MRE’s?
I’m curious why doesn’t anyone use MRE’s? Is it the cost or their size?
MRE’s
MRE’s would be a good answer to how to cook/warm up something underway…
I’ve used them on an overnighter, I think they’d be great for short trips, but could be expensive & bulky for an extended trip. And they’re not as good as what you can cook on your own.
back in the day, and I’m dating myself
In the Vietnam era the MRE came in a can with some kind of meat, a couple crackers and a little candy bar and two cigarettes. The ones I remember were Pall Mall unfiltered. Those meals actually were’nt too bad if you could build a little fire to heat it up…and if you were hungry enough.
Today the MRE’s are just too expensive, even more than freeze dried foods, which made me sick so I can’t even stand the sight of them, or the smell.
I can make a big pot of something at home and divide into serving size, dehydrate, vacuum pack and store in the refrigerator till I need them. For the price of just 1 MRE I can get 4-5 meals out of a pot of chili or beef stew, chicken noodle soup, spaghetti with meat sauce, vegetable beef soup.
I bought my dehydrator and vacuum bagger at a Big Box for about what it would cost me to buy a 7-day supply of Backpacker’s Pantry meals.
Be careful buying the discounted Mountain House meals at the Big Box, they’re the ones that made me sick.
For a look at how to really make quick meals in camp check out the book “Freezer Bag Cooking”, it improved my cooking immensely.
Reason for a paddle float re-entry?
With a really big, long, fat paddle float. Or maybe some brave soul did volunteer to empty that cockpit over their deck for an assisted rescue, couldn’t have been real popular though. Re-enter and roll doesn’t sound much better.
cooking with sea water?
might be okay for steaming fish or shellfish, but too many toxins/heavy metals for using as part of the meal, I think, at least in my region.
MREs will work . . .
. . . they are expensive (as much as ten buck a meal for the real thing) heavy (1 3/4 pound per meal) and bulky. Two MREs per day provide 2,500 callories. They are self-contained, providing matches, TP, spoon, etc. and are well packed.
To put it in perspective it cost me about $2.50 a day to eat grocer store stuff and it only weighs about about 2lbs/day.
Jetboil PCS details?
Where do you put it while cooking on the water? Are the fumes ever a problem? Are there any potential safety problems you have to watch for?
One thing I thought of was to attach a kind of short mast to my boat with a crossbar (I do this anyway sometimes for drying things and keeping gear handy), and hang the stove from it. I could make it so the cross bar swivels and thus be able to push it several feet away from me while cooking, then bring it back to just in front of me when needed. Any thoughts on that?
Also, how long does one of those little $4 4-oz canisters last? Is the price-per-meal reasonable enough to use for all my cooking, or should I still bring along my alcohol stove and paraphernalia for on-land cooking? Also, can you ever find the fuel in outfitter stores, or do you pretty much need to stockpile your own supply?
When you’re ready to camp
When you’re done paddling for the day and ready to camp, pick the first campsite you come to – even if you think you can find better by just paddling further.
Looking for the ideal campsite is a long process, involving slow paddling, and is a huge time waste.
So, just take the first place that will work.
Cooking slows me down the most.
I’m a big fan of freeze-dried foods even for breakfast. Boil some water, pour it into the bag and you can eat. I use a lot of spices to zip up the flavor. No need for tarps or anything but a tent since you don’t spend time cooking and cleaning up afterward. This is especially true in bear country when you need a super clean camp. I boil eggs before the trip and then have an easy breakfast for days until they run out. Cheese, peanut butter, etc. and pita bread supplements the eggs. Lunch is just snacks since cooking will waste too much time. I do bring some other type of meals to cook for when wind bound or just want to take a day off.
I definitely avoid any greasy food when in bear country since you have to be very thorough when washing the dishes to eliminate any smells. Also, greasy foods make heating dish water a must to clean the dishes properly which I feel is a waste of time.
I know a guy
who nearly burned a hole in his kayak trying to heat it with a jetboil. The moral of the story: you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
Seems like it could be done.
I don’t think fumes would be much of an issue, since I don’t notice them being too bad while on dry land, hunkering over a stove to stir the pot. Propane fumes are pretty safe, relatively speaking, since there’s not much CO produced and the other two by-products are completely safe (not sure about combustion products of any man-made “odor” mixed with the gas).
I’ve never had a stove tip over on land, but in a boat I would worry more about that, MAINLY because I wouldn’t want to burn the boat. I think a wide base on the stove should solve that problem, but the pot could still fall off, and spilling boiling soup on the floor might still cause some damage (just guessing), but at least the water on the other side of the hull would cool the spill area pronto.
