Keep a Camping Food Bin Ready at all Times!

Rich and I just got back from a series of work trips, camping trips, and our 4 year anniversary trip! As I was organizing and recovering from all the house chaos of a few back to back trips I realized, "hey! you may enjoy seeing what's in our camping food bin since it is freshly stocked and organized!"

I try and keep this bin pretty well stocked so that we can just grab it and go at any point during the week or weekend for an overnight camping trip. We can even throw together a few dehydrated backpacking meals from this bin!

Here is my quick video on what is in our camping food bin:

Here is a complete list to all the items I mentioned!

For FOOD we keep:

  • A couple of cans of soup - I pick up whatever looks healthy-ish from Sprouts, New Seasons or Whole Foods
  • Harmony House Dehydrated veggies (I like the spinach and mixed veggies)
  • Cliff bars
  • Dehydrated bone broth (this is a great item to keep on hand! Throw veggies, canned chicken, noodles + bone broth powder in a pot and you have a super cheap but nourishing dinner).
  • Buckwheat Soba Noodles (these are leftover from a Pad Thai dish I made on one of our backpacking trips)
  • Trader Joe's instant oatmeal packets
  • Dehydrated eggs (these are actually pretty good! We mix them with spinach for breakfast)
  • Condiments and seasoning bag - this has salt, pepper, mayo, nut butters, and any other seasoning packets I pick up along the way. 
  • Coffee supplies - bag of ground coffee ready to brew, sucanat sweetener, powdered goats milk, and my GSI pourover maker
  • Vitamins
  • Tea bags
  • Dehydrated potato - add these to your eggs and spinach breakfast for a super hearty morning!

For COOKING gear we keep:

  • Camp dish set - we have some old plate, mug, bowl set that we got at REI a long time ago
  • GSI mugs - THESE are lightweight and keep your drink hot!
  • Kettle - this may seem like a luxury, but i've really enjoyed it on trips. Makes all the meals where all you need is boiling water that much easier.
  • Camp stove - MSR whisperlite - I'm not going to lie, we used this stove for 5 years and never really loved it. We recently bought this cheapo amazon stove, listed below, and we LOVE it. 
  • Cheap backpacking stove
  • Tons of fuel (both the refillable can for the MSR and the fuel cannisters for our amazon stove)
  • Katadyn water filter - this one is great for pumping a lot of water and is one of the cleanest on the market. I've had giardia and i trust this filter.
  • Sawyer water filter - this one is small and lightweight. It's good for long bike rides or trail runs where you just need to purify a single water bottle.
  • Steripen - we don't use this as much since we have the Katadyn. Richard primarily used it when he lived in the Philippines for 3 months. 
  • Hatchet for chopping firewood!
  • Dish rag + soap!
  • Roasting sticks in case we grab some bratwursts on the way to camp!

As a bonus, we are also ready for Y2K, or the Apocalypse. Ha! I hope this is helpful for you!