Freeze dried meals

[wincrasher26]

Have any of you used these freeze dried meals on your boat? Seems like a good solution if you were going on a week long cruise. The Mountain House brand has glowing reviews on Amazon.

I know some of you may say gross, or poor nutritional value. But if you supplemented with some fresh items, it would certainly take one complication out of a trip. All you'd really need is a kettle, an alcohol stove and very little need for refrigeration.

[tlgibson97]

I've eaten the mountain house Chili and lasagna. Ive tried some other brands too that REI carries. I think they are a lot better than you expect them to be. I'm a pretty picky eater and I think they are totally edible.

[yukonbob]

There are far more economical options at your normal grocery store. I've had the brand name ones and they aren't bad (other than sodium; Although they tend to be chewy most of the time because they 'cook' in the bag (they really need five more min of heat to really cook) . Look at all the pasta dishes available (sidekicks makes at least fifty), mashed potatoes and gravy, seasoned rices with chicken and black beans (uncle bens). If you look there's lots out there to work with. Bring a can of tuna, chicken, shrimp, spam or whatever for protein and voila! five start dinning on the side of a mountain, or a boat. Jello makes some good instant deserts as well. Most of those brand name meals are 10 bucks a pop some as much as 15. I always get a chuckle when some green newbie brings those along in the bush

[yukonbob]

We keep a small pantry on board, canned food like beans, corn, mixed fruit, granola bars, juice boxes. Cup O soups are really good to have on board as they are simple to make no dishes and feel soooo good coming in cold and wet after battling the ocean for hours on end. As a good emergency for a larger group, a bag of dried spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Boiling water+pasta+sauce=feed four-six people. It's not gourmet dining, but no one will go to bed hungry.

[kmclemore]

As a Scout leader, I've probably eaten more freeze-dried meals that most folks. Mountain House are by far the best pre-packaged meals out there... I've eaten almost all of the different selections and there's not one that I would not go onto the trail with. That being said, as Yukonbob noted, you can put together some pretty economical dried meals without having to go with a pre-packaged stuff. Pasta, dried sauces, dried beans and other dried goods are easy to get for low prices in the store and make for very good meals.

One other key thing to bring along is a set of spices - on the trail we always bring tobasco, garlic powder, cinnamon, salt, oregano and chili powder. Adding these to the freeze-dried meals really zips them up nicely.

For the boat... well, we have a fridge, so we just bring 'normal' food, along with canned and dried foods and such... pretty much the same stuff you'd use at home. The only 'odd' thing we bring is those little bottles of wine - they fit nicely in the fridge and are just enough for a meal.

[Sumner]

There are far more economical options at your normal grocery store. .................. Look at all the pasta dishes available (sidekicks makes at least fifty), mashed potatoes and gravy, seasoned rices with chicken and black beans (uncle bens). If you look there's lots out there to work with. Bring a can of tuna, chicken, shrimp, spam or whatever for protein and voila! ....

We looked at the freeze dried but since your aren't packing this stuff in on your back went with the cheaper and just as good tasting or better grocery store option.



We try and keep our meals simple to help with cleanup which also conserves water. Not so important for weekend sailing but if you are trying to just go ashore once a month or so more so.



We really like the pasta meals above and eat them probably 5 days out of 7 for our main meal. We mix some form of canned meat with them and also dump in a vegtable or two and have a one pot meal that tastes good. We eat cereal in the morning and have a bigger breakfast meat with eggs and meat for our big meal. Our other meal, lunch when sailing/motoring or evening on anchor is usually cheese, crackers and fruit.



The storage unit holds about 3 weeks of food and we can keep another 3-4 weeks stored under the v-berth next to the water and in the aft berth which is our main storage compartment. When we do go ashore if there is a store nearby we will buy some fresh meat to use over the next week or so. One problem was the room that milk took up in the fridge for cereal but we found a way around that and are using it even now on the Endeavour. That is the ...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350598074263?hlp=false&var=

....UHT Milk that most stores now carry. We get the 2% and skim and it keeps well and doesn't need to be refrigerated until after opening. Being square it stores well in and out of the fridge and on cereal is not bad and in fact drink it a little and it is fine straight. I drink beer and Ruth likes the wine that Kevin posted.

Compared to back-packing into the mountains with everything on your back we have tons of room on these boats. I'm not sure but it looks like that even though the S and D's are smaller inside they might be more conductive to building in storage and such. Our trip reports...

