qmdv wrote:I hope I never have to fly plane that is so light on the gross that I need freeze dried food. Who makes a freeze dried hot link anyway.

I would rather have a can of soda in my pack than a water filtration system. This giardia bull is nothing more that hype to sell a bunch of yuppie backpackers extra stuff. Who backpacks where the only water to find is in a hoof track.

Now I do know a couple of guys that collapsed there nose fork on a 205. Seams the federales dug ditches across the runway to close it and did not get the word out. They were three days hiking out and there filter came in handy.

Tim

I just ordered a "Life Straw" yesterday, for mountain biking use, it's lighter then water! I'll pack it along in the plane too, only 20 bucks, what the hell, plus I'll still carry "real" water, I think of it as a backup.

I hit the local grocery store for those pasta type cheap dinners that cost about a buck and just need water and are packaged in a foil packet. Not exactly high cuisine but I'm not camping out days at a time anyway, they are cheap and easy to prepare, weigh nothing, and along with a couple beers, fill the gap. If I'm camping out on a flying trip, I'm having so much fun anyway I'm just not that picky as to what I'm eating I guess

As mentioned, freeze dried food are generally ultra high in salt. To me, the food is very edible, but not so great by home cooking standards. And it is very expensive.

You can make your own freeze dried, home cooked food very simply, and it will cost roughly 200 bucks for the equipment that will likely last a lifetime. That will get paid back pretty quickly if you use it regularly. And you'll get exactly what you want, your own cooking, spiced and salted to your tastes instead of what Mountain House provides. And it is the same cost as making it at home in your kitchen...because you are.

An entire sheet of lasagna, fruits, veggies, beans, rice, and others will finish in a day. I've had mixed results with fish, some pretty good. Soup takes quite a while longer. Home grown peaches are like crack this way even though we mostly can them.

If people are interested, I can show them how.

since 'Bigger plane' was not an option, I'd have to go with Mountain House, especially since I got a bit over-excited when I found them at Costco a few years ago and bought enough to comfort Salt Lake City's need for emergency rations.

lesuther wrote:As mentioned, freeze dried food are generally ultra high in salt. To me, the food is very edible, but not so great by home cooking standards. And it is very expensive.

You can make your own freeze dried, home cooked food very simply, and it will cost roughly 200 bucks for the equipment that will likely last a lifetime. That will get paid back pretty quickly if you use it regularly. And you'll get exactly what you want, your own cooking, spiced and salted to your tastes instead of what Mountain House provides. And it is the same cost as making it at home in your kitchen...because you are.

An entire sheet of lasagna, fruits, veggies, beans, rice, and others will finish in a day. I've had mixed results with fish, some pretty good. Soup takes quite a while longer. Home grown peaches are like crack this way even though we mostly can them.

If people are interested, I can show them how.

Heck, yeah I'm interested. Sign me up! Go ahead and post in this thread or PM if you prefer.

blackrock wrote:

lesuther wrote:
If people are interested, I can show them how.

Heck, yeah I'm interested. Sign me up! Go ahead and post in this thread or PM if you prefer.

Me too! I think this is a pretty interesting topic and would welcome a posting on your methods.

Thanks, M3X

First, you need a vac chamber. Any size that can fit a casserole in the bottom is fine for convenience.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/3018424944 ... noapp=true

Your freezer is best to use, but this works in a cold fridge too due to the physics of this process.

The goal is to get the food to between -10C and just a tad below freezing at around -5C. If it gets too cold, it slows the process greatly and even stops it. It does work, albeit slowly, at cooler temps.

To moderate the temperatures, get something like this (3 cfm or more preferably):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100W-120V-4x-5- ... WW&vxp=mtr


and this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-Digital-PI ... SwLN5WkyO-


You will place a towel on the floor of your freezer or fridge to insulate from the heater pad. Then place the heater pad down, then the vac chamber. Place your ready food in the chamber. There are a lot of hints and tips in the internet for how to prepare foods for freeze drying that require no extra effort- mostly just chop stuff up and cut up casserole foods pretty well to aid in water extraction. Let the food cool (fridge) or freeze (freezer). Then start the vac pump, making sure you get a good seal. The cords and the vac tube will go out a corner of the fridge gasket, and some painter taps is used to form a good seal around the rest. Some cut the magnetic gasket in a small section to allow these items to come out easily, and replace the piece after the process is done.

The vac pump will run continuously during the process. During the process, the lid to your vac chamber will frost over, and you need to check periodically to make sure the pump is not getting too much moisture ingested. The food will boil briefly if you are using a fridge, but the temperature will rapidly drop below the freezing point and this will stop after a half hour or so. Using either the fridge or the freezer, you will keep the silicone pad/temp control at roughly 0 degrees C to try and keep the food at between -10 and -5. An infrared thermometer is a handy tool for measuring the lid or sides of the vac chamber. If these get under -10C, you will need to raise the set temp of the silicone to warm it up, or the food will not dry very fast. The other issue is pressure- if your pump does not keep things below about a quarter psi, then this process does not work well. An inexpensive 3 cfm pump has been sufficient for me, and if the pressure rises slightly, I lower the temp setting a degree at a time for 10 minutes at a time until the pressure drops again.

After a couple of runs, you will be able to set it and forget it for the most part. If you start the process on Saturday morning, you will likely be done by Sunday morning easy when you wake up. A lot of stuff processes faster, and can be done by the evening. Stews can take a long time for obvious reasons.

The product of this process is similar to store bought for dryness if you allow several more hours to process. However, the moisture left in a single day run is really tiny, and I can keep stuff in seal a meals in a hot vehicle for months with no food safety or quality issues. I have never tried longer than a couple of months.

I did this for a while mostly out of curiosity and availability of equipment. I rarely need to carry a lot of food anymore, and rarely freeze dry stuff any more. But this is one way to do it. You can also just boil stuff off at room temperature in the vac chamber all by itself, but the result is less nice. The process is similar, but you will have to keep the heater pad warmer to keep the food warm enough to boil off. Overcooking the food at the bottom is usually the problem since it is often pretty warm to keep the top of the food from freezing.

Thank you for the excellent instructions lesuther! That looks pretty straight forward to me. I like how simple it is. I always thought it would be more complicated but never looked into it. We even have any extra freezer we are not using right now. In the winter, just the ambient temperature in our garage will be just about perfect for this so we can eliminate the freezer entirely then.

I'll let you know how it turns out, but it might be a while before I can try this.

BR

+2. Thanks for taking the time! I am amazed how much vacuum pumps have come down in price.......in 20 years since I last checked such things. Had no idea this was manageable by mere mortals at home.

-Jim

Thanks for the great info, Lesuther! I've been dehydrating my own backpacking food for a few years, but this takes it to a whole new level. I might just have to give it a try.

Just dehydrate the food and put it in zip lock baggies. Search on the back backer sights they have tons of dehydrated food ideas