Several years ago I read an account by the owner of Rutabaga about a memorable fall trip on the Wisconsin River. I am quite sure he mentioned firing up a stove while underway in his canoe, to make hot tea or some such thing. I had been on that river on the same day, and it was crazy out there, with winds supposedly gusting near 50 mph according to the Weather Service. I’d have beached my boat to fire-up a stove in that kind of weather but I’m sure I could have done it on the water without incident if I really wanted to.
I am a big fan of dehydrated food
add water and go.
But all the commercial ones are full of sodium and chemicals. I do my own.
You can dehydrate just about anything that has minimal fat.
Its a good winter activity.
Jet Boil PCS is pretty safe I think
Fumes are not a concern but I wouldn’t use the stove in my boat if the water was rough enough I didn’t want to loosen my spray skirt.
The Jet Boil has a 3-point foot atachment that makes it pretty stable, it locks to the canister with a solid click. The pot locks to the stove with a 1/4 twist so it’s not likely to fall over. If it did I think the flame would go out. The pot has a rubber lid that fits tightly so even if it did tip you wouldn’t spill much, but you’d still have a liter of boiling food rolling around in your boat. The pot has a neoprene cozy so you can pick it up even when it’s hot. I think it would be more controlled if you keep the stove on the floor in front of you rather than hanging it on something.
The new canisters for the Jet Boil are twice the size. For a while I was using the big MSR canisters which are half the price of the Jet Boil. Primus has big cannisters that are cheaper, too. I cooked 33 meals and a couple dozen cups of tea with two of the big ones. That was over a two week trip. I carried a third big cannister for back up but didn’t need it. It only takes a minute to boil 2 cups of water. It takes about 5-7 minutes to cook a pot of old fashioned oatmeal, not that instant crap, but real oatmeal that tastes good and fills you up with something besides gas. I pre-measure a cup of the oatmeal and 1/4 teaspoon of salt in a Jiffy bag. Bring two cups of water to boil and add oatmeal and cook until not too soupy. Don’t cook it too much, it will stick to the bottom.
This season I bought a good 2-cup Thermos with a wide base. I make food ahead in camp and just eat it out of the thermos when I’m hungry during the day. That way I can pack all my kitchen gear and food bag in the hatch and keep my skirt on and be ready to brace if I need to. I have a second thermos to carry hot tea for during the day.
I set my canoe on fire once - sort of
It was an old, well beaten canoe - I wouldn’t have done this to a new one. We were crossing a swamp and we wanted to make a pot of coffee, but the only heat source we had was charcoal and we didn’t want to sit around for 20-30 minutes to get the charcoal going.
So I dug up some mud and laid it about 4 inches thick on the floor of the canoe, then set an aluminum charcoal pan on the mud. I did this behind me, so the fumes wouldn’t be flowing straight at me. While the coals were starting, a buddy kept pace beside me and kept an eye on the fire. Both of us had one-gallon plastic pitchers as bailers, and we were ready to douse the fire if needed.
Eventually the coals got ready, and we stopped and did our business at the fire. When we were done, we dumped the coals and went on our way, happy at the way we had solved the cooking-in-transit problem. I was in the rear.
About 5-10 minutes later, one of my buddies looked back and said “Oh, sheet, your canoe is on fire!”
The problem was that the mud from the swamp we had used had a high organic content, and the charcoal pan had been so hot that it thoroughly dried the mud and started a smouldering fire among the sticks and leaves. When we got underway again, with the charcoal pan no longer on top to smother the oxygen, the wind fanned the smouldering sticks until they burst into flame.
Luckily my friend noticed the smoke in time and we put the fire out before any serious damamge was done.
Moral of the story - I’ve been known to be willing to go to great lengths for cooking-in-transit solutions.
HaHa, I like that.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time”. Bet all of you got a good laugh out of that one.
Camping routine
You’re getting lots of good info here Memphis. I follow a lot of these same ideas. On my trips I seem to get better each day at being more efficient in packing/unpacking.
Very good idea to use lots of small clear or color coded bags. One of the things I really like about touring or backpacking is you only have to think about what is going to make your trip go better.
Another MRE disadvantage
One under-appreciated disadvantage of MREs is the amount of trash they generate. Unless you are building a fire to burn the waste, which would require a fairly large and hot fire since the waste will be soggy, you will have to pack it out. A used-up MRE is almost as bulky as an unused one, though of course not as heavy.
Alex
Yep . . .
. . . you can debulk them a little by unpacking them and gettin’ rid of all the excess packing and stuff you don’t plan on using. Most of the stuff that is left over will burn.
That is why you stip the MRE…
Down to the bare minimum. Don’t take the whole accessory packet, just take what you use/want. Discard the outer plastic & cardboards before you leave, take the bare bones MRE & the spoon…lol
Paddle easy,
Coffee
Don’t forget . . .
. . . the TP!