I do about the same as Blast. I try to carry some Hickory Farms Beef Stick, especially the little bite sized party links. I also like cheese for lunch but when the weather is hot it is tougher to carry.
Nuts are excellent, dried fruits, raisins, Wheat Thins anything edible, won't spoil quickly and good for me!
I sure agree about the freeze-dried meals, a few are acceptable but most are tough for me to choke down.
I have taken pre-cooked bacon, fresh eggs and orange juice for breakfast before, first day only deal.
A great surprise dinner is a nearly fully cooked filet mignon, some boil in the bag rice, a vegtable and store it in a soft cooler with some blue ice. You need a fire and small grill to finish cooking the steak and warming the other things, but it sure tastes good! I freeze all that before the trip, carry it in the soft cooler and by evening it is ready for the fire.
Cheers!

I'm shocked/surprised/dismayed that no one has mentioned my old standby, the Lipton Sides. Add water (and maybe butter/margarine/oil), boil for 10 min or so (that is their main downside, hard to do on a Pepsi can stove), and a super meal for one. Probably my favorite is chicken and rice, maybe bulked up with a little bit of dehydrated chicken...

I didn’t mention Lipton by name but I do use them (and other brands.)

A modern grocery store is packed with lots of light-weight, easily cooked and tasty food that was not in them 30-years ago. It makes it easy to stay out for 5-days or more without having to buy expensive freeze dried food, or heavy MREs.

I do have some Mountain House food put away, But it’s too expensive to use as 100% of your hiking diet. That and I find it not filling enough, one meal needs to be supplemented with other food or another Mountain House meal to fill you up.

For day hikes we don't eat much on the trail. Our hikes are typically 8-13 miles, entail 2400 feet or so elevation gain and loss, and start in the morning after breakfast. Those take 5 or 6 hours, usually.

I always have a couple of Clif MoJo Bars in my pack. On humid summer days when salt is sweating out, I pack a ziplock of chips: Doritos or Fritos. And a ziplock of some kind of salted nuts -- cashews, almonds or mixed.

And some kibble for my pup, of course. :-)

I've never backpacked overnight so have no guidance to offer in that regard.

Breakfast: Folger's® Coffee Singles, Quaker® Instant Oatmeal, Backpacker's Pantry® Spicy Cheese or Denver Omelet, Bisquick® Shake 'n Pour Buttermilk Pancakes

Lunch: Pepperidge Farms® Mini Bagels, Ritz® Crackers, Hormel® Pepperoni, Hickory Farms® Beef Stick® Summer Sausage, Kraft® Cheese, Italian Dressing. I also enjoy the various “pouch” foods -- Starkist® Tuna, Tyson® Chicken Breast Chunks, Chicken Of The Sea® Pink Salmon, Chicken Of The Sea® Crab, Spam® Singles

Dinner: Backpacker's Pantry Beef Stroganoff, Mountain House Beef Teriyaki with Rice, Zatarain's® New Orleans Style Jambalaya w/ Ham & Sausage, Spaghetti, Lipton® Pasta Sides™ (I like most of the varieties), Stove Top® Turkey Stuffing, Idahoan® Loaded Baked Potatoes

Snacks: Beef Jerky, Slim Jim® Smoked Snacks, Various Snack-Size Chocolate Bars, Quaker® Chewy Granola Bars, Emerald® Barbeque Oven Roasted Peanuts, Stretch Island Fruit Co. Fruit Leather, Assorted Hard Candy

Other: I generally have an assortment of various spices and sauces to add some additional flavor to the freeze dried and pouch foods. My favorites are Arby's® Signature Barbeque Sauce, Old Bay® Seasoning, and Texas Pete® Hot Sauce. I generally will have a cup of Bigelow® Spiced Apple Cider Herb Tea or Nestle® Hot Cocoa Mix (both caffeine free) just before turning in for the night.


Have you tried using an insulated cozy? A good cozy will retain the heat allowing the pasta to continue to cook long after you take it off the stove saving you a bunch of fuel.



