Page 1: Commercial Meals and Making Your Own
Page 2: Resources
Page 3: Recipes- Deydrated, Ziplock Bag Meals
Page 4: Recipes- Single Pot Meals

Resources for Dehydrated Ingredients

If you are not interested in dehydrating your own foods, or would like to give the meals a try right away, we will offer a few sources for the ingredients you need to make your own meals. REI now carries a complete package for less than 50 dollars which will set you up with enough dehydrated vegetables to keep you in meals for a couple of seasons. The Harmony House Backpacking Kit is a great deal and offers a perfect selection of vegetables to start making your own meals. Read about it below. Learn more or purchase it right from REI by clicking the link.

Harmony House Backpacking Kit Backpacker April '07 scolds, ''Lack of time and money is no longer a valid excuse for eating plain old ramen. With this kit, we can all be gourmets.'' This kit features 18 zip pouches of dehydrated vegetables and beans allowing you to make your own unique trail dishes! Kit includes: Red and green peppers, potato dices (2), cabbage, carrots (2), celery, sweet corn, green beans, sweet peas (2) and chopped onions. Kit also includes: tomato dices, lentils, red beans, black beans, northern beans and pinto beans. One kit provides over 70 servings; number of servings and serving size vary per pouch. Add approximately one part vegetables to two parts water and allow to soften, or use directly in soups and stews and simmer until done. For beans, increase ratio to two parts water and one part beans.

If you are looking for specific items, and not such a large selection of ingredients, Barry Farm Foods sells small quantities of a great many dehydrated items. You should be able to find nearly everything you need on their website. I have only bought their whole dried egg powder, but I was completely satisfied with the purchase. We made many tasty omelets on the Green River last summer with the eggs. Click here to visit their grocery store page. They sell many organic items and most of their items have a link to more information about the item- nutritional information, cooking and rehydration tips. Their site is worth a visit if you are serious about making your own backpack meals.

Dehydrated Dishes at Discount Prices

A source for easy to prepare dishes that just require hot water is Fantastic Foods. They make many different flavors of soup cups, and sell boxed, dehydrated foods such as black beans, chili, couscous, and refried beans. Their products are available at most grocery stores, but natural food stores such as Whole Foods seems to have the best selection. In the Whole Foods bulk section you can find some of their products, and similar products by other vendors. You can purchse 1/2 cup of an item to give it a try. The Whole Foods I shop at has dishes such as split pea soup, lentil soup, black beans, chili, refried beans, and corn chowder all in bulk. If these sound appealing to you, then it will be easy to create excellent, cheap meals without much work. These dishes really help in adding variety to a menu for a long backpack or float trip. I use all these dishes, and for variety will sometimes buy their soup cups and dump them into Ziplock bags for backpacking.


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Page 1: Commercial Meals and Making Your Own
Page 2: Resources
Page 3: Recipes- Deydrated, Ziplock Bag Meals
Page 4: Recipes- Single Pot Meals