Expedition meals: Breakfast Start the day with a substantial breakfast and a hot drink. This can include cereals, muesli, porridge, noodles or even a full English with tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Tip: Make up your own porridge before you go with oats, nuts, fruit and muesli, then add milk powder. Once on expedition simply add hot water to make quick porridge. Lunch (up to around 30 minutes) There are many options but most people go for picnic or larder style foods that don’t need to be heated or kept chilled. A lunch break might consist of a hot drink with sandwiches, pitta bread or wraps with other high energy foods like flapjacks, cereal bars, nuts, dried fruit, biscuits, chocolate bars, dried sweets, jelly, mint cake and so on. Tip: Lunches need to be made from things that will not deteriorate over the course of the expedition. Things such as oatcakes or flapjacks are better than bread. Evening meal Almost every team chooses to cook and eat their substantial daily meal in the evening at the campsite as you have more time. With practice and planning, even on one stove, you can quite easily produce a hot three-course meal in a short amount of time. Soup, curry, stews, pasta, bangers and smash or noodle stir-fry are all great expedition meals and you can follow them up with a hot or cold pudding like hot chocolate cake or crumble and custard. Tip: As a team, boil a pan of water and use it to make soup as the starter or a hot drink, then use the rest to cook a boil in the bag pudding. Don’t throw the leftover water away as this can be used to do the washing up. Cooking on your expedition can be a great challenge and a way to make your expedition stand out. Think about your favorite foods and how you could adapt them so you can have them during your expedition. Tip: Ask for packets of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, salt and pepper etc. from a local cafe or take away. They keep really well and make meals taste better. Getting your food and cooking right can really make a big difference to how much you enjoy your D of E expedition. It is one of the best team activities of your Expedition section and is an opportunity to think creatively and impress your Assessor. Planning and teamwork is everything. You have to cook as a team so it’s usually best to share meals, but you can also take turns to cook individual meals. You’ll get much more out of cooking from scratch or preparing meals at home first, but you are allowed to use light weight ready-made expedition meals. Whatever you do, you’ll need to agree your menu and cooking plan as a team, spend your budget and then cook together as a group. The key principles of expedition food: You’ll need to design a menu which does the following: Keep your menu balanced, particularly for longer expeditions. Packs in as much energy (or calories) into the least weight and volume as possible. Depending on the length of your expedition and how big you are you’ll need to get through between three, four or even five thousand calories every day. Choose foods high in sugars, carbohydrates and fats. Choose food you like! Food is both energy for physical endurance and team morale! Keep meals easy and quick to cook (you might need to do some preparation at home first) and that will keep until you plan to eat it, even in hot weather. Dried, cured, smoked or vegetarian foods will usually all last well. Keep the weight and litter down by removing its packaging and cooking as a team. Make sure you keep your food in something waterproof like a plastic bag. You could also put it all into a lightweight container so it will stand up to the inevitable squashing into rucksacks, being sat on and being dropped... Try to pack the food for each day/meal together in one place so it is easy to find. This has been copied, trimmed and added here from the official D of E website

FoodCalorific value / Time to prep… Saturday Lunch Saturday tea Saturday supper Saturday snacks Sunday breakfast Sunday lunch Sunday snacks A few things to consider……. Cooking creates mess !, how will you clean it ?, what will you eat out of ? How long will it take to cook ?, can you get it there in one piece ?, Does it matter if the food gets broken into pieces in transit ?, Have you tried the food before the weekend ? What calorie value does it have ? Will it be dry when you eat it ? And many more ……. Food Saturday Lunch Sandwich / pasty / sausage roll. Cake bar, fruit Saturday tea Boil in the bag meal Swiss roll with powdered custard / semolina ? Saturday supper Hot chocolate, mint flavoured of course Saturday snacks Flapjack Rocky bars fruit Sunday breakfast Porridge in a pot – see image Sunday lunch Ginsters pastry, cheese and ham variety. Sunday snacks Flapjack Rocky bars Dried fruit