The interesting food pack

This shows pictures of the food I had ordered and my comments on it. I brought along two 500g Aldi Tea Loaf (fruitcake) and six cereal bars as well (just as well).

I don't drink tea or coffee and had found myself on expeditions in Scotland carrying cooking gear simply to boil water for an evening meal. Pasta takes 20 minutes or so, rice even longer. Couscous is the best because you only need to get the water boiling & leave it to stand. Have that along with a tin of fish-already-in-tomato & its reasonably tasty. (Tins of beans are generally a bit too big) Not a lot of variety, but it will do for a few days. Taking no cooking gear, to save weight means variations on bread (rolls, fruit loaf, malt loaf), but this does mean that dinner is pretty similar to breakfast & lunch. A couple of apples, or even a carefully-packed tomato early on in the trip make it feel more like real food.  I have previously tried those pre-dried camping-food preparations & they are a bit yuk (apart from the cous-cous ones if you can tolerate the salt levels)

So - imagine my delight at the promise of nutritious food, great variety, vegetarian, that needed no cooking, buried in the detailed information on the trekking website (date 19th June 2015 at 19:12 CET):

"Gourmet Partially Dehydrated Raw Food .... It doesn't need warming nor rehydrating it is ready to eat."

and following some personal endorsements

We have been blown away by this idea! High concentrated, nutritious, energy giving food, partially dehydrated and prepared so you can eat straight from the bag! Saves weight of stove,and fuel.

That definitely says "no cooking" & "I don't need cooking equipment". I was dead keen on this idea,to say the least. I had email exchanges with the supplier* & ordered food for Monday evening meal to Friday breakfast (I thought this was the duration of the trek, although I learned early on it was due to finish on Thursday, late afternoon). I informed the trek organiser that I wouldn't need cooking equipment as I had ordered from this suggested supplier.

Helpfully I was handed the food in labelled bags at the start of the walk, Once in the refuge, I opened Monday's bag & found a note describing how to prepare & cook the evening meal.

COOK! I wondered what had gone wrong & when (see * for post-walk analysis)

Thanks to the generosity of my companions, both a cooking vessel, cooker and gas was loaned each evening. A good job we didn't all go for this option, then.

I opened all the other days and photographed what was on offer. It took me a while to realise that I forgot to photograph Monday's contents, which included an evening meal exactly like "Thursday"'s, PLUS snack supplies for the full trek: two substantial packs of trail mix, plus some dried fruit leathers, which were, indeed very good.

So here's the days:

Monday evening meal (no photo - sorry forgot): something spicy with bulgur wheat. Took a good 10 minutes for the bulgur wheat to go soft (simmering at altitude boys & girls)

Tuesday: Left -  Pancakes  for breakfast (dried bananas, cherries, not bad, but not filling. Good job I had fruitcake); Middle - lunch green leaves and tomatoes (v nice) with a very thin wrap & some sauce, with some rather over-spiced mini-felafal; Right - Dinner, spicy something with buckwheat spaghetti. Quicker to go soft than bulgur wheat anyway

Wednesday: I only realised later that the item on the left was not breakfast, but spicy-something lunch that may have been fig to go with the green veg (very tasty) & sauce (far too much of it & I wasn't going to risk spilling it on my clothing, balanced on a rock). The breakfast was that block lower middle. Like a cereal bar - liked it, Dinner on the right a very tasty goulash-like sauce with mushrooms. Very small noodles which did not take much cooking,  but 10 minutes overall to get the mix in an edible consistency.

Thursday. Pancakes again (ate these Wednesday night); Lunch felfal again & some sauce (never ate this. I had fruit cake instead). Seems very minimalist compared to previous lunches. Evening meal same as Monday's (did not eat this, walk ended anyway) 

Friday: nice big block of flapjack-like granola (I liked this). Ate this for Thursday morning breakfast (along with some fruit cake)

* So here's where I went wrong:

Keen to believe the trekking site was correct in saving cooker weight, I failed to see the significance of the one word in the first communication with the supplier that gave the game away:

 " I make... lunches that dont need warming and hot meals for the evenings ..."

If only I had questioned "hot", things might have turned out a little differently. The trek website is going to change its wording.