More food tests

I've been testing Mountain House's and Expedition Foods' freeze-dried offerings over the last couple of weeks.

I've found these to be tastier than the ExtremeAdventure freeze-dried foods I've tried recently.

This time I used less than the recommended water amounts: I boiled what the instructions suggested but then added just enough hot water to the foil bag to come above the dried food, gave it a thorough stir (including the bits easily missed in the corners of the foil bag), then added a little more to end up with a consistency that resembled solid food rather than soup.

Taste wise there was little between the Mountain House and Expedition Foods brands but the former marginally had it. The Mountain House Scrambled Egg with Ham and Potato was surprisingly very tasty, and Expedition Foods' Porridge with Sultanas and Fruity Muesli with Milk Powder were delicious.

A problem remains though that when these breakfast freeze-dried foods are combined with another freeze-dried main meal in the evening, even though I've deliberately ensured the overall fibre intake for the day isn't excessive (which I found difficult to do when trialling the ExtremeAdventure brand), I still get uncomfortable and excessive windy-pops!

So I don't plan on having two freeze-dried meals for every day of the MdS.

Instead I'll largely go with my own breakfast mix: 150g of Jordan's Crunchy Oat Cereal with 60g of skimmed milk powder and a spoonful of sugar thoroughly mixed in a Lakeland small zip-lock bag (with 500ml of water) does the trick to give just short of 900 calories.

Another test has been trying to cook Batchelor's SuperNoodles: these go down really easily, are tasty and 1.5 packs gives a good number of calories for a warm breakfast.

But I don't want to be using my Esbit titanium pot for anything other than boiling up water: this is part of the overall attempt to try and ensure potential hygiene risks in the desert are kept to a minimum.

So what I tried this morning was smashing up 1.5 packs of SuperNoodles into a Lakeland boil-a-bag. Using two hexamine fuel blocks I boiled up some water in my Esbit pot and tried pouring the water into the boil-a-bag, scolding my finger in the process. What I hadn't realised was that a flaming hexamine block was attached to the bottom of the pot . . . which then fell burning onto the kitchen worksurface!

My stove and 0.75L pot together weigh
just 127 grammes but have the power
to burn down kitchens.

In a mad panic I doused and removed the burning block but spilt some of the contents of the boil-a-bag. With the pot back on the stove I tried to cram as much as I could of the boil-a-bag into the pot until I realised the boil-a-bag was starting to disintegrate! Finally, the noodles having taken on as much water as I dared to attempt I poured the lot into a 1.5L bottle cut in half (this is the size distributed on the MdS: 1.5L water bottles cut in half form ideal eating bowls, saving washing up and hygiene issues!) . . . only to start seeing the water bottle start to warp from the heat of the water.

I just poured the lot into a breakfast bowl and enjoyed SuperNoodles with chicken and molten plastic flavouring before today's 20 mile effort (and removing all evidence of attempts to set alight our kitchen before my wife got home).

So back to the drawing board on cooking SuperNoodles for breakfast, or maybe I'll just stick with a cold breakfast every day instead.

I use the word "tent" loosely: with no front or back and the sides
not touching the ground these black sacks on poles allow overnight
sand storms to be experienced to the full!

With the Saharan Berbers waking us all up at 6am each day of the MdS to dismantle our "tents" I'm not sure I'll be awake enough to boil up 300ml of water anyway!