| I also weight the trash and food containers when
I got home with the following results. My trash,
consisting of used food bags weighed 56 grams, squeeze tubes for
my peanut butter and jam weighed 21 grams each, and olive oil
bottle (with ~ 6 tbsp capacity) weighs 20 grams. The sum
of this dead weight is 118 grams or 4.2 ounces and when compared
to the total weight of the food (3 days worth of breakfasts,
lunches, and dinners plus 4 days worth of snacks) seems pretty
insignificant. A good deal of this weight was the paper
from the three powdered milk packets that I used.
Repackaging or burning these would cut the dead weight a lot.
|
| Breakfast: Prior to measuring out my cereal at
home I will gently crush the large pieces to get rid of air
voids. I will also just measure 3/4 cup instead of 2/3
since my plastic cup I take as part of my cooking kit doesn't
have a 2/3 cup marking.
Lunch: If I need a bear canister, and space is tight I will
replace bread with pita, or perhaps just a more compact
bread. I will not take Trader Joes Sprouted Wheat Berry
Bread again since it dried. As mentioned before, I will
reduce my peanut butter intake as well.
Dinner: No changes here. Chili-Mac rules! My
recipe is easy to make, clean up, takes up no space, is a
whopping 680 calories, and most importantly, I looked forward to
it each night. To make it I put 1.25 cups of water and 0.5
cups of elbow pasta in my pot, bring it to a boil, add 0.5 cups
of bean mix, bring to boil again, shut off the stove, and let it
sit for about 5 minutes. Then I add 2 tablespoons of olive
oil, and salt/pepper/Tabasco to taste. At the end of the
meal I use my fingers to eat the excess from the pot and clean
it with a cup of water and my fingers as well; no soap
required. The reason that this works, despite adding 2
tablespoons full of oil, is that all of the oil gets absorbed
into the bean mix.
Snacks: As I said before I will replace most of the chocolate
covered espresso beans with roasted and salted almonds, plus a
bit more to make up for bringing less peanut butter. |