Jim

Tried one of those in college, along with just a couple of wool watchcaps on a long, skinny pot.

It turned every kind of pasta I tried it with, and most varities of rice, into book paste. Nasty. And as the quality of pasta goes down, the more like eating... I have no idea what it is like, actually.

Granola bars, dried fruit, pouch/dried meat (chicken, ham, beef, sausages, spam, slim jims), instant potatoes, harder cheese (a good, dense chedder) or waxed, rice if I'm using more than a alcohal or sterno stove. Dried corn, mushrooms, peppers. Bacon bits. Nuts. A good selection of small containers of spices.

Peanut butter.

I would love to get small retort pouches of things like marinated mushrooms.

I once packed a bottle of Chateau-Laffite '48 and a fresh cooked three course meal including cornbread, stew and cobbler. Of course, I had 3 Dutch Ovens, a coffeepot and a string of mules to help. A friend got into the ultralight hiking cult. He brought a six pack of Bud light. I packed a six pack of glass bottled Warsteiner- and knapped a survival tool kit out of the empties. With the aluminum Bud Light cans he just wasted his chocolate polishing the bases for a signal mirror and fabricated a mini stove.I ate my chocolate, swiss not german and I think on my pannier scales the Bud light wieghed pretty much the same as my german beer once decanted.Unless you indeed dehydrate the stuff, food simply isn't going to be 'light.' This is the same argument as lighter sleeping bags. You need x amount of loft for warmth and x amount of calories. My personal favourite, and very traditonal survival food is Fruitcake. I've even taken to fabricating custom cooking pans out of aluminum to fit the funny pockets on my ( again) german flektharn parka shell.You'd think one at least would be dedicated for my ESBIT stove, but nooooo. So at day's end I've settled for; fruitcake, chocolate, jerky, hard cheese and a lesser wine and finished with coffee or tea. I open it with my ( again) swiss army knife corkscrew all these outdoor Pundits( Pundit being a specially trained british spy trained to calculate long distances via measured and counted steps in India.)decry as useless while promoting guthooks and sawbacks.

Light Trail Food
http://www.geocities.com/lighttrailfood/

SCANDINAVIAN HARDTACK
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/1973-05-01/A-Scandinavian-Treat-Hardtack.aspx
http://www.recipecottage.com/breads-quick/hardtack06.html
http://www.fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=226014
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.food.recipes/msg/fa2835433524e395

Pioneer Pocket Food
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/1981-09-01/Camping-Pocket-Food.aspx
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/rohdenburg81a.html

Sailors Biscuits
http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m082501.htm

How To Dry Sweet Corn
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Natural-Health/1971-05-01/How-To-Dry-Sweet-Corn.aspx

Parched Corn
http://woodfolks.com/corn.htm
http://www.esnips.com/doc/084f0a96-853a-4e36-b305-a33dcc2bd025/How%20to%20Make%20Your%20Own%20Parched%20Corn:%20Trail%20Foods%20@%20HistoricalTrekking.com
http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods011.htm
http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods009.htm

Trail Mixes
http://www.ivu.org/recipes/northam/dianne-j.html
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/food/foo_gorp.htm

Ganola
http://www.post-gazette.com/food/20001012one7.asp
http://www.bbonline.com/recipe/occidental_ca_recipe1.html
http://www.recipesource.com/munchies/snacks/granola/granola6.html
http://www.biggsuperstore.com/tbsrecipes/breakfastandbrunch/homemadegranola.htm

Logan Bread
http://pweb.jps.net/~prichins/loganbrd.htm
http://recipecircus.com/recipes/Debbie_Seale/BREAD/LOGAN_BREAD.html

Other
http://www.thecampingsource.com/great_snack_ideas.html

ZWIEBACK
http://kitchenbee.com/crackers/55918.html
http://babyparenting.about.com/cs/formulafeeding/ht/zwieback.htm
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sugar-Zwieback/Detail.aspx

My sister's kids came over with that once on a visit. I got a taste of it and thought it was a pretty good snack, thanks for the recipe.


-JRJ