt and pepper.
Derek81pci
03-29-2012, 16:30
Freeze dried cats for dinner?
Creek Dancer
03-29-2012, 16:39
LOL! What's fer dinner? Cat a la King.
Cans? Are you serious?
I'm intrigued.....
I would look at something like this http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/emergencydriedmeals.aspx then when you split it vacuum seal it and you have freezer bag cooking. Make some meals at home so you can check out the quanity. You might like more or less than what they are showing on the package.