What are your must have’s from the aforementioned brands?
I’m a big Pad Thai lover especially the Backpackers Pantry brand.

What are your favorites?

Mountain House's Beef Stroganoff is one of my favorites. The Breakfast skillet is good with salsa on a tortilla shell. Also the Raspberry Crumble is a great dessert. For Backpackers Pantry the Chicken Alfredo was good.

Not a freeze dried meal regular user but the MH fajita wraps we're quite good. I was surprised by the roasted taste of the vegetables. Also no bowl or plate required. :)

Mountain House Southwest Breakfast Hash. We put it on flour tortillas. Also quick and easy Mountain House Blueberry Granola Add cold water, can't get easier.

Don't overlook Alpine Aire. Their gumbo is killer. I always add some smoked sausage and it easily feeds two peopl.

I like the Alpineaire peppered beef. You can other things to it to change it around. For instance I take sweet and sour sauce packets and add them for a sweet and sour beef meal. Or other times take some bbq sauce to use with it.

Mountain House Italian Pepper Steak!

food# hawk
i used to eat the above mentioned foods until i found these.

I am not a huge mountain house fan but have eaten plenty of it on the backpacking trail.

2 choices are stand outs........the Pasta primavera is excellent particularly as an accompaniment to fish.

And my all time favorite lunch is granola with blueberries and milk. A decent amount of calories at 600 and an absolutely delicious treat. I do not wait the suggested 15 minutes with this meal and 5 minutes might elapse. A long handled titanium spoon is the tool of choice. I rinse the package out, roll tightly and secure with a tiny electrical cable tie for a much tighter and practically odor free garbage.

As with any freeze dried meal if you wait longer than the suggested time by about 10 minutes, you will have a better meal.

The above 2 choices are so good you will be tempted to eat them at home.

My favorite dinners include - Spaghetti with meat sauce, sweet and sour pork and lasagna. I used to like pasta primavera so much that I took 6 on a 10 day trip. I got a little tired of it. Also, there are 2 versions of the PP. one is saucy and one is dry. The saucy is great and the dry sucks. There seems to be nothing distinguishing the difference on the package so I quit buying them.

My favorite dinners include - Spaghetti with meat sauce, sweet and sour pork and lasagna. I used to like pasta primavera so much that I took 6 on a 10 day trip. I got a little tired of it. Also, there are 2 versions of the PP. one is saucy and one is dry. The saucy is great and the dry sucks. There seems to be nothing distinguishing the difference on the package so I quit buying them.

Trail Center on the Gunflint Road makes some good camp chow if you're interested in trying another brand. Mail order available if you aren't driving by the place. I've tried a few of their products. Tasty.

Anyone remember the Blueberry Cheesecake by MH? That was some good stuff. I haven't been able to find it for a number of years now. One year I forgot to bring syrup for pancakes so we used the Raspberry Crumble to top them. It was a pricey syrup but was good.

What I tend to do is buy the #10 tin can and then transfer what I want for a trip into a Nalgene water canteen. The tin when on sale is a good buy. The Nalgene water canteen, which I have posted several times is peerless as a loose food container such as oats or freez dried food or powdered substances. Wide mouth, collapsible and very sturdy coming in various sizes they are very hard to beat.

True about the blueberry cheesecake, but the Jello Cheescake instant pudding is pretty good and a fraction of the cost. I used Cache Lake http://cachelake.com/ for several years, but all of these are pretty pricey IMHO. $5 to 8 for a main dish for one is expensive, the main reason I started using grocery store products and a few bulk freeze dried items. (I do splurge on the AlpineAire guacamole for quesadilla night.)

Never eating those brands or alpineaire again.

Trailtopia, packitgourmet, goodto-go are the sources for the good stuff.

sns: "Never eating those brands or alpineaire again.


Trailtopia, packitgourmet, goodto-go are the sources for the good stuff."

I tried Good-To-Go (pad thai) and found its flavor disapointing not to mention its very pricey compared to what I spend at the local stores.

Looking at nutritional info, they are all allover the place in calories per serving and sodium.

I tried some packitgourmet deserts and found them very unpalatable and I am not a particularly fussy eater.

FWIW.......avoid just add water mac and cheese from the grocery store shelfs from Kraft. Horrible stuff, which surprised me since I basically grew up eating their regular mac and cheese.

Never tried Backpackers Pantry (still pretty new to dehydrated food), but my husband and I love the MH breakfast skillet. We ate it in pita bread with cheese pretty much every morning on our first trip last summer! Bought a couple for our next trip, too!

mashpotatomezzo: "Never tried Backpackers Pantry (still pretty new to dehydrated food), but my husband and I love the MH breakfast skillet. We ate it in pita bread with cheese pretty much every morning on our first trip last summer! Bought a couple for our next trip, too!"

My understanding is the instant dehydrated eggs have come a long way since the early days. The first freeze dried eggs I had (despite warnings from others) happened in the back country of Glacier. Quite possibility the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. I forced it down due largely to bear concerns.

MH lasagna with added olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Washed down with box wine.

mastertangler: "What I tend to do is buy the #10 tin can and then transfer what I want for a trip into a Nalgene water canteen. The tin when on sale is a good buy. The Nalgene water canteen, which I have posted several times is peerless as a loose food container such as oats or freez dried food or powdered substances. Wide mouth, collapsible and very sturdy coming in various sizes they are very hard to beat. "

I have a 48oz Nalgene that I use for fish breading. Nothing works better.

Yes, I have the same size and use it for breading as well. The 96 oz version holds 12 days worth of Old fashioned Oats.

BobDobbs: "MH lasagna with added olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Washed down with box wine. "

MH lasagna was the first freeze dried meal I had ever eaten. I was backpacking at Isle Royale and was so confident of my fishing abilities I didn't bring any dinners. Needless to say I was hungry and wading along the shores of lake chickenbone hoping to catch something (anything). Some other campers asked how it was going and I replied by stating I was trying to catch dinner.

They took my drift and said they were leaving tomorrow and would like to lighten their packs. Included in the bounty was the aforementioned lasagna which was wonderful. Naturally after eating I caught a walleye and a perch but that lasagna was superb. I like the idea of the additions, nice!

MH beef Stroganoff has always been a fav of mine.
I also like PakIt Gourmet Gumbo.
MH spaghetti with meat sauce is also pretty good.
Cache Lake pan fried breads are always a hit with everyone.