bags for cooking

[Bart.T]

is there a place to get those foil bags that store-bought dehydrated food comes in? I like mixing in the bag to cut down on pot cleaning. I realize a lot of people like ziplocs for this purpose, but I would like something designed to handle boiling water.

Any ideas?

[orion]

pour rinse water in the pot immediately after dinner, clean with finger and drink the water. this turns rinse water into drinking water, which saves on water filtering (pumpenschade) and reduces waste.

unless you are in polite company.

[AlmostThere]

I use either a screw top ziploc hard sided container with reflectix duct taped around it to insulate, or just pour the hot water in the freezer bag. Regular ziplocs are thinner and more likely to spring a leak at the seams. By the time the water goes in, it's no longer boiling and doesn't really do much other than make the bag hot to the touch (and rehydrate the food).

If you want an available source of bags that are in fact designed to handle boiling water you can either use foodsaver (vacuum sealer) bags, which are nylon lined with the same plastic as the ziplocs, or get something like these.. I have cracked eggs into a foodsaver bag, sealed, and boiled it in my pot in camp the next day - perfect omelet as long as the bag does not touch the sides.

[holz]

I use a "fair share" mug to hydrate the food in and eat out of. Since it is graduated, it helps split up the food and it comes with a lid to help keep it all warm. I freely admit there may be a couple of ounces to be saved here, but it is convenient enough that it isn't horribly significant IMO. In fact, I only carry a stove (jet boil or msr reactor depending on group size - they both have integrated pots) a cup and a titanium spoon. That is my entire cooking set. Now, I know that many are a bit more creative with their back country cooking in which case my set wouldn't work. Oh, also note that the only thing that happens in the stove pot is boiling of water. Keeping the food out makes for much easier cleaning.

Before I leave, all food is removed from original packaging to make it better fit in a bear vault although this step is not necessary if you aren't filling your bear cannister to the gills. I usually use 1q bags to put the food in as it fits in those about right.

Oh and if you are a coffee drinker and have the money, I can't highly enough recommend the Starbucks Via freeze dried coffee. It is really pretty gosh darn good.

Sorry about the rambling there and I only sorta answered your question.

Have fun!

[LVRAY]

We have been using ziplock freezer bags (qt size) for a few years and have never had one fail. We repackage all the freeze dried food into ziplock bags to save space & weight and to get serving size correct for our needs. We then take one of the original empty freeze dried packages with us to insulate the ziplocks - i.e. we pour boiling water into ziplock and put the ziplock into the empty freeze dried bag. The freeze dried bag can be reused and the ziplock bags become garbage bags.