Again, the week was lacking in adventures and insane exercises (although capoeira did feature a couple of times, as well as some more irish dancing training). What it lacked in those, it made up for with further explorations of gear and notably of food. A menu of sorts was planned out, considered, reconsidered, debated (tell a lie, it was only really considered once and then left as is) and finally settled on. Eight different meals, cycling through every eight days or as we choose to eat them. Everything that can be dehydrated will be dehydrated. Everything that can't be is likely not to appear on the menu.
Each food drop gets its subsequent tasty evening meal and dessert, plus some fancier lunches the next day or two. One of the problems over a walk of this length is that we'll be gone long enough to risk the onset of scurvy. Now vitamin C tablets and supplements are pretty easy to obtain, but I'm not overly fond of using supplements where food can provide. The issue here is that dehydrating any vegetable will rob it of most of its vitamin C content. Note that I wrote "most" rather than "all". So, use a lot of capsicum in some sauces (particularly high in vitamin C) and use lemon as the requisite acidic preservative pre-dehydration and I hope we'll be alright...
"Hope" isn't very reassuring, is it? An idea was proposed that really was so logical that I felt a little silly for not considering it myself. Hang some stockings off the backs of the packs, keep them filled with mung beans, alfalfa, et cetera and dunk them in the odd stream along the way. That way, we get fresh greenery for lunches and non-dehydrated vegetables with their vitamins intact. Coupled with the rest of the planned meals, the vaguely concerning use of "hope" can now be put aside.
Dehydration experiments are required for some of the meals, pushing the boundaries of what can and can't be rehydrated (anything can be dried, but some things refuse to absorb water again afterwards. We learnt early on that minced beef hydrates in minutes while minced white meats turn into balls of rubber). I have no intention of eating instant noodles every day for a month! There shall be courses, different flavours, textures, a variety of colours and where's my wine?
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