MOUNTAIN HOUSE CHALLENGE - I ate survival food for a week - 7 Days, 21 Bags of Food

hey guys how's it going hope you've been well today we have a weird video for you or tonight maybe I don't know when you're watching this video but this video is kind of weird I filmed it like two months ago and you can tell by the title I'm sure but I ate mountain house for a week three meals a day for seven days I ate 21 bags of mountain house why did I do this I don't really know it just like sounded like a good idea sounded like something I kind of wanted to try just to try out a lot of meals some that I haven't had before and then to see how I felt but also to kind of open some eyes to preparedness in a sense so Mountain House you probably know of Mountain House meals from like backpacking I ate a lot of mountain house back when I used to backpack and stuff there like a bag and you pour boiling water in and you let it cook for like eight minutes and then you can eat it out of the bag but mountain house meals also make up a large chunk of my survival prepper kind of food because they sell it in number ten cans as well so this video is kind of just to spotlight some food preparation but also kind of like taste testing I don't know it sounded fun to me so I just made the video and this is the video so if you're new to like wanting to be prepared I made a video actually not this video but I made another video I'll link to it up here but it's like intro to prepping it's called like will you survive are you prepared something like that and it covers a lot of topics about like being a more prepared individual one of the main aspects of being prepared is having food because if you don't have food you're gonna die you're gonna starve to death and you're gonna die so preparedness food and then I just kind of do taste tests like I used to do these like munch packs box once in a while and eat stuff and kind of give my feedback on it and people really like that I don't know why it's not really the direction of my channel but I was like hey this kind of fits with that so let's do it I've already edited like the eating part of this video and it's not great sums on my cell phone I'm not really used I'm not like a vlogger I'm hardly even a youtuber all that to say I'm not used to really filming myself that much as filming yourself three times a day so I was preparing these mountain house meals and they're pretty easy to make then I was filming myself and it was kind of weird so it's kind of out of it for half of them and I don't know it's not great but I thought it was fun I don't know I hope you liked it but one other thing I wanted to do in this video but the video is getting way too long and so I cut out so much stuff of my like daily filming to do in a later video is I tried to bring a bunch of different stoves a bunch of different food preparation basically just a stove to boil water because to make mountain house meals all you need is boiling water so there's a lot of ways to boil water there's a lot of different stoves I have a lot of different stoves a lot of them are like survival-type stoves where you just like use twigs and stuff so I'm gonna do a follow-up video where I'm gonna talk about these stoves more well it's not going to be this video this video is just the food so if you want the stove video get subscribed and I'll do that in the future but this is video on food and I'll give some more thoughts at the end but I hope you enjoy the next seven days you all right so we're on day one here actually I already got this thing going the fan actually automatically kicks on so day one breakfast the lighting is horrible out here scrambled eggs okay so we got fire so these will all have an oxygen absorber random you want to take that out ahead of time but if you forget it you can take it out after it's already cooked and then all of them will have little directions on the back so this one says one cup of water let's stand for three you could stir it and then five or six so about eight or nine minutes that cooking time will go up depending on your altitude so I measured one cup in there I like to use these longer he's super long like spoon sport kind of things though this bag is pretty short you can see that it has plenty of length so I'll put this in here mix it up a little bit and let it cook there's a little ziplock kind of thing at the top that'll seal in all the well I'll just seal it in so you could use this if it's cold the bag gets really hot so you can kind of warm up your hands on it I do that you should do that when I was backpacking and stuff that's kind of like free heat so why waste it and then you just kind of set that aside if you don't need the heat for eight or nine minutes I'm gonna let this by a light kind of die out while I sit here next to it the bio light also gives off heat probably I wouldn't recommend picking it up like this normally but here it is and the fire is still going in here so the fire will died died out the fan actually does a pretty good full burn on