[pct-l] Cozy and re: freezer bag cooking

[Alan Artman]

Thanks everyone, for a terrific thread--it's been real interesting reading.  Here's my experience.

I use Roberta Cobb's method of food prep/resupply, which Dicentra alluded to--basically I cook the entire meal, dehydrate it, seal it with seal-a-meal.  On the trail, I open the seal-a-meal bag, pour in the boiling water, roll the edge of the bag up and clip it (to prevent the contents from spilling), then tie my fleece hat around it as a cozy as the meal rehydrates.   

The process of preparing meals for a long hike need not be so time-intensive--if I'm planning chili for dinner next Friday, I'll make a LARGE pot of chili, have my dinner, then dehydrate the remainder (I use up to eight trays on the dehydrator, one meal per tray).  It usually takes most of a day to dehydrate, but I don't have to hover over it.  I can be doing other things, just checking the dehydrating periodically, usually to stir the food on the tray. After vacuum-sealing and labeling the meals, I store them in the freezer until it's time to sort and pack for the resupply boxes.  Before I leave I have two bags for each resupply box: one in the freezer, containing the dehydrated meals, the other containing the other foods such as peanut butter, granola, bars (Clif, ProBars, or homemade), and whatever additional food and sundries.  Both bags are marked with the resupply point--e.g. Warner Springs--so when the time comes my resupply person throws them together in the pre-addressed Warner Springs box and mails it. (Although this year I am considering asking Bob to have his resupply person bring me my resupply boxes personally, for I am the most fragile of flowers and will need all the help I can get.)

Some observations from my experience:  (1) the entire meal has to be prepared with dehydration in mind, so, for example, everything needs to be chopped into pretty uniform size (and small) so the food dries uniformly.  Meats--hamburger or ground chicken in the chili, for example--need to be patted with a paper towel after sauteing, to sop up excess fat before adding to the meal.  This helps the meat to dehydrate more fully.   (2)  Since different elements of the meal --veggies vs. meat vs. carbs--dehydrate at different rates,  monitoring the dehydrating is pretty important.  If some things are over-dried, they won't rehydrate properly; if under-dried...well, not so good.  If you're new to dehydrating, as I was, plan on allowing time for trial and error.  Until you're confident, leave one of your sealed meals from each batch outside the fridge.  If they puff up like a balloon, something was not completely dehydrated.  Toss it out and try again. (I rely on the couple of weeks between when the box is sent and when I pick it up as a final check--occasionally I have to toss out a balloon-meal, but I can usually make up a substitute at the local store.)  (5) Sometimes the rigors of life in the backpack will puncture a sealed meal and the vacuum will be lost.  It's possible the meal could be spoiled, but not likely if it was properly dehydrated.  So if it passes the sniff test, I'll go ahead and eat it.  Another cause of failed seals--some foods such as pasta can be mushy in the dinner, but become sharp or pointed when dehydrated, and the force of the vacuum sealing can cause a puncture.  (6) Part of the trial and error is to rehydrate and eat at least one of your dehydrated meals at home, preferably one from each batch.  You don't expect the rehydrated meal to be as good as the original, but occasionally you will find that a particular recipe yielded a great dinner fresh, but an unpalatable one dehydrated.  

Advantages of this method:  (1) resupply is easy--I still get additional food at the stores along the way, but it's the snacky stuff for variety, not my main nutrition.  (2) On the trail, I'm just boiling water, not cooking, so I use less time and less fuel.  And cleanup is minimal.  (3) I cook/dehydrate/seal about once a month, all year, every year--I'm always building my stash. Frozen, they keep a long time--Roberta says two years, but last summer I mis-read a label and ate a meal from 2002 (which I would have thrown out in 2005), and I'm not dead yet.  I think.  (3) I'm confident of the nutrition I'm getting--which matters way more at 63 than it did at 43. (4) I get a much greater variety of meals.   

Disadvantages: (1) my portion sizes are set once I've sealed the meals.  This year I'll be doing larger meals for later in the hike, but I'm sure I'll still have to supplement with additional food at times.  (2) some ingredients may not fully rehydrate in the allotted 10 minutes--rice is notorious for this--so I have to let it sit longer. Worst case--fairly rare--I will toss it back into the pot and actually cook it for awhile. (But then there's that cleanup....)  (3) I too am concerned about the chemical residue from heated plastic, so I really do appreciate the comments people have had in this thread. ( Haven't decided yet what to do.)

Final comments: (1) there are several good books on dehydrating food--"Dry It You'll Like It" helped me a lot.  (2) Roberta dehydrates her lunches too, but instead of cooking water at lunchtime, she crumbles the dehydrated lunch into her plastic container and adds water about 10am, and the meal rehydrates by lunchtime.  (3) I bought Dicentra's book at the ALDHA West Gathering last year, and will be using a lot of her suggestions for this year's hike, because those meals will be of a different texture and flavor than the dehydrated ones.  Hoping to slow that progression along the arc from 'delicious' to 'yuck'.

See you in April!

Alan Artman 
"Patchwork"