Planning Your Back Packing Menu

Good back packing food is dependent on four factors. These are that the food is: Non-perishable, nutritious, light-weight and not messy. One of my favorite back packing foods is pemmican. Pemmican was has been made for centuries by its inventors, the native people of North American. It is a concentrated, high calorie food that when packaged properly can be stored for long periods of time. This made it perfect for traders of ancient times because it was a food that gave them the necessary nutrition they needed for their journey and was easy to transport. In todays modern world, pemmican is extremely easy to make at home, and perfect for the back packing enthusiast. Original recipes of pemmican consisted of dried pulverized meat, dried berries and rendered fat. A general search on the internet however, will provide you with hundreds of recipes with many different ingredients. There are even some recipes that replace the rendered fat with peanut butter. I make pemmican at home all the time, even for consumption when not back packing. It's not hard to make, and if you store it in zip-lock bags or even vacuum seal it, it will last for quite some time. The best thing about pemmican is that it is so light-weight that you can put quite a bit of it in your back pack, and hardly even know its there!

Plain beef jerky is also a great food to take when back packing or camping. Store bought beef jerky can be very expensive, but can also be made very easily at home. Jerky can be made in an oven or a dehydrator. Jerky can also be made from different types of meat, giving you a variety of jerky that you can take with you. Any kind of dehydrated food is great for back packing and camping. You can dehydrate many different fruits and even some vegetables. With dehydrated fruits, you can make your own trail mix that is cheaper and much tastier than any trail mix you will buy at the store. To make your own trail mix, simply mix your choice of dehydrated fruits with nuts, pretzels and your favorite dry cereal. This can also be stored in zip-lock bags and is great to munch on while you are hiking. If you dehydrate some vegetables to take with you, you can then cook those vegetables with some jerky in water over a camp fire, and have a great tasting, healthy camp stew. Fresh fruits that won't spoil easily such as apples, oranges and pears can be a great addition to your menu. Hard boiled eggs are also great, as long as you plan on eating them the first day or so.

There are many other things you can take as well. Granola bars, fruit roll-ups, crackers, pop-tarts and dry cereal are great to munch on. Instant oatmeal can be made with water boiled over a camp fire. Instant soups such as Top Ramen can also be cooked over your fire and you can even add some of your dehydrated vegetables to this to make a vegetable noodle soup. For dessert, you can pack a few cookies to satisfy your sweet tooth. As you can see, there is a large selection of foods you can choose from that will make your back packing adventure a great success and not a horror story.