all this stuff in there and if you just don't feed it it'll die out pretty quick so now I don't want to drop this on the ground you can see we got some fluffy eggs with a little tiny bacon bits kind of all right stacking some firewood while I waited for this to cool down still a little juicy what you can do and when I sometimes do if you have the time and energy is you could dump this out into a skillet to kind of crisp it up dissolve kind of the extra water or evaporate the extra water I'm not doing that I'm gonna eat all these meals just right out of the bag like they come but if you want to doctor these meals up you can I can add ketchup seasoning extra extra meat or vegetables to any of this stuff really it's just I'm gonna eat it just like it comes so this one's pretty good sodium is high starting to be high I'm gonna have a high-salt diet this week so Brian not necessarily recommend for you to do for a week straight for every meal but it doesn't taste too salty but I like salt so I don't mind it which is pretty good I mean the eggs are really fluffy they don't quite taste like fresh eggs pretty good nothing amazing I raised chickens for a number of years so I had I'm kind of spoiled a little bit on eggs used to like super fresh eggs but I actually haven't had chickens for a couple years now so I'm used to regular eggs but I'm thinking about getting chickens again what do you think she'll get some chickens again let me know down below if you would like to see that anyway this is a pretty basic breakfast hearty tasty warm so whether you're out backpacking or car camping or in a survival situation it's a pretty hearty filling yummy meal I mean I'm not starving at all and I still think it's pretty good so I would say it's good all right for lunch we are having chili mac with beef and I just did a little electric kettle for that nice and quick and easy so this is cooking here is I usually add a little bit less water than is recommended I find that the recommended amount of water makes a little juicy but this is what it looks like with the recommend water all right chili mac and beef all gone this one says it was two point five servings but I ate it myself filled me up pretty well I don't eat huge meals but I don't need tiny meals either so I think it's a good size for one person if you're super hungry you might need to add a little bit to it and if you don't eat much then you might not be able to eat the whole thing but it's good it's chili mac with beef it's basically like macaroni like the macaroni and cheese but with chili and beef so I didn't need to add anything to it really just like I'm not gonna have anything to these meals you could probably add some cheese or something and it might make it a little better even but it's really good the beans and the pasta and the beef super filling one of my favorites I prize you two saved it for the end when I was kind of getting sick of this stuff but Jim I can be good stuff so I'm trying out this the rocket stove okay so we finally got to go on a little bit here with my cattle up top it's my first time using this so I'm not sure how how full to stuff this thing it'll take a little bit of time to figure it out for dinner we have a homestyle turkey dinner casserole stuffing white turkey and vegetables sure sounds good so you give an awful lot of smoke I think I'm probably not don't have the fire quite going as hot as it needs to be this is what it looks like inside pretty good smells pretty good honestly good boil going alright so I haven't had this one before see how it is that's real good tastes like Thanksgiving dinner which always makes me wonder why do we only have Thanksgiving dinner at Thanksgiving like that turkey stuffing mashed potatoes is so good I've never had this one so previously chicken and dumplings was my favorite mount house oh but this one this one made dethrone it it's got a little more like a vegetable vegetable like texture and chewiness and stuff to it but overall man was a good meal so far breakfast morning of day two feeling fine breakfast skillet is what we have here which is hashbrowns and scrambled eggs mixed with sort pork sausage patty peppers and onions this is sorry I wasn't at my face this is two servings and this time I am cooking it on a little bit stove with a little cup with a lid all right day two breakfast is good I like it a lot I don't think I'm gonna say that about every meal he's first I guess this is my fourth meal are all good they're all things I thought I would like there's a few in here that I don't think I'll like not a big fan of vegetables so we'll get to those later I'm saving those for when Ashley's around so that way she can give me a second opinion on if I don't like something because she's you know she likes more vegetables and stuff than I do so anyway this is good this and the breakfast yesterday I don't know if I mentioned it yesterday are both a little smokey flavored so if you're not a fan of smokiness so far both of the egg breakfast I've tried have had some a