Cruisers Forum
 


Reply
  This discussion is proudly sponsored by:
Please support our sponsors and let them know you heard about their products on Cruisers Forums. Advertise Here
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Rate Thread Display Modes
Old 15-12-2015, 00:09   #1
Registered User

Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 2
Freeze dried food

We are sailing up to Burma from Phuket and there is very little information about restocking food up there. Has anyone used dried/dehydrated food and is it any good? Where can I get it in UK? Any help gratefully received.
Susie Hay is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 15-12-2015, 00:14   #2
Registered User

Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Essex, England
Boat: Hartley Tahitian 48
Posts: 394
Re: Freeze dried food

Welcome to the forum.

Try camping shops or online.
paulajayne is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 15-12-2015, 01:14   #3
Registered User
 
Lizzy Belle's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Netherlands
Boat: Ohlson 29
Posts: 1,519
Re: Freeze dried food

Welcome to CF, Susie!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Susie Hay View Post
We are sailing up to Burma from Phuket
Phuket - shouldn't be hard to stock up there.
Burma - same thing; millions of people, so there must be food somewhere

I honestly see no reason to bring food from the UK to Phuket ...
__________________
"Il faut être toujours ivre." - Charles Baudelaire
Dutch ♀ Liveaboard, sharing an Ohlson 29 with a feline.
Lizzy Belle is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 15-12-2015, 03:10   #4
Senior Cruiser
 
GordMay's Avatar

Cruisers Forum Supporter

Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Thunder Bay, Ontario - 48-29N x 89-20W
Boat: (Cruiser Living On Dirt)
Posts: 49,143
Images: 241
Re: Freeze dried food

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Susie.
__________________
Gord May
"If you didn't have the time or money to do it right in the first place, when will you get the time/$ to fix it?"



GordMay is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 15-12-2015, 09:29   #5
Registered User
 
DailyLunatic's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 41
Re: Freeze dried food

For myself here in the US I like Honeyville. In the UK I know not, but did a quick search and found Emergency Food Storage UK - Freeze Dried Food, Mountain House Food and Survival Food & Buy Mountain House Freeze Dried Survival Food for emergencies and.... I cannot speak to the companies, but the pics on both the home page show Mountain House ( a well respected brand )
DailyLunatic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 15-12-2015, 20:17   #6
Moderator
 
JPA Cate's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: aboard, cruising in Australia
Boat: Sayer 46' Solent rig sloop
Posts: 28,438
Re: Freeze dried food

I have used Mountain House, and also some of the more complex meals sold by REI in the States. Some of both are to my taste. I particularly thought the MH chili & beans was tasty, in a backpacking environment, also the f-d strawberries and cottage cheese. We have always had freeze dried food or retort pouch food as emergency rations, only, not for day to day, as they're pretty expensive.

A while back, there was a thread here about trying to find the best meal in a can. You might get some ideas from that.

Good luck with your search.

Ann
__________________
Who scorns the calm has forgotten the storm.
JPA Cate is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 09:53   #7
Senior Cruiser

Cruisers Forum Supporter

Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Coos Bay, Oregon
Boat: Valiant 40 (1975)
Posts: 4,073
Re: Freeze dried food

Are right guys (and gals) time to fess up. Does Freeze dried food give you gas? When on extended camping trips as a kid, we lived off the stuff, but man were the tents stinky! Have they changed their formulation maybe? Or was it just us?
s/v Beth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 09:55   #8
Registered User
 
DailyLunatic's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 41
Re: Freeze dried food

Quote:
Originally Posted by Susie Hay View Post
We are sailing up to Burma from Phuket and there is very little information about restocking food up there. Has anyone used dried/dehydrated food and is it any good? Where can I get it in UK? Any help gratefully received.
Unfortunately not yet available in UK voltages, so this may not be much help. Harvest Right introduced the first freeze drier for the home. I'm sure You could find some sort of adapter. (no affiliation with company)

I bought one and love it. No good for you if you are a full time cruiser (space and power being a premium) but great for stocking up if you are a seasonal cruiser.

The best part is you are not eating someone else's meals. When I make something like casserole that has leftovers, I just pop them in the FD and I'm eating 'MY' food next year.
DailyLunatic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 10:03   #9
Registered User
 
DailyLunatic's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 41
Re: Freeze dried food

Quote:
Originally Posted by s/v Beth View Post
Are right guys (and gals) time to fess up. Does Freeze dried food give you gas? When on extended camping trips as a kid, we lived off the stuff, but man were the tents stinky! Have they changed their formulation maybe? Or was it just us?
I haven't noticed anything. Perhaps you were eating FD chili & beans?
DailyLunatic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 10:19   #10
Registered User
 
Dsanduril's Avatar

Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Petersburg, AK
Boat: Outremer 50S
Posts: 4,229
Re: Freeze dried food

If you want freeze dried foods in bulk you can also check the Mormon/LDS suppliers. With the requirement to keep a one year cache on hand there is a lot of freeze-dried product there. We have used Harmony House in the past. Don't know how much of an LDS population (if any) there is in the UK, but it might help broaden your search.

