[pct-l] Determining how much food to take

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

On May 13, 2010, at 8:49 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
> Does any one know how I figure out how much dehydrated food to pack  
> if I need a pound of food a day?  I will be generally eating  
> oatmeal w/pwd milk for breakfast, soup for lunch, gorp and peanut  
> butter as needed throughout the day.
> Sherry

A pound a day might be okay for the first few weeks but after that  
you'll need a pound and a half or more. I never needed quite two  
pounds every single day. That's a lot of food to me.

The way I figured it out was to actually measure it. I had a small  
bowl for breakfast so I filled it up with my grapenuts, one bowl for  
each breakfast. Dumped that into a big bag. I tested the dried milk  
and figured out that it tasted pretty good with 2 heaping spoonfuls  
of powdered milk so I counted out spoonfuls into a bag of powdered milk.

Counted out snacks, dinners, desserts.

I never weighed the food to determine exactly pounds. I mostly walked  
myself through a day and tossed in what I wanted to eat for the day.

Eventually I saw it like at home. At home I look in the cupboard and  
if there's nothing to eat I go shopping. I'd still count out the  
packets of dinner, cookies, candy, bowls of cereal, but I really just  
eyeballed a lot of it, especially things you carry in bulk like  
tortillas and peanut butter, but also the cereal. Long stretch, big  
box of grapenuts. Short stretch, little box.

Never saw a scorpion. If you are tarping you might get ants. Welcome  
to Giant Ant World. They don't bite but they are curious and they  
tickle.



Books I've written:
~ Piper's Flight
~ Adventure and Magic
~ Santa Barbara Hikes
http://stores.lulu.com/dianesoini