little bit of smokiness this I like better than yesterday's breakfast though the breakfast skillet definitely I would say is better than just the eggs and bacon all right so this is good there's a lot like just regular lasagna except it's all in pieces but one thing to note don't know if you can tell does leave like a this was from mixing it earlier leaves a layer of cheese which is good I like cheese but you only have to scrape that off really good with your teeth or wash it well in hot water to get all that cheese off of it it's good all these meals all these uh backpacking meals are pretty salty as you could imagine a lot of sodium okay for dinner today beef stew this is the solar stove this is the not tiny one this one's a little bigger than the small ones I forget how big but got a fire going in here got a little kettle let's check out what we got here so we have two cups of water so this is one of the reasons I like now gene you can kind of just check out the measuring here so I got 20 ounces actually let me drink a little cool so two cups this guy goes on top here then there's this little hole so I can feed fuel through like this into there it's a gasifier stove so it's less smokey more efficient burn [Music] looks kind of yummy this is so these chunks are potatoes beef chunks peas and carrots and it's pretty good it's pretty hearty it's a pretty basic flavor just kind of salt I think there's a little bit of onion powder probably I don't think there's any chunks of onions and maybe a little bit of garlic powder but good just a good hearty meal it is pretty juicy so but I mean it's stew so it should be that way so if you wanted it a little less juicy you could add a little less water if you wanted more you could add more water these meals aren't super precise science kind of if you want it more liquidy you add more but it's good I could see this being really really really good on on a colder night so if it's a colder backpacking night or just a colder night in general if you're out car camping over landing whatever just hearty hearty the flavors aren't too complex spices definitely aren't overpowering no I think pretty pretty well-rounded balanced meal like all these meals a little little salty I just hung these lights under my little front porch area so just enjoying the night and I'll finish off this meal but I like it a good hearty meal all right breakfast day 3 I believe biscuits and gravy I know these are delicious butter my biscuits with gravy and pork patty from I notice have a husky this is my girlfriend's dog and it will not stop whining anyway I'm using an old Jetboil multicam very nice and I have an adapter that can run it off the propane so that's what's going down here I'm out here getting some biscuits and gravy well Tom Davis it's on YouTube also trains a tree you on some alright day three lunch pasta primavera ashes here to help me eat it because I don't think I like this one very much this is what it looks like on the inside noodles and a bunch of different vegetables and then we are boiling the water just on stove top for this one because we've got a precious boiling some water for some other stuff too so it's not bad it's uh feels not quite as flavorful as some of the other ones but it's got like Parmesan cheese sauce kind of which makes it pretty good all the vegetables are pretty small nothing too crazy kinda just little little pieces like this and no vegetables that I find offensive really zucchini cauliflower broccoli red and yellow peppers green peas and macaroni in a cheese sauce so definitely not my favorite meal ever but not as bad as I thought it would be totally eat it just fine maybe I'll give actually a little bit but I think I'm just gonna down the whole thing okay we are doing day three dinner not gonna lie kind of want something else as in the mountain house but now the end of the world at least I have variety so this time we're doing chicken and mashed potatoes - grilled chicken breasts with rib meat and mashed potatoes is what it says but the crazy thing is there's two like two actual grilled chicken patties these are like diet they're super lightweight they're it's crazy I wonder if I could just eat them as is but I'm not gonna try so we got two of those and then in its own bag is the powdered mashed potatoes so the quick instructions are a little different than any other mountain house I've had where you just add the water this is like a two-part process you basically rehydrate the meat and then you add the mashed potatoes and then it's gonna be full chicken patties so it's not gonna just be eating with a spoon I guess I'm sure I'll let you know how it goes but this is definitely a first for me and interesting to see how it I'm interested to see how it goes I'm gonna fall me like a knife to cut up the chicken I'm just gonna do the electric kettle so this is the meal basically you had to take the potato pack it out soak the rehydrate the patties for two or three minutes and then take the patties out and then put the packet of