For backpacking, this seems to work for me:

Breakfast: Quaker instant oatmeal & Mountain House eggs ... plus you can't forget the Starbucks Via instant coffee!

Lunch: Snack sized flavored tuna & crackers or bagel

Dinner: Mountain House (or equivalent) entree (Note: In my opinion, many of the 2 serving bags are good for one person ... I've often found a full bag only contains five or six hundred calories)

Good snack foods include bars (I like LÄRABARs best now), trail mix and beef jerky.

One note about the Mountain House eggs ... I really have to find a something better for protein in the morning. While I enjoy scrambled eggs & oatmeal as a meal, re-hydrated eggs are only vaguely egg-like . I'm thinking at a minimum I need to break down and buy a small fry pan and some powdered eggs; as you can tell by my food list above, I really just boil water now - I don't cook.

Also, for anyone interested in making their own backpacking food, I'd check out BackpackingChef.com. While I haven't tried any of the recipes my self yet, he seems to have some really good ideas for home-made backpacking food.

My hiking (also biking) fare is very similar to yours, with some variations.

I generally make up my own oatmeal packets, using rolled oats, with powdered non fat milk, nuts, dried fruit, and whatever. Much cheaper than the silly Quaker packets - a victory of packaging over price. For variety, I will make pancakes (if I am packing a skillet).

Lunch is usually just a series of snacks, similar to yours. I like Tanka bars - they are mostly protein and really tasty, but they ain't cheap. Nuts are hard to beat for lightweight nutrition.

Dinners include instant potatoes with beef jerky and assorted vegetables or pasta with whatever, typically lots of cheeses.

I am a tea drinker, but when I do coffee, I really like Via. In cold weather, it is great to eat hot Jello. Combine hot Jello with your oatmeal for an unusual breakfast.

What hikermor said! :-)

My personal favorites are:

Dinner -chilie with bannock/stew with bannock
*I add instant rice to the mix while I'm cooking it to bulk it up. I either prep homemade before the trip and take it frozen, or bring freeze dried. (MH Chilie Mac is my fav of the freeze dried I've tried.)
*I think there are as many different bannock recipies and methods of cooking as there are days in a lifetime. Experiment!

Lunch - wraps or subs, soup or stew
*I add instant rice to soups and stews to bulk them up.
*Left-over or fresh banock is nice with soups and stew too
*Myfave wraps and sandwiches are good old PB&J OR hummas with spinach *smoked turkey is heavenly in warps and sandwiches, as are lettace, onion, tomato, cuke....

Breakfast - oatmeal or granola with fruit
*mixed with hot chocolate is great on cold mormings

Snacks - peanut butter with celery, trail mix with dried fruit and chocolate (peanut m&ms work well), oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies

Drinks - VIA, Tang, Koolaid hot chocolate

My son would argue that all you really need is KD, weiners, marshmallows and hot chocolate to make any overnighter menu a success.

what food do you eat on backpaking/camping trip?

Whatever makes me happy at the time ... and usually way more than I should eat :-)

But I did screw up on my last trip a few weeks ago - had no way to do some fresh coffee. That was a disaster! I need a some sort of compact coffee brewing system. That is a MUST.

Pete2

Pete, you need to try Starbucks Via. SO good! No grinds to clean up either.

As an alternative, I have a metal coffee filter that fits on my Nalgene. Works great! I got it in my Christmas stocking so I have no idea who makes it, sorry.

A cup, hot water, and ground coffee will get it done. Nice if you can filter/strain the grounds, but not strictly necessary---just don't drink it to the bottom and swallow the grounds.

Ground coffee in hot water is the way we make coffee in our "french press" coffee maker: I prefer it.

Maybe I got used to dumping coffee into the hot water from my old Army field days. . .

Filtering coffee grounds - another use for our trusty bandanas!

Another vote here for Starbucks Via ... definitely the best and most compact way to have a good cup of coffee when camping, although not the cheapest.

As far as other ways to make coffee, I've tried a lot of different ways and my preference before Starbucks Via came along is the very simple solution from Coghlan's: one-cup coffee filters. It allows you to make good coffee with minimal hassles and cost.

Basically for a few dollars you get 40 single cup filters and a plastic stick that the filters slide on to like this:



Coffee quality aside, the problem with every other brewing method is that clean-up is a pain; with the Coghlan's solution at least you only have to deal with the waste. Obviously this is still a better solution for car camping than it would be for backpacking where you're packing out all your garbage.

Be careful with some of those pre-packaged dehydrated meals and soups. I nearly did myself in last week with an MSG overload!

For supper I had a package of mushroom soup mix, farmer's sausage, bagel & PB. As soon as I devoured the soup, I started getting a tingly feeling in my fingers and originally thought I was just cold. But by the time I finished the entire meal, I was "bouncing" around the campsite. I felt like I needed to puke. Knowing how my brother's heart arrhythmia reacts to MSG (hospitalized 2x), I was immediately concerned and drank as much water as I could to dilute effect. I've reacted before to heavy amounts of MSG but this time it was on the extreme side for me. I followed up with some very weird dreams that night.

Even though the packaging often say MSG free, there is MSG used in the manufacturing/processing that doesn't get reported or labelled properly. In any case, the remaining mushroom soup mix in my stock will get deep sixed.