[pct-l] Food on the trail

[dicentra]

I'm on this list to be all commercial and bang my book over everyone's head, but all of the recipes in the book are dehydrator free, and made from store bought ingredients.

Lots more FREE recipes on the site too (some of those require a dehydrator).  Couscous, instant rice, rice noodles and few other things can be done stove free. I'm working on more recipes for that sort of thing... I'll post it to the list. :)

I agree with the whole concept of wandering the grocery store aisles. You often find neat things and it's FUN!! At least for me it is. Like the time I found an entire chicken in one can... You don't see weird stuff like that everyday. lol.

Happy Hiking,
Dicentra.


 
http://www.onepanwonders.com ~ Backcountry Cooking at its Finest
http://www.freewebs.com/dicentra 

 

--- On Fri, 2/6/09, jason moores <jmmoores at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: jason moores <jmmoores at hotmail.com>
Subject: [pct-l] Food on the trail
To: pct-l at backcountry.net
Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 8:57 PM



I've carried many stoves over the years, from a Sierra wood burning, alcohol and multi-day trips with a jetboil or vargo Jet-ti. For the purpose of the '09 hike Melissa and I are planning to give "going stove-less" a try. 

I've always found the dinners that most hikers prepare very limited in flavor and very high in sodium and preservitives. For us, prepping 200+ meals in advance is impractical so that option is out.  Most people resort to Lippton meals, spuds or rices. I know that I've eaten my share. With and without tuna. Many people find new and interesting ways of spicing things up. If you spend a little time walking down every food isle in the grocery store, examining the shelves, and asking yourself how could I incorperate this into my hiker diet, possibilities open up. Dried chilis, asian seasoning packets, hot sausces, dried fruits. All these things do improve your reconstituted dinner du jur. But in the end it's still Lippton for the 18th time this month.

Some foods I can eat every day, others I can't handle more than once a week. As the years go by I've found myself carrying more and more fresh food on my hikes. Even to the point that I probobly end up eating healthier on a hike than at home. I've found that showing the same level of creativity that I once applied to improving the limmited 8-minute meals I was cooking, could be better spent finding better ways of carrying fresh ingredients.

At the point in time that we decided to try hiking without a stove (past July) we were using our stoves only for dinners. Even our morning coffee had taken a hit to improve our morning breakdown time. Now we mixed up instant coffee grounds with water the night before. The crystals hydrate by morning, and mix well with a breakfast/protien shake to make a crude frappacuinno. So, we found ourselves wondering if the weight of a stove and the requisit cooking time worth all the effort for a single meal. For us the answer was no. 

For the most part our meals now consist of the usual suspects: a bread item, a meat item, and a cheese item. Then we add whatever fresh vegetable that is in season and packable. Green onions, a few stalks of trimmed asparagus, spinach and such. Most fresh foods will hold well for several days if kept protected from the heat of the day down in your pack. I find that packing my water bottles or bladders around my food bag of some help. Assuming that the water is cooler than the ambient air.

The trade off is of course the extra water weight that your gain by carrying fresh food as apposed to dehydrated. Factor the weight of a stove and fuel for two people and already you have a little leeway. We would normally carry some fresh food out of town with us anyways, now just apply this towards your dinner and even more of the weight issue is mitigated.

As in all things, balance is what we're looking for. It's not necessary to carry ten pounds of fresh food to enjoy some fresh ingredients in the daily rotation. I'm sure our bodies will appreciate getting it's vitamins from a natural source instead of the pills we pop to compensate for our diets deficiencies. I'm willing to carry a few more #'s to eat healthy. Specially when you consider that you'll be eating like this for five months.

Obviously, you could still do all these things with a stove. YMMV and such. We've tried this style of eating for the past six months and have found that it works for us. Plus, now no worries about canister resupply (Canisters work out more efficiant for us on multi-day hikes).

jason




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