mashed potatoes into that water they're basically instant mashed potatoes so the process is weird and honestly you kind of need somewhere to put the patties after you take them out before you make this so I don't know how this how this meal is but we're gonna go ahead and eat it with the spork anyway now that it's uh I don't prefer it maybe some ranch or something if I like ride a little saddle ranch maybe some hot sauce out of something to spice it up these are the mashed potatoes I like garlicky and think a little garlicky little butter maybe some maybe some chives in there I'm not sure it's not horrible but it's kind of weird just because this is the first meal I'm guessing probably the only meal that I won't eat out of the bag so that's a little it's a little interesting so I'll just try to use a chicken by itself it's super tender basically just girl playing chicken I don't think there's I don't think there's any flavoring to it at all anyway when mixed together this how I would eat it a little bit of potato a little bit of chicken it's pretty good I think I would have preferred this meal if the chicken was like already diced and you just cooked it together and ate it out of the bag that's essentially what I'm doing now what kind of a interesting change all right this is day four I believe breakfast we're having the breakfast hash spicy Southwest breakfast hash potatoes shredded beef green chilies black beans and corn it's actually looks and smells pretty good I think I'm gonna like this just doing the electric kettle for this one and we'll get it cooking all right so breakfast hash was good I didn't really read this carefully I thought there was eggs but there's no eggs just shredded potatoes so like hash browns and then shredded beef green chilies black beans and corn I didn't even realize there was corn and a little bit spicy I thought the seasoning was just the right amount not too bland not too Saudia me so I can recommend can recommend all right stay for day 4 I think lunch is a chicken fajita bowl seasoned chicken with rice black beans corn and fire roasted peppers and onions let's take a peek inside this I think I already had two bites good would be really awesome if you brought some tortillas along you make a little burrito kind of thing because that's basically what it is it's like a I mean it's breathable essentially so if you bring a tortilla you want to add a little bit of extra or maybe feed two people out of this tortilla would make it good it's a little bit on the a little bit on the bland side maybe maybe add a little seasoning a little hot sauce spice it up a little bit but it's good I mean if you like if you like burrito bowls this one will do the trick for you and yeah miss got rice and beans and chicken so it should be pretty filling should give you quite a bit of energy and yeah it's beautiful rich nice dinner I'm having Pete stroganoff this is one I like I don't really like the little chunks of mushrooms in it put any bad I accidentally dropped a couple pieces on the ground there's Trey is eating requires two cups of water but I'm making on the bio light I just grabbed a few twigs and some people from a wood chopping pile just kind of like little scraps that's what I'm using there this will boil this water actually sounds like it might be going already and then dump it on in I didn't even say I'm actually I'm filming on my cellphone but I'm also charging my cell phone through with the bio light as well all right so we got boils coming off of this actually super quick the bio light with this little passionate goes fast so we will pour that in there do this little spout set that over there hope I don't burn my deck down well this kind of burns off the thing about these kind of stoves is there's never a way to turn them off really just kind of burns down once it's done burning all right we're gonna mix this up close the bag and let it cook well keep charging my cell phone while I do that all cooked add a couple bites already I've had this meal quite a bit it's basically noodles some creamy kind of like cream of mushroom type sauce little beef crumbles and then little pieces of mushrooms I could go without the mushrooms but if you like mushrooms you'll like the mushrooms I can deal with them there's not a ton of them but overall pretty good kind of creamy kind of yummy flavor isn't overpowering at all pretty simple easy meal I like it or not a lot if you've had beef stroganoff you know what this is and yeah I mean nothing too exciting not my favorite mountain house meal but a pretty good one I buy these in the big cans because it's something I don't think I'd get sick of too easily and it feels pretty nourishing [Music] [Music] so I'm at my office today I've forgotten my real camera so this is on my phone but we're making the breakfast skillet I think this is the second time I've had this so it'll be the same as last time probably but I'll let you know how it goes this is day I think it's a day five breakfast so I don't know where my camera