We asked our senior members for their bushwalking food ideas. Here is the result of 12 x 40 years of their experience, in their own words. Comments in italics are editorial additions. See also our list of over 50 easy recipes.

General Advice

A hike or ski trip is no time to start or even continue a weight reducing diet. Your lack of energy will be a real handicap to the other members of the group. There is a difference between naturally slow and being burnt out. You will need heaps of energy for those last few kilometres, organising yourself, pitching a tent, preparing dinner and to ward off the cold. Save dieting for the less strenuous times.

As a rule of thumb, 900-1000 gm/ person-day is normal but 700 gm is feasible though you will lose a couple of kilograms over a week.

For a strenuous or cold weather trip there needs to be a slight increase in high energy foods. Meals on a snow camping trip need to be quick and easy to prepare, especially if snow has to be melted and cooking is done in the tent. Availability of water can also affect the menu. For camps in arid or high areas, select foods with a high moisture content that are not salty and require a minimum of water.

A hike or ski trip is also no time to try cooking a meal for the first time. Whatever you make should be tried at home first, as if you can’t do it in a controlled environment you’re not going to be able to in the dark and rain on a tiny stove. Similarly, if it isn’t tasty at home, you’re unlikely to want to eat it on the hike when you most need the calories. It’s also a good idea to build in variety for longer hikes as it’s easy to get sick of the same thing.

Breakfast 

The most important meal of all! It sets you up for the rest of the day, so don’t skimp, particularly if the day is going to be long and strenuous. Options include:

• A huge bowl of porridge with some stewed fruit or a handful of scroggin is a good start. 2-3 cups of cooked porridge or other grains is a generous serve. For alternatives or variety during longer trips use semolina, polenta, rice, rolled barley, tritcale, rye, burghul or hulled millet. Soya milk which is available in powder form is a tasty alternative to the usual milk (available in 2025 from Nimbus online). The breakfast grain could be flavoured with sultanas, currants, tahini, jam, soya grits, drinking chocolate, lethicin, or just plain! (You could also add chia seeds, desiccated coconut, dried berries, brown sugar or honey.)
• Uncle Tobys instant porridge individual sachets – plain or multi fruit flavours +/- powdered milk.
• WeetBix.
• Pancake mixture – in the plastic ‘shake container’.
• Pikelets but only on rest days on longer trips as you can’t rush them. You can make the mix at home and just add water at camp.
• If you fancy bacon and eggs with chunks of bread – go for it, but the smell might make everyone hate you! A Trangia lid makes a good frypan.
• Muesli (e.g. Fru-Nut Cereal, Purina, home-made) + powdered milk

Breakfast is a good time to prepare the day’s lunch and then keep it near the top of the pack. Also to put the evening meal in to soak in a sealed container, to be carried during the day.

Lunch

Lunchtime on a walk is often a time for resting as well as eating, and often the weather might be hot, or cold, or wet, or you may be in an exposed position, so the food needs to be near the top of the pack and possibly prepared in advance. Do not make this meal fiddly. Often because of tiredness, the cold, the heat, the flies or simply the lack of time you will not feel like digging into the rucksack to come out with all the food items and then spreading biscuit after biscuit.

In the middle of the day, a heavy meal is not recommended as it takes too long to prepare, and it leaves you lethargic. Snack foods that are light and easily digested are better when you need to be sharp on your feet in the afternoon. The most popular and practical are based on breads, such as: 

• Regular bread or pita for the first part of a trip. 
• Other types which keep longer are rye, Persian and Pumpernickel bread. (These days theres a much bigger selection of flat breads which keep well in an airtight bag.)
• There is a also huge range of dry biscuits available, e.g Ryvita, Vita-Wheat, rice cakes, Salada, so why bring all the same type?

Toppings include:

• Cheese or Kraft ‘cheese’. As John says, “There is a galaxy of cheese available so there is no need to jam oneself up with the silver foil wrapped processed variety.” Hard cheeses and mini baby bel or laughing cow keep better. 
• Margarine or butter
• Peanut paste
• Hams etc in winter – well packaged.
• Salami / Mettwurst. Not all of these are stable without refrigeration so check yours carefully.
• Meat pastes. Remember Peck’s Pastes? They still exist but be careful about how well they will keep once opened.
• Sardines / Tuna. These days, flavoured sachets have replaced tins.
• Vegemite
• Nutella
• Jam

Eggs boiled at breakfast are great at lunch (also see Paddy’s roasted egg recipe. Raw eggs keep very well; plastic egg carriers are available in camping stores.)

Keep meats and cheeses towards the middle of the rucksack along with the margarine/butter to keep cool. Beef jerky is a long-lasting meat alternative. Carrot is a robust vegetable which stays fresh a long time if not peeled or diced. Celery will keep a lesser time but don’t bruise it.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts (can be sprouted as you go) and fresh fruit are great if you have the room.

