Backpack Gourmet: Good Hot Grub You Can Make at Home, Dehydrate, and Pack for Quick, Easy, and Healthy Eating on the Trail

Well who'd ever think I, a middled aged man married to a wonderful wife and cook,would be cooking for 4 in the third world, anything other than PB & J's. They all laughed at me as I stashed vac-packed meals into 4 seperate ditty bags, I would just smile and say I wanted to be prepared. As we went off the main road and up into the mountain villages, by the third day thier tune started to change. Wonderful quick meals Breakfasts(eggs and sausage) soups for lunch, lasanga and stews for dinner and even bisguits. breakfast squares, granola bars, and carrot soup were the big hits with the ladies but I think they just enjoyed not having to cook. The meals are power packed and full of protien very nutritional. easy to find or grow ingredients.The portions were plentiful, usually we would share in the villages. Now from grill master at home to the trail chef cooking lasnqna in the bush in less than 5 minutes they want me to cook these meals at home . I Highly recommend this book to all who travel and camp where there are no stores. Cooking meals 1st then dehyrating them not only saved lots of weight in the backpack, but allows you to spice them up to your liking before you dehydrate, so meals are a delight not the same old, same old, very important on 3-4 week trips. (A good cook always tastes the food before giving to the critics) These Nutritional meals keep your body healthy and full of energy to work or play the next day. yet allow you to pack away plenty in a small space. also you can prepare them and stash them in the freezer months before. Not a bad Idea to have on hand in a disaster kit stored in a sealed bucket with a couple of cases of water in the cool basement either. Don't forget the water filter and small pot to cook & eat out of.

This is the book I have been waiting for. I love to cook, I love to eat, and I love to backpack, and this book lets me enjoy all three. Previously, I was one of those backpackers who ate mac-n-cheese and Lipton noodles over and over and over. It was really boring, and I wasn't getting enough protein in my diet. Getting ready for our epic 4 month hike on the PCT this summer, I wanted to try food dehydrating, but I also needed a recipe book. After lots of online research I ordered this book and "Trail Food" by Alan Kesselheim. Kesselheim and Yaffe have completely different approaches, and I find Yaffe's approach far more user-friendly. You DO NOT want to mess with drying each food item separately and then trying to assemble them in the backcountry. You are tired, you are hungry. You do not want to spend lots of time messing with ten different little baggies and jars of spices and oils. Leave all of that at home. Yaffe's approach is simple and elegant, and I'm quite honestly shocked that more people don't do it this way: You make your soup, stew, pasta dish or casserole in the comfort of your home. The key is that you must keep the chunks of vegetables, etc. very small. You then spread the dish in thin layers on your dehydrator trays and let the dehydrator do all of the work. Just this weekend, we went backpacking and ran the true field test: rehydrating all of the foods that I had previously dehydrated. The results were impressive. Breakfast casseroles, delicious spaghetti for dinner, tuna and bruschetta spreads at lunch, and none of it had that preservative-laden flavor that store-bought foods are cursed with. The only two comments I would make where Yaffe didn't get it quite right are that I can't fit the whole dish into the dehydrator (if you only have four trays like I do), so we usually end up eating some of it for dinner (not a bad thing). The second thing is that her recommended drying times seem a bit too short. I've had to add an extra hour or two to many of the recipes, but again, this is not a big deal as I dry most of this stuff overnight anyway. If you are looking for a lightweight backpacking meal solution, you cannot live without this book!

If you are going to buy a book about backpack dehydrating this is the one. I have read several others and beat my brains out trying to get spagetti sauce to powder, etc. They are all wrong, and she is right. Don't try to dehydrate the ingredients separately, cook the whole meal and then dehydrate the whole thing together. It seems too good to be true, but it really works, and it works both easier and better. Make it your own way (within a few simple limits), and it really is better, cheaper, and easier than buying the commercial deydrated foods. I might have thought of it myself, if all of the other books weren't so misleading!

I noticed this book at the library and checked it out because I really liked Ms. Yaffe's previous book of recipes High Trail Cookery. Now I'm going to buy it. This book provides even more great recipes that you can make ahead and dehydrate - making camping meals carefree and delicious.