hi all

in trying to get better organized for next season, i was looking at some ideas to better pack our food bag.

typically, whether i am solo or if the wife is with me, we carry the bulk of our food in a 20 litre nylon dry bag, and that goes into a 30 litre dry pack along with other cooking or food stuff.

i was thinking i would just get three or four 10 litre nylon dry bags of all different colours, and use them to separate breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. and i am sure this would work just fine. lots of inexpensive options avail online.

then i looked into what Ostrom Outdoors had to offer. i am sure many of you have heard of them. solid product and their idea would work great. but i think these would be too large for us seeing as they are about 15 litres each. and they are 35 cad each or 130 cad for four.

i remembered that Recreational Barrels Works made "buckets" for the blue barrels, but did not know they had them in two different sizes. the smaller ones with lids are about 7 litres each and they are only about 20 cad each depending where you get them. so i am thinking i may go with these once they become avail. they are out of stock right now.

thoughts? would love to hear how others organized their food pacs or barrels for some other ideas.

ostrom outdoors

rec barrel works

I have a 60L blue barrel for my food pack and use the colored buckets you mentioned but from Cook Custom Sewing instead of the Recreational Barrel Works variety. They also have two different sizes to fit a 30L and 60L barrel. You can order direct from the CCS site, the boundary waters catalogue or at some of the outfitters (Piragis).

CCS colored barrel bags

Regardless of barrel vs pack, I have been happy with the organization and color coding to make mealtime that much easier. I do have the cooler bucket from Recreational barrel works that's made to fit the 60L barrel. Nice option for a little dried ice and fresh food most of the week.

I use sealine dry bags (which I hang). For longer trips I organize chronologically, a different bag for every 4 or 5 days. I still have to paw through the bag I'm using but the future meals are undisturbed.

As a solo, I use a 30l Esone brand rolltop pack as a food pack. I fit three 4qt plastic ice cream pails in the pack which holds pretty much all my food for 5 to 7 days; all home dehydrated, portioned and vacuum packed. Repacked things such as syrup, honey, mustard, s&p etc go in plastic squeeze tubes. Bulkier items such as coffee peanut butter, hot coco, butter, bisquick and crisco go in recycled pill bottles.

The buckets with lids weigh appox 5 oz each but IMHO are worth the weight because they add a layer of protection against spills, bugs, mice, wet canoes, bear noses, rain and my clumsiness. Other uses include, dish washing sink, people washing sink, trash carrier and putting out the fire.
For a larger group I would only use the buckets for small things (condiments) and
liquids, fish breading, flour or anything that makes a big mess if spilled.

You could use clear storage containers to replace the buckets especially for larger groups but if you like chocolate ice cream as much as I do you will have plenty of "free" buckets laying around.

Banksiana: "I use sealine dry bags (which I hang). For longer trips I organize chronologically, a different bag for every 4 or 5 days. I still have to paw through the bag I'm using but the future meals are undisturbed."

Pretty much the same, except on group trips it is three bags - breakfast, lunch/snack and dinner. On solos it's just one bag sized for the length of the trip. Oh, and the dog's saddlebags carry her food...

For the two of us eating store bought dehydrated meals, each day's worth goes in a separate ops sack and then into the ursak. Makes it easy in the morning to grab the entire day's worth (including a new ziploc garbage) and make breakfast, separate lunch and snacks if needed and go about the day.

A tip I read here that saves allot of space ( especially with mountain house) is to pop a hole in the bag and squeeze out the air. Then cover hole with a bit of duct tape. Try to do it near the top....

BEARnMOOSE: "…A tip I read here that saves allot of space ( especially with mountain house) is to pop a hole in the bag and squeeze out the air. Then cover hole with a bit of duct tape. Try to do it near the top...."

We take it a step further by transferring the meals into ziplock bags. Label with a Sharpie, including the water amount required. We each take one empty MH pouch to rehydrate the meals in and reuse it each day. The empty pouch takes up virtually no space. The ziplocks take up much less room as the stiff MH pouches pack inefficiently even with the excess air expelled. Maybe this is excessive for most canoe trips but it has served us well for backpacking trips.

As to the original post. We switched to the barrel bags with lids from RBW and love them.

Tundra

Various sizes of ziplocs goes a long ways for organizing, but I have been using crown royal bags for things like seasonings and breakfast food. I like the mix of clear bags for the meals and color coded bags for things I use every day. If I color coded each meal, there is no way I would remember which meal was which so clear bags would work better for me. Plus the ziploc bags are reusable and disposable so I can use them for things like fish fillets.

A tip I read here that saves allot of space ( especially with mountain house) is to pop a hole in the bag and squeeze out the air. Then cover hole with a bit of duct tape. Try to do it near the top...."

my wife came up with that idea for us as well. we dont use packaged meals, but we do it with any bags of chips etc that we bring as fire side snacks