For sharing weight loads consider taking the effort to upload to
https://lighterpack.com/This will let you modify it online, and if you click the share button you can hand that URL out at the rest of us can see your load without being able to modify it. It also shows weight categories by pie chart which are far easier to contemplate than lists of numbers, e.g. bag, tent & sleeping; kitchen equipment and hardware; clothes caried; clothes worn; consumables; etc. It's a joy of a website and one of automatic go-to sites for those
Annoying American Gram Weenies. It really helps work through visualisation and community effort. You can also export as CSV to upload to Excel at a later date.
Foodwise, yes ignore those expensive Mountain House abominations. You can get instant dry pasta meals, cup a soups (the Heinz range is really good), dry couscous meals, and best of all noodles. Not Pot Noodles but ASIAN Noodles, just find you local Chinese supermarket or your normal supermarket if it has an Asian section. The A1 Noodle brand I get round here are just unbelievably delicious, other types are good too. Common options of rice or egg noodles.
Flavour wise an easy way of bolstering savoury food is to take along some Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon Powder. You can baggie it up but I take a medium neoprene container of it. A couple of teaspoons in hot water is itself a delicious soup-like drink (if you pick up some bread rolls at a shop on the way those torn-up and throw in is a meal in itself). But otherwise a small sprinkle will turn really mediocre food into a tasty meal or snack, e.g. Smash dehydrated mash. Plain it's pretty revolting, but add a bit of Bouillon and it's tasty as anything. Use sparingly, it's strong stuff.
I also take a very small neoprene container with a mix of custom seasonings, mine is salt, ground white pepper, coarse black pepper, garlic salt, and a dash of steak seasoning mix.
Nido is Nestlés dehydrated milk with added vitamins, it also rehydrates directly with hot water rather than needing to be mixed into a paste with cold water first. It has a bit of a strong taste for tea & coffee, I usually end up going black coffee on the trail and take green tea (very refreshing and rehydrating), but it's great to add a spoon to oats, makes them richer and gives them a nutrition boost.
Instant custard a great sweet, especially with a bit of added plain cocoa powder - delicious chocolate custard. For that matter I make some of my morning oats with some cocoa added too.... breakfast of champions.
You want to avoid rigid (heavy) containers for you own concoctions, and you want to avoid having a big bag that you dip in and out of - you risk getting moisture in, you risk mismeasuring. I take the lightest sandwich bags and measure out portions of oats, or custard, or Smash, etc., then tie them off and trim the waist of the bag. I often get two portions per bag. My measuring I know exactly how many ML of water I need to rehydrate.
EG I might make a bag with 40g of oats, a teaspoon or two of brown sugar or cocoa, about 10g of Nido, put some freeze dried berries into it, and baggie that up. Oh, freeze dried berries and fruits are definitely much more pleasant than dehydrated. I know 250ml of water is required to reconstitute it.
Save fuel by only getting water to a boil, putting it in a rehydration container, I use a Sistema 656 ML microwave mug with the handle cut off, and a cosy made from Thermawrap. "Cooking" stuff on a stove burns fuel you'll have to carry. The only thing I need to simmer for a couple of minutes is oats.
There's more but that's a start.