Food. It’s
important. The awesome endeavor of hiking can become a drag if one’s body is
not well fueled. So planning food for a backpacking trip—especially one in
which you have no options for resupply partway through as you do with such
trails as the Appalachian Trail—needs attention toward bringing the right kinds
of foods—getting enough carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, as well as bringing
food that you will find appetizing when the increased physical activity and
higher altitude will inevitably kill your appetite—and the right amounts—as in,
you might need to first force yourself to eat, but later might get the hiker
hungries and become ravenous. As avid home chefs, we have the additional
requirements that whatever we cook is fantastic rather than mediocre and is
creative.
Our
itinerary indicates we will have 6 on-trail breakfasts (since our first
breakfast can happen before we start hiking), 7 on-trail lunches, and 6
on-trail dinners (since we will be able to eat dinner after we get picked up).
Breakfast
is probably the hardest meal to figure out. First, for some reason eating early
in the morning tends to be especially unappealing when hiking, even though it’s
a time you need it most. Second, there is always the question of cold breakfast
and get hiking quickly versus hot breakfast and get a slow start. What a
conundrum! On the one hand, getting out early can set you up for covering
ground before the potential afternoon thunderstorms hit. On the other hand, hot
breakfasts tend to be slightly more appealing. We ended up choosing 3 cold
breakfasts and 3 hot breakfasts to be able to take advantage of both those
benefits at different times. For our cold breakfasts, we’ll eat homemade granola
bars (recipe to come) on two mornings and bagels with peanut butter and jam on
one morning. For hot breakfast, we’ll have a morning of oatmeal with dried
fruit and peanut butter and a morning of blueberry pancakes and peanut butter.
(Hopefully we will not tire of peanut butter. :P) Finally, we’ve planned a
morning of hot chocolate protein shakes (mixing milk powder and protein powder
in hot water) that can become a cold breakfast if necessary.
“Lunch” can
be a loose to nonexistent event out on the trail. Having a single, long lunch
in the middle of the day can leave your body feeling under-fueled in late
morning and lethargic in the early afternoon after a big meal. A big lunch can
be accompanied by snacks, or some people even do away with lunch all together
and snack all day long. A nice middle-path is taking first and second lunch.
(Alternatively, you could take first and second breakfast and a late lunch.)
These lunch breaks involve a real stop—sitting down to get off your feet,
taking off your pack, removing your shoes to dry out your socks if
necessary—but spread out the quantity of food you might eat in one big lunch
across the day. First lunch usually happens around 10:30 am, while second lunch
tends to crop up around 2:00 pm. Of course, it’s we’re not set on any given
time, and it’s more up to how we’re feeling, what the weather is doing, and where
there might be lunch spots with fantastic views, but we’re going for the “four
meal day” approach. We’re not dividing out specific lunches but calculated how
much of different items we wanted to bring by estimating such things as 1 bread
product (a bagel or caloric equivalent) per meal for 7 meals, 5 ounces of
cheese for two people for X number of meals, ½ cup hummus for Y number of
meals, and so on, as well as added some all important staples like Nutella
(!!!) and Trail Mix.
A glance at some of our lunch foods:
1st and 2nd
Lunches:
Bread Products (7 normal people, 7 glutard)
Cheese (20 oz)
Hummus (~1-1 ½ cup when hydrated)
Carrots (1 1 lb. bag)
Trail Mix: Almonds, Cashews, Pumpkin Seeds, Apples, Raisins,
Rhubarb, M&Ms
Nutella (1 jar)
Tuna packets (2)
Chicken packets (2)
Apples (4)
Snickers (14)
Pretzels (gluten free and regular, 1 bag of each)
After a
full day of hiking, a hot meal becomes one of the best things in the world. It
becomes even better when it’s delicious and varied. Dinner is the most exciting
meal of the day, because we’re not trying to go anywhere so we can really enjoy
making and eating it, and there are so many options for what to cook. Since
we’re carrying all of our food for a seven day trip, we’re going to dehydrate
anything that is dehydratable for our dinners to lighten our packs. (Also, food
dehydration is a cool skill to develop…more on dehydrating in a later post.)
Below are the 6 meals we’ve planned. Beyond the fiesta night, which we’ve
planned for the first night since it will involve heavy (but delicious and
worthwhile) things like salsa and guacamole, we’ll choose what we want to eat
on any given night based on what we feel like, what kind of miles we did that
day, and what the weather is like (split pea soup is often kept in reserve for
rainy days).
1.
Fiesta Night: We’ll cook brown rice, black
beans, and bell peppers ahead of time and dehydrate them. Come dinnertime,
these rehydrated will be combined with cheese, salsa, and guacamole.
2.
Non-Ramen Bombs: Ramen Bombs—ramen noodles with
instant mashed potatoes—are an Outing Club Classic, but given D$’s poor
relationship with gluten, Ramen is out. No worries, though—we’re using mung
bean noodles instead and adding (dehydrated) Brussel sprouts, spinach,
broccoli, bell peppers, and spices to make the meal more interesting.
3.
Split Pea Soup: The soup is made ahead of time
and dehydrated until it’s crumbly. Carrots are sliced, cooked, and dehydrated.
These are combined and reconstituted after a long, cold, rainy day to make one
of the best backpacking meals of all time.
4.
Peanut Sauce Noodles: We’ll first cook, then
dehydrate, some gluten free noodles (rice or quinoa pasta). In camp, these will
be rehydrated with broccoli and will be combined with a delicious peanut sauce
that involves peanut butter, soy sauce, and lots of garlic.
5.
Pizza Casserole: A blend of polenta, tomato
sauce, mushrooms, and cheese. Tastes just like pizza but comes in a pot and is
eaten with a spork.
6.
Our last dinner plan is debuting on this trip,
and thus has no title yet. A combination of a hearty quantity of sweet
potatoes, black beans, red peppers, and yet-to-be-determined spices will likely
satisfy the two of us and potentially become a popular, repeatable vegetarian
backpacking meal. In perfect conditions, this meal will occur at a moment
and/or in a location that ties the meal to fond memories that we will easily
recalled when we cook the meal in the future.
In addition to our meals, we’re bringing tea and hot cocoa
for the chilly mountain evenings and mornings, as well as a batch of gluten
free brownie mix that will provide multiple nights of after dinner delight.
Keep your eyes peeled in the next few weeks for a little
“how to” on dehydrating food!
Do YOU have any food ideas for backpacking? Let us know in the comments!
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