is on my phone really great five breakfast feeling good the breakfast surpri so my favorite meals honestly I buy just like breakfast food in general all right for lunch day five lunch chicken and dumplings with vegetables sis fry my is my previous favorite mountain house meal just really yummy obviously is with all things a little soggy er than your standard chip chicken and dumpling and maybe but it's kind of already a soggy mix but this is one I already know I like I've had a couple other good meals during this four previous days so I'm not sure if chicken and dumplings will be my favorite still but I'll let you know kind of my final thoughts at the end I've kind of like what my favorite meals were anyways chicken and dumplings it's cooking right now poured the water in just from the electric kettle and we'll get into it I probably will eat with the rest of the guys here we have a table at our office so I'll feel a little weird filming there but I maybe will film like my afterthoughts all right this place not a lot of Mac users it's like a whole all right chicken and dumplings was good it's kind of like kind of reminds me of like a chicken pot pie if you just kind of broke it all up into kind of mush and ate it which sounds kind of gross but it's actually pretty good so one of my favorites still just as good as I remember it so chicken and dumplings is is always a good choice for amount of ass meals you all right so we got day six breakfast and this is one of my favorites just because it tastes really good granola with milk and blueberries so it's kind of like cereal it's a little bit crunchy I mean it's granola with milk essentially though all you add is water so there's kind of like some powdered milk kind of stuff in here so it's kind of crunchy sweet scott blueberries in it it takes no prep because you don't have to boil the water or anything it was really delicious the other good thing is has low sodium content so all these mountain house meals have so much sodium which is okay I'll talk about that at the end a little bit but it's nice getting a meal that isn't so high in sodium and it's not a hot meal so this is a good meal if you a don't want to heat up the water or be maybe you're on a really hot trip and you don't want to eat a hot breakfast this is the way to go still good protein still good amount of calories still good about energy anyway this is probably all in all my favorite mountain house breakfast and just kind of like a nice snack sort of speak just because there's no prep it tastes delicious but again you're not getting eggs or hashbrowns or vegetables or anything like that you're getting blueberries through a berry but yeah this breakfast really good for all the reasons that I mentioned all right day six lunch chicken noodle casserole it's pretty good it it's quite salty as I kind of assumed it would there's three servings in this bag and in those three servings is 99 percent of my daily sodium intake so a good meal if you're doing a lot of sweating pretty tasty has some mushrooms I don't really like the ones with mushrooms in them that much so the beef stroganoff also which I do actually like the beef stroganoff has mushrooms and this is pretty good too it's kind of chicken noodle soup II but not really soupy but kind of those flavors and ingredients are you good pretty filling but definitely salty which for if you're backpacking or doing a lot of Labor again good but for me it's in at a desk got a drink a lot of water all right for this one we're going from mac and cheese surprising enough I've actually never had mountainous mac and cheese looks like mac and powdered cheese this is one that I don't know mac and cheese little boring to me I would if I wasn't doing this challenge out add some like hot dogs or maybe some spam to it but for now we'll just have mac cheese the mac and cheese is pretty soupy it's like I have a bag of nacho cheese basically not my favorite I love nacho cheese though so it's not not horrible either but the the macaroni seems a little bit chewy and it tastes more like the powdered not your cheese packets versus like the mac and cheese you can get with the actual like liquid cheese packets so anyway it's I probably wouldn't choose this one honestly but if I add some like hot dogs or something to add to it I think it could be pretty good [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so we've made it to day seven breakfast scrambled eggs with ham and peppers which I'll see isn't my favorite probably my least favorite of the breakfasts anything that's like all eggs dehydrated a dehydrated eggs I don't like that much it's not bad also this is taste a little smoky it's got some ham small chunks of pepper it's okay but probably my least favorite of the breakfast meals anyway day 7 lunch but super tasty pretty simple pretty salty there's a lot in here it's a three serving meal has quite a bit of half I'll need to be pretty hungry try to eat the whole thing but you know depending on what you're doing that could be a good