Cheap Trail Food, and How to Not Get Gastro

We had two subsribers ask questions in the readiness quiz this week that turn out to be closely linked.

T wrote: "Australian based dehydrated food recipes and cheap food options".

D wrote: "Tips for ensuring you do not get gastro. anti-bac rub, taps, water tank taps".

Cheap food and a settled stomach sit closer together than they look on a long walk, because the cheapest way to feed yourself is also the one that asks the most of your hands, your pot and your water. So let's look at them together.

There are two ways to eat well out in the wilderness, and neither is wrong. The right one is whichever you will actually do.

The first is to cook a real meal at home, dry it on a dehydrator and bring it back to life with boiling water in camp. That is the path I am using more and more, and it is where the biggest jump in quality happens, although it takes a dehydrator and a bit of effort up front.

The second needs neither. You build meals from dry ingredients off any supermarket shelf, like instant rice, couscous, dried veg and a stock cube, then add hot water, wait ten minutes and eat. It is faster to put together and, price wise, beats most shop-bought trail meals.

If you want one place to start on the dehydrator path, the two I would point you to are a shepherd's pie and a lamb and chickpea tagine with couscous. Both have been cooked, dried and eaten on the trail, and with the tagine the couscous drinks up the sauce and comes back faster than rice. They’re available on my website.

Whichever path you pick, the rule that keeps a cheap food bag honest is Calories per gram. Carbs and protein give you about four Calories a gram and fat gives you about nine. I aim for at least four Calories a gram across the whole bag, not every item, so nuts sit around six while oats and dry pasta sit around three and a half to four. If the whole bag is under four, you are carrying water up the hill.

30 years ago we did not care about food as much. We’d often make the same pasta with tomato paste every single night. It was cheap and light, but by about night three I did not want to look at it, and that was not fun.

There is nothing worse than taking food out on the track that you do not like, because you are probably not going to end up eating it. Thinking about what's for dinner tonight is mentally quite helpful, especially when you are in bad weather.

So when you build a cheap menu, build in variety, with a different dinner every night on a walk of a week or more. If you are mixing in ready-made meals, mix the brands too, because a whole trip of one brand gets old fast.

And, if you can, never take a new food on a big trip. If you want to try a new meal, it goes on a weekend walk first, because day five of a seven day trip is not the time to find out you hate it or that it does not agree with you.

D named three things: hands, taps and water tanks. Here is how I handle each.

Hands first. Hand sanitiser lives where I can reach it easily, and it gets used before I touch food and after every toilet stop. But sanitiser does not kill everything. Some of the bugs behind trail gastro, like norovirus and Giardia, mostly shrug off alcohol, and soap and water is what gets them off your skin. So I also carry a small bottle of biodegradable soap and wash my hands after the toilet, well away from any creek or lake. Most trail gastro is passed hand to mouth, and this is the cheapest fix there is.

Where there is a toilet, use it. Where there is not, walk well away from camp, tracks and water, at least 100 metres from any creek or lake here in Tasmania. Dig a hole 15 centimetres deep with a trowel and carry out your toilet paper in a sealed bag.

In some places you now have to carry out all your human waste, not just the paper. A reader asked me about this recently. At popular spots in Tasmania like Lake Rhona and the Labyrinth, more and more walkers carry a toilet waste bag (often called a WAG bag) or a sealed poo tube and take everything out with them. Check the rules for where you are going before you leave.

Water next. Plan your water sources before you go and check they are flowing, and recent trip reports are the best guide. Carry a filter or tablets and treat water where you need to. Fill your bottles before dark so you are not stumbling to the creek with a headtorch. A tank tap at a hut is still water you did not watch fall from the sky, so if you are unsure, treat it the same way you would a creek.

Then the pot. Wash your dishes away from creeks and lakes, and keep soap out of the water, even the biodegradable kind. A pot that is scraped clean and dried is a pot that will not surprise you tomorrow.

If you are drying your own meals, the enemies are fat and trapped moisture, and the leaner a meal dries, the longer it lasts.

For a trip in the next week or two, an airtight bag at room temperature is fine. For longer, vacuum-seal it and keep it in the freezer until you pack. And when in doubt, smell it, and if anything seems off, leave it, because a skipped dinner costs you one hungry night while a bad one can cost you the trip.

Portion every day of food into its own zip lock bag, and put the hand sanitiser somewhere easily accessible. The bags show you at a glance how much food you have left on day five, and the sanitiser only works if it is within reach when your hands are dirty and the food is out.

Cheap food and a settled stomach come from the same plan, done properly.

THAT’S ALL FOR THIS WEEK

Thanks for reading Mowser’s Musings. I hope this helps you hike further and happier.

Until next week, keep exploring.

Mowser

Discover more. Hike further.

P.S. I'm thinking about opening a small members' circle: a live call and a group pack shakedown with me each month. One tap below would help me shape it, and I'll let you know first when it opens.

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