BWCA Food Planning software Boundary Waters BWCA Food and Recipes
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WindChill
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01/29/2015 12:58PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
For several years now I have been the one to organize the food for my Scout Troop's trips. This typically means taking a menu of one-pot and freezer bag meals that the Scouts plan, breaking it down to items/ingredients, scaling for the number of people, combining items for a total quantity needed of each item, generating a shopping list, printing scaled recipes so we can repackage everything and printing menus to take with us.

Ive done this with paper and pencil, spreadsheets and several different "recipe software" packages. They all fall short in some way or other so I figured Id get a jump on this years effort and see what other folks do for food planning.

I think Ive tried all of the "consumer grade" (i.e. reasonably priced) programs and websites. I wish I had kept notes about the shortcomings of each, but they generally fall into one of three categories:
1) Entering ingredient and recipe info is not efficient or intuitive.
2) Scaling recipes, combining into meals and building meals into a week-long meal plan is not efficient or intuitive
3) Shopping list and meal plan reports (print outs) are incomplete, inaccurate (ingredients are not combined properly) or poorly formatted
4) Not a functionality shortcoming but recipe programs seem to be stuck in the 1980's - they really all need a good user interface and usability overhaul.

There has got to be a better way to do this!
 
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OldFingers57
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01/29/2015 01:56PM  
You forgot one other variable to throw in there. You are dealing with the appetites of teenage boys there. Most software would just figure a normal persons consumption of food, not a teenage boy. I know with our troop we used to figure way more for food than what was called for in recipes.
 
WindChill
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01/29/2015 02:16PM  
Surprisingly appetite has not been something we adjust for. A couple of the programs Ive tried do have a setting for that but evidently the recipes we use are pretty generous. At least - they have never complained about being hungry.
 
billconner
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01/29/2015 05:11PM  
Why aren't you leaving this to the Scouts? Or to answer your question as to what others do, we leave it to the Scouts.
 
WindChill
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01/30/2015 07:48AM  
Um....I, ah....er...Hm....[sheepishly] I dont have a reason. Thanks for pointing out the obvious billconner!

I am still interested in other approaches as I do this for the adult patrol when we do a big meal like Thanksgiving and do it for the occasional non-Scout outing.

 
billconner
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01/30/2015 10:17AM  
Fair enough. I do adult patrol meals occasional, and we use to do one weekend a year where we we did troop meals.

I guess the activity of camping just doesn't lend itself to automation for me, and I do it all by pencil and paper - shopping lists, menus, etc. I do use google to find some answers - like how many heads of romaine for salad for 16 adults, which of course is pointless when 4 more or less show up. Then there was the dutch oven bbq meatloaf - like a quad recipe that should have served 24 - and 15 ate it all.

My kids - in 20s now - are pretty good at menu planning - both Eagle Scouts - and both having made portion mistakes as Scouts.
 
Old Hoosier
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01/30/2015 12:05PM  
Windchill,

The food thing is a big deal for me because it is the largest single weight issue on almost all trips when larger groups paddle. If you don't solo, then tents, cooking, canoe, etc become very "efficient" because more than one person share the use & therefore weight.

Food is totally different. It simply multiplies out by number of persons times number of meals. Example - 4 people times 3 meals times 8 days is 96 meals. No shared efficiency at all. The only way to save weight is select light weight items and don't bring too much.

Agree with the comment about food portions. My rule is for children under 12 eat normal stated portions, but double the stated portions listed on packaged food for age 13 and over. Very little waste.

I work hard to do a few critical things:

1) Plan exact menus - literally every drink, every menu item and every day.
2) Measure out exact weights for each item for each meal. Put them in freezer grade zip locks with clear labels. Note any cooking instructions on the bag "add 1 qt water" Clip off cooking instructions for dried store bought food and include it in the Ziploc bag.
3) Work hard at locating and understanding light weight (great tasting) food items your group would like. There are many excellent threads on this site for food ideas.


I have created my own Excel file for food planning. It has the equations for number of people (adults & children) and translates that into meals, portions and purchase list. But it still takes a lot of judgment to get the final list settled. But that is part of the "planning fun" and ramps up the trip anticipation factor.


Good paddling,

Old Hoosier
 
Bwoods
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02/01/2015 04:23PM  
I do large scale meal planning for a camp that sends out week long trips with 50 kids. I also plan a wide variety of personal trips to BWCA and various other locations. For camp myself ad another staff member designed a database system that we can use for inexperienced staff to order food. They enter variables for numbers of kids, staff, vegetarians, etc. Then the select the meals from a preset list of options.

The database then creates a grocery list, recipe list, and menu. It took 2 summers to get the kinks worked out but it works well for us. Clearly we need to start marketing it.......
 
WindChill
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02/02/2015 08:08AM  
Yes Bwoods - definitely should consider making it available to small and non-profit groups.

Naturally, there are lots of systems meant for restaurants and some for catering - both include functionality for integrating with food service providers, generating invoices, printing "pretty" menus for on the table etc. And they are priced accordingly.

Drop me a PM if you would consider sharing your database. I would sure be willing to give feedback on improvements with regard to what Im trying to accomplish. Im a software developer and small business owner so I would also be willing to contribute in other ways if you really did want to market it.



 
OBX2Kayak
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02/02/2015 10:33AM  
Or, you could do it like the scout troop I saw while camping last weekend ... have it catered by a local restaurant.

All I could think is that scouts have changed a lot since the days when I had to snare my own rabbits for lunch.
 
WindChill
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02/02/2015 12:35PM  
quote OBX2Kayak: "Or, you could do it like the scout troop I saw while camping last weekend ... have it catered by a local restaurant."



Hmmm....If I could get Bucky Burgers and a frosty root beer delivered to my campsite on Hatchet on about day 6, then I might just go for that!
 
02/04/2015 09:24PM  
There is an app for that. If you have itunes there are camping food planners you can use.
 
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