Food Test

After some lackluster commercial freeze-dried meals on trail this year, I asked Lola for a food dehydrator for my birthday so that we could make our own.  Dried food is important on the trail because wet food is heavy to carry.  Dried food is a fraction of the weight of, say, canned food or ready-to-heat pouch food. 

Two nights ago I was ready to test it out so I made a big batch of spaghetti and meat sauce.  We enjoyed big bowls of it with a nice glass of red and expired episodes of The Daily Show.

After dinner I pulled out The Beast.



Nesco American Harvest Dehydrator and Jerky Maker.
A mouthful of a name that could use some shrinkage itself.

I spread half of the spaghetti mixed with the sauce onto the fruit leather tray so it wouldn't seep through the venting trays.  The unit only came with one leather tray, though, so I cut a circle out of wax paper and layed that on another tray, then spread the remaining spaghetti onto it.  Plugged it in, set the temp to 145 degrees, watched a little more TV, did the dishes and went to bed.  I set my alarm to wake me every two hours so I could agitate the spaghetti, making sure there were no thick areas of pasta that were not drying out.  Waking up throughout the night kind of reminded of waking up for midnight watches on my ocean passages this summer. 

Nine hours later it looked pretty well dried out.  I transferred it all to a big mixing bowl and gently broke up the spaghetti so I could place it in plastic Zip-Locs (also, since I'll only be using a spoon on the CT, long strands would be problematic). 

4.5 ounces of dehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce

People who do these kinds of things regularly recommend putting the bagged food into the freezer to keep things fresh.  What I will probably end up doing, though, is buying a food vacuum sealer so that I can dry out the food and not freeze it.  Then I can make the food far in advance of the trip and not worry about freshness issues.

This morning I decided that a breakfast of rehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce would be a nice little departure from Multi Grain Cheerios so I got out my trail cook kit and cooked it up.

First of all, here's my entire camp kitchen (minus fuel and spoon) bundled up all tidy and small, not unlike Russian nesting dolls.

DIY Reflectix pot cozy (instructions here on Erik the Black's website)



Snow Peak Titanium Mini Solo cookset



 Cookset (pot, mug, lid), MSR Pocket Rocket Stove and storage sleeve,
  two small lighters, green scrubby, food scraper, Campsuds soap in an
old Visine bottle, synthetic towel. 
Total weight including cozy and spoon:  13 ounces

Outside, I assembled the materials:  Cookset, spaghetti...

fuel...


(Not the size fuel canister I'll be taking on trail)

I brought 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil (in two minutes! This stove is amazing!) then added the dehydrated spaghetti.

Gave it a little stir to ensure all the pasta was covered with water...

Put the lid on and placed in the cozy...

Snugged the cozy lid down...

And set the timer on my watch.

The cozy is a clever implementation because it keeps the food inside screaming hot while saving fuel.  I made it out of an Auto Sun Shade and duct tape with instructions from Erik the Black's website. Traditionally you would boil the water and food until it was all ready to go, which could be seven to eight minutes of boil time.  That's a lot of fuel used.  And remember, you have to lug everything on your back, so if you can use 1/3 of the fuel that's a good deal.  The cozy keeps things hot and still manages to hydrate things well enough.

15 minutes later I removed the cozy and pot lids and gave it a stir. 

Immediately I could tell that 1 1/2 cups of water was too much.  I probably should have only added 1 to 1 1/4 cups.  It was more soupy than saucy.  User error.

I took a bite and the flavor was pretty good but not as good as the night I made it--in part I'm sure because I had diluted it too much.  Also, eating it fresh that first night,  I had grated Parmigiano Reggiano over the top.  I didn't this morning, so some flavor deficiency would be expected there.  The pasta was al dente, but I'm Southern so I like it cooked through.  Something happens in the dehydrating process, I guess, that did not allow it to re-attain the proper Southern consistency, which is how we enjoyed it with Jon Stewart.  Also, 4.5 ounces dried spaghetti with meat sauce was fine for a breakfast fresh from a long, comfortable sleep in my bed, preceded by a day of ass-sitting, but it's probably not sufficient for capping off a day of hard hiking.  Six to eight ounces would probably be a more satisfying amount of food.

I will definitely remember to bring single-serving pizza shop packets of parm for flavor on the trail.

I guess I should mention that when you dehydrate food you need to cook it with as little fat as possible since fats become rancid over time.  My guess is that cooking them accelerates this process.  The solution is to cook with as little fat as possible, dehydrate the food, rehydrate it to order, then add fats such as cheese and olive oil.

Fats are important because they are calorie-rich.  On the trail you are burning up so many calories that you are almost always hungry.  If  a person eats 2,500 calories in their regular life, on the trail they may need up to 6,000, depending on the distance covered each day.  Fats are a good way to pack in the most calories with the least amount of weight.  If you want to lose weight fast, go on a thru hike and don't pack enough food.  Or hike vegan.

Here are the caloric amounts of different types of food:

Carbohydrates:  4 calories/gram

Protein:  4 calories/gram

Alcohol:  7 calories/gram

Fats:  9 calories/gram

So I should have added olive oil and parm or just made spaghetti and bourbon.  Lesson learned.

But OK, that' a good start to the food problem.  Overall,  I'd give this a B, B+ for a first test.

Next test:  Ballotines de Poulet and chocolate soufflé with Grand Marnier Crème Anglaise.