Google up homemade hamburger helper - the recipe I used had a bunch of spices, corn starch and powdered beef buillion. Brown and dry lean burger to the consistency of gravel, dry some garden veggies to add by the handful (kale, beans, onions, zucchini, whatever), reconstitute the veggies and gravel with the water with which you boil your noodles, and add the seasoning/thickening mix once the noodles are almost cooked. Simmer then for a few minutes until everything looks like a nice flavorful pot of glop. Noodle and beef portions are measured, the rest are eyeballed. Not hard to figure out how much water to use if you're using a 500ml or 1-qt pot and have eaten a pot of food before.
Most folks don't like to sit and simmer for ten minutes at night, hence the MH meals. I kind of dig relaxing and warming my hands over the hissing whisperlite or simmerlite, nursing the cranky stove to simmer and smelling the forthcoming meal. One 22 oz bottle of white gas can cook this way for two guys for 16 days, i've found, including a half dozen morning warmups for buddy's oatmeal (I eat everything cold before dinner). A smart guy could probably use less fuel by utilizing a pot cozy and not simmering, but I'm not real smart.
Other meals worth simmering are some of the various packaged lipton or knorr noodles/sauce combos with bagged chicken and tuna. It's easy to conjure up tex/mex rice/beans with a bagged chicken breast, or cheesy noodles with fishy meat. Bagged crab is excellent with various parmesan noodly stuff. These all call for milk and butter or oil - it's not hard to use powdered milk and olive oil and a handful of dried veggies. Everything I make gets a big glop of olive oil. Weight vs. calories is no different than MH if you're starting with dry stuff.
New policy for me is that for trips less than five days solo, no hot food is planned besides stick-roasted tenderloin. This saves a lot of time and weight.
