DofE award weekend - what will your son/daughter be eating?

easy

Hi everyone
my lad is off on his Bronze award camping expedition this weekend. When he did the practice weekend, we racked our brains for food he could take to eat, and struggled a bit with the best option for a hot evening meal. In the end he was happy with a sachet of Super noodles, but it seemed to me that lacked something, and took sandwiches for the 2 lunches, and satsumas, malt loaf, dried apricots & seeds, mars bars & such to munch while walking along (I know, all sugary, but it is only for 36 hours).

So I'm just being nosey - and perhaps looking for ideas to pinch. What sort of stuff are your brave soldiers taking?

Rosemary7391

Pasta, noodles etc are always good options. You can get stir in sauces that jazz it up somewhat. Is he not cooking with the others in his group? It's easier if they all eat the same. You can get things like bean feast that are quite filling. What're they having for breakfast? We've taken bacon before (vacuum wrapped) and porridge is another favorite.

Gloomendoom

Weight is the problem so dried food is best. There are all sorts of fancy options available now.

For example...

http://www.mountainhouse.eu/

When I did the DoE award back in the 70's all we had was Vesta curries or paella

Rambosmum

We lived off pasta with the little pots of dolmio stir in sauce, for our bronze, silver and gold! Team with biscuits, cereal bars and chocolate we were fine. We stocked up on the latter each morning at the villages shops on our way, along with an ice cream usually!

The special mountaineering dried food packs are expensive and a bit rubbish and more geared up toward long treks where shops are few and far between.

Rosemary7391

Remember that as they'll have been walking all day they'll want to eat more than normal!

Faith177

Try looking on army surplus stores for rat (ration) packs they are designed with calories to keep you going in mind and they are quite light weight use to use them all the time in the cadets

Gigervamp

What about something like these?

christineperseus

I second the 'look what we found' stuff - one of those and a sachet of uncle bens rice - both 'boiled in the bag' great - no serious washing up either!

touch*my*food*feel*myfork

my son is currently planning his bronze level weekend and they are eating/planning this in there groups breakfast - lunch - dinner - his has 6 people - so they are having to come up with ideas that all of the like - plus i will send him with a few extra snacks

RachyClaire

I run dofe expeditions, and lots of good advice been given so far.

As people have said he will need a lot of extra calories due to the amount of walking (3000-5000ish depending on distance/terrain/time of year). It's much easier to consume calories in larger numbers if it's something you enjoy eating, so last time one of my groups had a tinned full English followed by chocolate puddings (the microwave ones can be boiled to heat them).

Wraps are better than sandwiches, as they don't get squashed, jam and choc spread are good options for lunch on day two.
My groups usually work on the basis of three courses for their evening meal - though not always in the right order - large main course (pasta, boil in bag rice, pitta bread, instant mash with topping of choice - dolmio sachets are good, as some contain meat already, pepperami doesn't need to be kept refrigerated although it usually is in the supermarket, flavoured rice/pasta that you just add hot water to is popular, as are the "look what we found" meals.) followed by a hot pudding (custard with or without cheap Swiss roll usually goes down well or more microwave puddings!) then followed by soup later in the evening - if it's cold and wet then this can come first as it's an easy way to get warmed up and only needs hot water.

You (or he) can make your own boil in the bag meals from tinned food (to reduce weight), put contents in a zip lock bag at home, and then put in pan of boiling water to heat - making sure that the bag doesn't touch the sides of the pan! There is of course a risk with doing this that food can go off, so it's a judgement call to make - I've never had any issues but it's not beyond possibility.

Oh and make sure he has proper cutlery - plastic (party type) cutlery melts when you put it in boiling water, as one team found out a few years back! And something to clean/dry pots with!

Madame_Foo

My daughter likes to take packets of flavoured cous cous - very light to carry and easy to make with just boiling water.