Prepping meals

Piecing together the breakfasts, snacks and dinners that will motivate and sustain me

The price that I have to pay for eating well in the backcountry is that I have to put those meals together at home first. This usually takes me 4-5 hours over 2 days. About a month out from a trip I plan out my menu and see what dehydrated ingredients, spices, condiments and miscellaneous items I need to order. And then I write out my recipes and preperation instructions out on index cards so that I know what I’m doing (the prep instructions get packed in the food bags). Once I forgot an instruction card, and when I set out to prepare that meal I totally blanked on what to do. That particular meal didn’t turn out well.

I typically end up with several snack sized and mini ziplocs containing various ingredients that all get stuffed into a quart freezer bag along with the cooking instructions card and packets of whatever condiments are necessary (such as ghee, olive oil, hot sauce etc.). The day before I leave I go shopping for any fresh ingredients such as onion, garlic and ginger.

Next week’s hike is going to have a bunch of new recipes and will feature Somali, Ecuadorian, Lebanese, Moroccan and Greek cuisine. So that’ll give us both something to look forward to. There’s a good chance that I’ll be hiking along with part of the early thru-hiker bubble, so I’m making these meals a little larger to allow me to share a bit. Cooking wonderful meals around thru-hikers is kinda cruel otherwise. My pack weight will still be low enough to allow me to carry along several mini bottles of wine. For medicinal purposes.

Anyway, the photo shows the pile of ingredients that I’ll be putting to use. My wife loves having me take over the dining room table like this. By tomorrow at least one of my kids will look at it and ask me “do you really eat that crap?” And then they’ll try to steal my Snickers.

Since granola seemed to solve my breakfast woes on my last hike, that’s what I’ll be bringing on this hike for each and every morning, along with some powdered whole milk. Lowfat milk and soy milk are nothing more than cloudy water in my book.

For lunch snacks, I’ll be going with the tried and true cheese crackers, Slim Jims, Chex Mix, Combos and Fruit Gushers, along with 1 crucial Snickers per day. Snickers NEVER get old on the trail, and at around 130 calories/ounce are definitely efficient to carry. But it’s the dinners that I’ll be looking forward to each day. These are my luxury weight, and the carrot that sometimes keeps me going. And I have a feeling that it’s going to rain a lot on this section hike, so I may need these carrots.

In fact, if the forecast calls for lots of rain, I’m going to bring some bourbon too. Enough to share even.