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner ... index.html

... have a lot of info on how we live for extended times on the boat in relative ease. There have been times when we didn't even go ashore for even a walk for 2-3 weeks at a time and enjoyed it immensely,

Sum

===================================
Our MacGregor 26-S

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Mac-Venture Links

[RobertB]

Have any of you used these freeze dried meals on your boat? Seems like a good solution if you were going on a week long cruise. The Mountain House brand has glowing reviews on Amazon.

I know some of you may say gross, or poor nutritional value. But if you supplemented with some fresh items, it would certainly take one complication out of a trip. All you'd really need is a kettle, an alcohol stove and very little need for refrigeration.

I have had this conversation with fellow campers for years. If you are in a situation where you need to carry both your food and your water, why suffer the inferior taste and texture of freeze dried foods and pay alot more on top of that? You do not save any weight. One might argue that you do not need refrigeration but there is a surprising amount of food available that does not need it - even milk.

[wincrasher26]

I do like the idea of the pasta or rice packages that you can use as a basis of a one-pot meal. That certainly would be cheaper. I found chicken, tuna and salmon in the pouches that don't need refrigeration - kinda pricey on a $/lb basis, but convenient, and you at least have some meat on hand if your refrigeration craps out.

I think the advantages of what I'm suggesting are many if you are cruising for an extended voyage. The space savings are tremendous, especially on an M with limited storage. With the cooking facilities limited, making meals easier is definitely a plus. Also, having something if the weather isn't cooperating is good too.

I like the idea of fully provisioning for the entire trip. If you can stop and pick up some things, that's a bonus, but not to count on it.

[Sumner]

...I like the idea of fully provisioning for the entire trip. If you can stop and pick up some things, that's a bonus, but not to count on it.

That is...



....pretty much what we do. That is 2 months worth and we didn't buy much on the trip and came back with some. If there are just the two of you...



...you can give up the v-berth or aft berth (what we do) for storage and then a Mac has as much or more storage space as much larger boats.

The pasta dishes in a package we use are dirt cheap and then just add the meat or fish of your choice form one of the small cans. We keep the meals simple, but if on shore will buy a rotisserie chicken or some steat for a special...



...meal...

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner ... -koot.html

................

Sum

===================================
Our MacGregor 26-S

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Mac-Venture Links

[wincrasher26]

Wow, I guess there is alot of room in an M if you just dump everything in the boat!

I have a mental condition which will not allow me to travel like that. Everything must be stored away in a compartment or cabinet or container or I'd go bonkers.

[mastreb]

We camp on the boat quite a bit here in San Diego--any time the kids are out of school for a few days and we're in town, we'll be down camping on the boat at the Marina.

At the risk of revealing exactly how white-trashy we actually are, here's how we eat onboard:

We typically bring a few cartons of bottled water aboard in the gallon-sized jugs (we have a freshwater system but rarely ever use it. It's installed primarily for the stern shower)

We typically eat:
Cup-o-Noodles
Ramen
Canned chili
Canned soups (not condensed)
Canned fruit for desert
Spagghetti-O's (for the kids)
Pastas with Jar sauce
Spam, canned tuna, canned shrimp, sardines, kipper snacks, snails, or any other canned fish meats (which I love).
Folgers coffee (or other freeze dried). It's gross, but its just there for caffeine.
Carton of already hardboiled eggs
Various cheeses with crackers
Chips and other snack foods
Generic twinkies and ho-hos for the kids now that Hostess is gone.

We take the labels off and cook the canned foods in the can. Use vise grips as a handle.

For the various pastas with sauce: Take the label off the sauce jar and clean the glue off before you leave home. When you're on the boat, fill a pot with water, put the opened jar of sauce in the jar along with the pasta, cook the pasta, remove the jar of heated sauce, drain the pasta, and pour the heated jar sauce on the pasta. The pasta pot can be reused without washing. Buy jar sizes that fit your meal size--usually the smaller jars are best. Pasta takes a long time to cook on an alcohol stove and its hard to get it "al dente". You just have to keep checking it as you go and take it off when it's right. We carry only one large low-side pot (4-Qt I believe) aboard, and cook everything in it, including using it as a frying pan for bacon, spam, etc. If it can't be cooked in one pot, we don't eat it on the boat.