thing or you could share it with somebody or you know if you just eat big meals probably no problem but yeah definitely kind of salty there's some other seasoning it's mostly rice not a whole lot of sugar in here like you can't even see any chicken on the surface right here but there are a few pieces not a ton of protein in this meal only 18 grams in this whole three servings so six grams per serving so not a high-protein meal and as much protein as some of the other meals but a pretty hearty meal if you like rice and I'm Asian so I do like rice those are good this meal doesn't move me it's not like incredible but not bad either not bad just kind of a solid not too polarizing nourishing meal mm-hmm all right dinner tonight we got Italian style pepper steak with rice and tomatoes if use my cell phone to film Oh what time doesn't seem to do better with this kind of stuff but the audio is probably not as good so sorry about that two servings decent amount of protein looks pretty decent I don't like pepper or I don't like tomatoes though so those look like a bunch of chunks of tomatoes so I don't see fry water they like this meal that much I still have the palate of a young child I started the fire out here on the solo stove I need to add a little bit more fuel I actually collected some little stuff from my yard and from kind of chopping some firewood the silts got a little chute here you can just shove some more fuel in alright sounds like we got a pretty good boil going on yeah we do all right I didn't measure out the water unfortunately so I think I made it a little too soupy we'll go ahead and close this bag up and let cook for a second so you can kind of see there's some of these might be peppers some might be Tomatoes but rice and beef it's pretty good I'm alright with peppers so I'm kind of eating through this and it tastes like you know I'm not sure if I'm eating peppers or tomatoes consistency of them and this is pretty similar it's a little bit bland but not bad overall a little bit acidic so if you have if you're prone to heartburn or something I'm not but if you are I'm not sure anyway not a bad meal ah okay guys that was it so some things to note the meals are pretty high sodium they're kind of geared towards backpacking and when you're backpacking you're sweating and you're exerting a lot of energy and you need to replenish your salt but for me like in my normal life I don't work that hard I'm a web developer so I'm not sweating a bunch and stuff so my salt intake was higher than I would have liked but for a survival scenario for a backpacking scenario for that kind of stuff you're probably gonna be exerting more physical energy and you're gonna be sweating and you're gonna want to replenish those salts so the high salt the high sodium content mm not great for day to day but I think not bad for a survival scenario and the main thing that I like about mountain house meals is they're all all-inclusive it's like a full meal and it's really good but for me personally in the in the end of the world kind of scenario we're just a grid down scenario or a natural disaster scenario if you want to stretch that food further for cheaper then you get some staples like some rice and some beans and then you mix it you know 50/50 or whatever mountain house with a bunch of rice and that's a lot tastier than just eating rice or with a bunch of beans or whatever something that's just kind of hearty you can mix the deliciousness of the mountain house in with other stuff to make it last longer to feed more people that's I didn't do that in this video because I just want to eat them out of the bag but for like a survivalist prepper type mindset store some staples too and you can mix all this stuff in with it anyway again I'll link down below to all of this stuff that I ate there's all kinds of different flavors there's a bunch of there's a bunch of different types I had a bunch of different meals I think I had a different meal every time except I think I ate like two breakfasts twice like they don't have as much variety in the breakfast I think anyway this is pretty good I'm not saying you have to try it but if you do try it let me know tag me or something maybe this would be like a mountain house challenge but I don't know it's kind of weird but if you want to do it do it anyway again sorry for the weird video I thought it would be fun hope you liked it hit that thumbs up button as always in all my videos asking me questions or leave comments down below for the algorithm or just ask me questions because a lot of the videos I make are in reply to the questions and the comments that I get on these videos so let me know what you're thinking get subscribed to the channel if you're not and until next time take care

Channel: Last Line Of Defense

Views: 178,771

Rating: 4.856328 out of 5

Keywords: mountain house, survival food, preparedness, camping, backpacking food, food taste test

Id: aetZadS84Tg

Length: 42min 43sec (2563 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019