by Phil » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:19 am
Depends on what you like to eat. For most people, pre-prepared freeze dried meals that just require adding water and heating are easiest. Unless space in your bear can is an issue, starting out, just keep them in their original package. You can find them online at good outdoor stores, at an REI, sometimes Walmart even, but on a limited basis. It's always best if you can try them out first to see if you like them, but if shopping blind, at least read the reviews. It can be really hit and miss. For soups, a tour of the grocery store can usually yield some good discoveries. And if something isn't quite right to your tastes, salt, pepper, a few spices like paprika, chili powder, oregano, etc, or even small bottles of hot or fish sauce can do wonders. GSI makes a small salt and pepper shaker that fits into a bear can nicely (we always have one of these with us), but they also make what amounts to a small spice rack in the same style.
For snacks, lunches, additions to main courses, always some dried fruit (oatmeal supplement extraordinaire). Some of it weighs a ton and is bulky, so take that into consideration. Our exception to that rule is dates, always dates in one form or another. Carbs and protein. Some energy bars, trail mix that we put together ourselves that has things we like, maybe some jerky, sausage, tuna packets, hard cheeses. Avoid things that'll be crushed into powder or unrecognizable mush when compressed like flakey crackers and breads, or that'll take up a lot of room. If you need starches, do it in the form of pita bread or tortillas. Some people have a sweet tooth, so if it won't melt or you don't care if it does and can keep it sealed, take what satisfies the craving.
Always instant coffee packets! Sometimes teas. Also, we like to have something to drink besides water at the end of the day and sometimes at lunch, so the little packets of flavored drink mix really work for us. Our preference is diet Snapple, but you can find just about everything you like at home in powdered form.
For the stove and cooking kit, it varies based on how many I need to cook for, altitude, temperature. Never a Jetboil, not enough volume for my needs. I prefer to put together my own set, but the one thing I always shoot for is nesting: stove goes into cup, cup goes into pot. Most manufacturers make some form of this type of system (Jetboil being one of them), but look at MSR, Snow Peak, Optimus, Primus, Soto. In my world, and one of the main reasons I never use a Jetboil, I find that boiling more water for my overall needs during the course of a meal, all at once, is easier and uses less fuel overall than multiple boilings. For this reason, the two pots that go out the most are my Snow Peak Trek 900 and the Trek 1400. But for someone new to backcountry cooking, let the company that makes the product design the system for you. If you stay with it, you'll quickly figure out what works and what doesn't in everything from what you eat to how you prepare it. Just remember that it doesn't have to be hard work and disgusting, just because it's done on a rock and served out of a bag, and not in your kitchen.