But, I suspect you'll find it much easier, cheaper, and more satisfying to eat local foods.
Dsanduril is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 10:27   #11
Moderator Emeritus
 
a64pilot's Avatar

Cruisers Forum Supporter

Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Jacksonville/ out cruising
Boat: Island Packet 38
Posts: 31,351
Re: Freeze dried food

Army, we ate a LOT of MRE's, (meals ready to eat) which to start with were heavily freeze dried, as well as LURP's (long range patrol rations), then some genius discovered the water you had to carry to re-hydrate the food weighed as much as hydrated food did and freeze drying fell out of favor.
If it were me, since weight on a boat is no issue by comparison, I'd go for good, high quality canned goods and dried beans, rice etc. Still get long shelf life, but better tasting and lots, lots cheaper
a64pilot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 16-12-2015, 11:56   #12
֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎

Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 15,136
Re: Freeze dried food

I wonder how Thai Customs officials are going to treat hermetically sealed bags of...Yes, sure, you have only all that food in those bags? OK, we going to open them all up, just to make sure no heroin got inside. Or explosives. (Hey, in the US the TSA won't allow peanutbutter onboard, because it might be plastique.)
Or simply, there may be "agricultural" restrictions.


I wouldn't suggest to anyone, at any time, that they even think about MRE's or freeze-dried foods for a long trip, unless they had already bought and sampled a variety of them. It is not a four-star restaurant in a bag.


Fresh local rice and fish (skip the fish if you're a vegan) will work just fine.
hellosailor is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-12-2015, 10:17   #13
Registered User
 
DailyLunatic's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 41
Re: Freeze dried food

Quote:
Originally Posted by hellosailor View Post
I wonder how Thai Customs officials are going to treat hermetically sealed bags of...Yes, sure, you have only all that food in those bags? OK, we going to open them all up, just to make sure no heroin got inside. Or explosives. (Hey, in the US the TSA won't allow peanutbutter onboard, because it might be plastique.)
Or simply, there may be "agricultural" restrictions.

I wouldn't suggest to anyone, at any time, that they even think about MRE's or freeze-dried foods for a long trip, unless they had already bought and sampled a variety of them. It is not a four-star restaurant in a bag.

Fresh local rice and fish (skip the fish if you're a vegan) will work just fine.
MREs, or whatever one would call "add water, heat & eat" is, unfortunately, what a lot of people think of when they hear 'Freeze Dried'. About half of what I have falls into this category. The rest is dried 'raw' and requires cooking after rehydration. No 'preserved' food is four star. Take canned chicken for instance. I can't stand the stuff.

Anything that is OK after freezing, is generally about the same after FD. If you have adequate refrigeration then don't bother, eat the frozen. For me, I don't like the idea of running the engines that much and even at the house FD most of my long term storage meats (Freezer went out one year. You know, once burned twice shy)

Take a look at the attached vids to see what I think of when discussing FD.



DailyLunatic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-12-2015, 12:05   #14
Registered User
 
Ribbit's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 664
Re: Freeze dried food

Quote:
Originally Posted by s/v Beth View Post
Are right guys (and gals) time to fess up. Does Freeze dried food give you gas? When on extended camping trips as a kid, we lived off the stuff, but man were the tents stinky! Have they changed their formulation maybe? Or was it just us?
A lot of them used to have large amounts of unfermented Soya as Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP) in them.

Unfermented Soya is really bad for us (it's supposed to be a neuro toxin - why in Asia a long time ago, after massive problems, they hit on fermenting it to make it safe).

A friend used to have a factory making Soya products (TVP, Soya milk, Soya cheese, etc), and the stuff killed him.

I've made a point of avoiding the stuff ever since.

It does affect the digestion too.

An example of this was an old neighbour, who had a large herd of dairy cows. He came up for a chat one evening, really concerned about his cows, because they were getting all sorts of digestion problems, and he (and the vet) was struggling to get to the bottom of things.

So I asked him if he had changed the concentrate he fed them recently. He had, about 10 days before. So I asked him to check if there was Soya in it. Turned out there was. A new type of concentrate, higher protein, lower price.

He had what was left collected, reverted to the previous concentrate, and after a few days of working the Soya out of their system, the cows were ok.

Wind with Soya? That's the least of the problems, but it is part of the problem.
Ribbit is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-12-2015, 12:32   #15
Eternal Member
 
cabo_sailor's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Tarpon Springs FL
Boat: Cabo Rico 38
Posts: 1,987
Re: Freeze dried food

I have used Mountain House and MRE's while backpacking. Not bad, not great. I usually have a half dozen of each on board for when even heating water can be a challenge. A couple of thermos bottles filled with hot water gives us meals, coffee, tea, and instant soup.

Memo to self: fill thermos before not after it gets sloppy.

Rich


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum
cabo_sailor is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
food

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Found a Freeze Dried Source! Rakuflames Cooking and Provisioning: Food & Drink 6 13-08-2013 09:05
Question concerning freeze dried meat/etc Ken Andersen Cooking and Provisioning: Food & Drink 7 16-11-2012 08:15
Freeze dried food for long passage Loco Gato Cooking and Provisioning: Food & Drink 10 19-07-2012 07:12
Shelf Reliance Freeze-Dried Foods - Six Months Supply $500 Velocir Cooking and Provisioning: Food & Drink 4 27-01-2011 06:19
New to Freeze-Dried Food ? JanetGroene Cooking and Provisioning: Food & Drink 1 13-01-2011 11:08

Advertise Here


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 06:23.


Google+
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Social Knowledge Networks
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.

ShowCase vBulletin Plugins by Drive Thru Online, Inc.