Backcountry Food
Caveat: I am told I am a light eater. My brother is usually appalled by what he considers my starvation rations. Using this as a rought guideline, I'd highly recommend trying this stuff out on a one or two night trip.
General Overview
As a rough guideline, my food will weigh between 1.5 and 2 lbs per day. One and a half pounds is bear-minimum rations for me, and I will usually have very little left at the end of the allotted time (maybe a cliff bar or two and some soup).
You will burn many more calories in the winter, and a fat-heavy dinner will help keep you warmer at night.
I have a rule for the winter about what goes in the pot: only water (i.e. snow first). It is pretty much impossible to wash things in the winter and this keeps your water a little less manky. Hence, fast-rehydrating things like boil-in-a-bag dinners or potato-flake based meals and soup powder are the order of the day (see below).
Heat-exchangers for pots do actually work in "real" winter conditions and actually do seem to reduce your fuel usage by about 25% -- the break-even point is 3 nights. So, for four nights, you're saving weight by taking less fuel per day and carrying the heat-exchanger.
Winter/Spring ski-touring
Freeze-dried Dinner: small amount of broth-type soup (tomato or similar) made very thin for re-hydrating; boil-in-a-bag dinner (e.g. backcountry pantry, alpinaire, etcetera); square or two of chocolate for dessert.
Homemade Dinner: 1C potato flakes; flavouring powder (curry, chili, etc); tiny cheese nuggets (or shredded); handful each of: sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast (not a handful), pumpkin seeds, flax seeds; 1T hunk of butter. This is combined with a few (8) crackers and a 1-inch square cube of cheese with a slightly heavier soup for appitizer. Square of chocolate for dessert.
Bringing a little cocoa powder might be nice, too.
The best breakfast I've come up with so far is granola with powdered milk and dried fruit with hot water in it -- much easier to eat than instant porridge (and much healthier, too). I take about 1C total (after mixing) per breakfast. About 1/3 by volume of milk powder. This is combined with some drink crystals ("Emergen'C") and tea to round out the morning meal.
Lunch usually consists of: 2 Cliff Bars; 1/3 C trail mix; 2 shortbread (or whatever) cookies; 2 sun-rype fruit bars (the thick ones, not fruit leather).
Fuel: In the winter, we have gotten by (just) with as little as 100ml/person/day with a heat exchanger. Without one, 125ml/person/day is a bare-minimum. Taking 140ml-150ml will give you a little extra cushion, which is always nice (maybe some nights you want to make a hot-water bottle or extra tea; maybe you spill a litre or two of hot water along the way).
Summer Alpine Climbing
In the summer, since both my fiancee and I are light eaters, a standard day's worth of food (each) consists of:
- dinner: half a boil-in-a-bag dinner (e.g. Backpacker's Pantry, Alpinaire, etc.)
- dinner: some soup poweder
- dinner: a few crackers and a cube of cheese
- dinner: square of cocholate
- tea (for breakfast + dinner)
- breakfast: a little less than 1C of granola with powedered milk + dried fruit
- lunch: 1.5 Cliff bars
- lunch: 1 or 2 fruit bars
- lunch: trail mix
- lunch: summit chocholate
- lunch: drink mix for water
Fuel: I have never come close to using all the fuel I take in the summer; I usually take about 100ml/person/day which allows for lots of tea and for simmering the dinners, which makes them taste a whole lot better). In the summer, it is also possible to buy the much, much nicer Soft Path organic dinners -- they are not instant so in the winter they break the "nothing but water in the pot" rule. (Also, their serving sizes are accurate: it is tough for two people to finish one of their dinners, whereas it is easy for one person to eat a supposedly two-serving backpacker's pantry dinner). You can probably get by with a lot less than 100ml, but I haven't found a good number to report yet.