Dinner 

There is usually plenty of time to prepare the evening meal, so why not prepare the type of food you would have at home. In planning the dinners for a trip, bear in mind such things as fuel availability, whether there will be much light, and limitations of cooking utensils. A hot drink or soup is a good way to start, as it is re-vitalising, and keeps you occupied while other courses are being prepared. 

For short trips, or for the first couple of nights of a longer trip, meat, sausages and fresh vegetables are welcome. Otherwise, the usual foods are pasta, rice, sauces, freeze dried packet foods.

• Noodles, instant potato and dried vegetables are all light to carry, and can be added to soups and other dishes.
• Carry some olive oil in a small, well sealed plastic bottle. It is useful to stop rice and pasta from sticking and to add calories to each meal.
• Pre-mix dry ingredients where possible – it saves space and reduces cooking time. However, avoid repackaging sealed ingredients that may spoil or leak.
• No meal should be bland. Use freely rice, pasta, instant potato, puppodums, curry, chilli, bacon and ham speck, herbs and spices.

Ingredients include:

• Real potatoes in alfoil – to cook on a real campfire (much harder now).  Depending on size – can take at least 45 minutes to cook on the coals. I cooked the potatoes until the skin became nearly black – that I ate served with lashings of salt & butter.  Can’t replicate the flavour any other way. Do same with whole garlic bulb/onion.
• Consider burghal or couscous instead of rice or pasta. Both are precooked, thus only require standing in boiled water, not simmering.
• Real vegetables/onion – use up first night/s.  Small cans of corn kernels.
• Soups – Trident brand Laksa Thai soup with noodles (& spice oil).
• Deb Instant Mashed Potato with butter.
• Damper dough wrapped around a stick and cooked on the coals.
• Beans, lentils (and rice for that matter) could be soaked in a water tight container from the morning.
• For a long trip and for variations in flavour, take such things as garlic, curry powder, dried herbs and spices, tomato paste, ginger, black pepper and grated parmesan cheese
• Freeze a steak and let it defrost in your pack with a very small fresh onion, fry it on your trangia on the first night

Sweets 

Dessert was clearly a traditional part of the evening meal. Funny story: when this questionnaire was sent to the Wednesday Walkers, there was no heading for desserts: this was quickly corrected.

• Stewed (formerly dried) fruit and custard is popular. Apples, apricots, peaches and prunes are the pick of the bunch; also tasty are pears, nectarines and bananas.
• Instant custard and egg custard are quick to prepare.
• Cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon could be used.
• Semolina or polenta are an alternative to the sweet custards.
• Pancakes or fritters are worth the effort.
• Instant puddings are quick and jellies will set at night.
• Cheese cake is never too much trouble.
• Hot chocolate with/without marshmallows.
• Chopped dried apricots/apples softened in boiling water with a bit of cinnamon/cloves.
• Chocolate with fruit or nuts.
• Fruit cake from home wrapped in foil and sometimes soaked with brandy

Snacks

Ideas include:

• Scroggin made up from a base of mixed nuts and dried fruit.
• Add to this sunflower seed, pumpkin seed, jelly beans and babies, licorice, chocolate, sugared nuts etc.
• Smarties or M&Ms with the chocolate on the inside! 
• Dried fruit on its own. Figs are very chewy.
• Chocolate/carob is great in cold weather and is unsurpassed as an emergency food.
• Barley sugar and lollies
• ‘Health food’ bars, muesli bars, confectionery bars / Mars Bars
• Halva
• Fresh fruit
• Mint cake
• The giant Jaffas – that I’d place into my hot cup of tea – digging them out when shell’s melting and cracking – choc inside still intact.  Closest you can buy now are the Darrell Lea’s BB’s Orange Crunch – other flavours too.

Drinks 

ABW WESTERN STYLE COFFEE

• Serves 1 or 2
• 2 cups
• 4 tablespoons ground coffee

Bring water to boil. Add coffee and immediately remove from heat, and cover. Coffee ready after approximately 3 minutes when grounds sink. Warning – if you stir before the coffee grounds begin to settle, they will remain suspended!

ABW BILLY TEA

Bring billy of water to the boil, add loose tea leaves, after about 10 seconds remove and let stand for about 3 minutes, then tap side of billy several times or swing billy round the head a few times to settle the leaves. No need for non-biodegradable tea bags.

Ideas include:

• Usually tea, coffee, cocoa/Milo, powdered drinks.  
• Sustagen powdered drink for nutrients and calories – long trips especially.
• Sustagen/gatorade for a fizzy drink and to deal with headaches and not feeling like drinking water
• Packed dehydrated soup. A low salt packet of soup, first.
• Finally, a hot drink, some chocolate, and a wee drop of your favourite beverage.
• Tawny port

Thanks go to:

• John Bartlett and his ABW The Bushwalkers Cookbook from 1996
• Lorraine Billett
• Jon Bojczuk and his Thought For Food article from Tandanya 1987
• Ian Boscence
• Helen Davies 
• Harry Hakkennes
• Kathy Haskard
• Ray Hickman
• Melanie Jackson 
• Roger Kempson
• David Markey
• Jeannie Pope