We use disposable SOLO pint cups for most things rather than plates or bowls. The kids like it and it works better--no spilling all over the table and floor. They eat out of the cup with a spork or just drink soups. We use paper plates occasionally. Makes silverware unnecessary for many foods.

We bring that stuff aboard in by the carton and pack it beneath the aft berth--it fits pretty well between the ballast chines. Bottles of water go wherever they fit.

We occasionally make one-pot dinners on the alcohol stove as well, but we really try to avoid doing dishes (as you can probably tell). We wash the pot by putting a drop or two of dishsoap in it, a pint of water, and heat it back up on the stove. When the water is hot, turn off the heat, wash out the pot with a rag, and pour the dirty rinse water back into a used empty water gallon jug. Rinse with another pint of water. Dispose of grey water overboard if you're out to sea or in the marina toilets if in-port.

We have no permanent dishes or cups aboard, only disposable. You can easily carry a month's worth of disposable plates, cups, and flatware.

We don't have a fridge, and so we just don't carry foods that require it. Red wine and ales are fine at room temperature, so thats what I drink onboard.

Trader Joe's has a lot of really good Indian food meals that can be stored at room temperature. They come in a bag and require a pot to cook however.

It does generate a lot of trash--we take a bag of trash off with us every time we leave the boat it seems.

[Russ]

We are debating using paper plates or wash dishes. We often go out for a couple of days and storing trash becomes an issue.

We did find a box of foil sheets and line a basket with them. Serve up the meal in the basket. When done, we crumple up the foil and toss it in the trash. Seems to save a lot of trash. Doesn't work well with steak or anything you need to cut with a knife.
Plastic bottles and plates seem to waste a lot of trash space.

We grill almost every meal. Breakfast in the cockpit, grilled bacon and scrambled eggs. Lunch, hot dogs (even when sailing). Dinner, well you have all kinds of meat to grill. We've even grilled pizza. Nothing tastes as good as pizza on the boat. I've often thought of opening a pizza shop and selling sliced to ski-boaters for $5 a slice.

As for cooking in the can... don't even open it. The pressure inside cooks it faster, like a pressure cooker.










(I'm joking about the can..don't do that).

[wincrasher26]

Those are some good ideas. Never thought about getting by with just one pot. Trash is definitely an issue on a longer cruise.

[Sumner]

Wow, I guess there is alot of room in an M if you just dump everything in the boat!

I have a mental condition which will not allow me to travel like that. Everything must be stored away in a compartment or cabinet or container or I'd go bonkers.

In the first picture....



...Ruth is sorting items and putting them in storage containers.

In the second picture...



...it looks like a mess but almost everything is in some thing and ....



...the somethings are marked as to what is in them. Sure it still looks like a mess, but we had a great 2 months on new water and I'll put up with some mess for that ,

Sum

===================================
Our MacGregor 26-S

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Mac-Venture Links

[mastreb]

We put everything in those rubbermaid clear plastic boxes with the lock-on lids. We use the ones that have a lift-up handle on the lid.

We put everything from my injury rigging, safety items, all the manuals, tools, electronics, the pump, kids games, and just about everything else on board. Some of the boxes come and go with us like the box for handheld videogames and iPads, the box for books and magazines, the boxes for clothes, etc.

You can really pack the smaller shoebox sized ones in under the seats and berths and because they're clear, you don't need labels to find what you're looking for. With all kinds of sizes down to very small, you can really pack the storage spaces but still easily find what you're after.

The only things we have onboard that aren't stowed in these boxes are food and water (which are usually in shrinkwrapped box trays under the aft-berth) bedding (sleeping bags and pillows), longer items like the wash broom and gin-pole, life vests, flip charts (between the galley and the wall), and the dinghy (rolled up in the starboard V-Berth. We have "at hand" items like line, gloves, the handheld VHF, etc. in canvas bags that hang from 3M sticky-hooks along the headliner in the cabin as well.

We buy new empty boxes any time we get close to running out. They're way easier to move around that loose items. We also tend to clean out the boat when we leave at the dock to make sure we're only leaving items onboard that are permanent. I'd say 50% of our carry load comes and goes with us when we put in and take out.

Works really well for us--so well that while I love what a lot of you guys have done with onboard cabinetry and woodwork, permanent storage isn't in the cards for us until the kids are grown.