When we hiked Wilson’s Prom (Vic) and Hinchinbrook Island (Qld), we had to be self sufficient carrying everything we needed for the 5 days on the trail.  We survived on nuts and sultanas, tuna and crackers, and noodles.  Our longer hikes in Langtang Nepal (Mandarin version of video)  and Tiger Leaping Gorge (China), we were spoiled with tea houses along the way to fill up with hearty food.

We want to do a really really long, self-sufficient trail next 🙂 On any of our expeditions, we have researched into the best, lightest and affordable equipment to ensure a safe and enjoyable hike.  It really doesn’t matter how fancy your gear is though, it’s our bodies that are moving us through the hike! We need to look after them. Which means that we are going to have to think about our nutrition…noodles and angel hair pasta with no veg for 3 months isn’t looking after that most valuable piece of equipment.

We have been watching lots of vlogs of hikers doing these long trails, and we are learning that many hikers pre make and dehydrate all their meals, box them, and mail them to towns along the route of the trail, ready for their next self-sufficient stint 🙂 It saves the $13 per meal per person you need to spend for a similar dehydrated meal in the camp shops…which would be over $3000 over 2 months JUST for DINNER alone. Plus you have preservative and additive free meals 🙂  Some just take fruit and veg dehydrated separately, and just add them to their regular noodle meals.  Some dehydrate whole dinners, whipping out their powder in a zip lock at the end of the day and rehydrating a coq au vin for dinner 🙂

We were given a used dehydrator over a year ago, and it has been sitting in the box under the stairs.  So we thought we would get it out, and start to explore the world of dehydrating foods 🙂

It takes months to experiment and master dehydrating and rehydrating full meals. So we are learning all about the science and safety of food dehydrating, starting with the easiest: fruit 🙂

Over next few months we are going to experiment and learn everything we need to know about making our own dehydrated meals for a long trail 🙂 We have reserved some dehydrating books from the library 🙂  We have watched YouTube videos 🙂 We have learned up to now:

• Food spoils because the mould and bacteria that spoil it like the moisture and in it  🙂
• Dehydrating it will get rid of the moisture and so make it last much longer
• Drying food is a preserving method that has been done naturally by many cultures for centuries (we saw lots of families drying their fish or chillies on the streets in China)
• Dehydrating it also kills enzymes, which you really want to not kill…and although dehydrating machines probably aren’t as good as the sun, dehydrating longer at lower temps kills less enzymes apparently, and we can control this with our machines.
• After our first few attempts of fruit, we found that it’s really hard to tell whether the food has dehydrated enough, and therefore if it is going to be safe to keep for months…

We are going to continue for a few months, experiment and read and learn about the science a little more, and hopefully become confident dehydrators 🙂 We may have to invest in a bigger machine though if we go ahead and try and make all our meals for a 3 month hike.

We have already discussed a future challenge once the kids have experimented with lots of foods.  They will need to make a  dehydrated meal to take on an overnight hike with us.  It will need to be nutritionally balanced, tasty, safely prepared, packaged like the ones in the camp shop, selling us with enticing images and scientific information, labelled on the back with nutrition content and reheating instructions etc.  We thought it would be a great challenge integrating science, technology, health, maths, English, marketing, design, visual arts and apparently business…as after chatting about the challenge together, they seemed pretty keen and their first question was ‘Will we get paid the $13 for it?’ 🙂

I am sure updates on our dehydrating journey will follow 🙂