[pct-l] update: Chips Fire explodes

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

On Aug 4, 2012, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
> I hiked SoCal in ?07, a very dry year.  I was so concerned about  
> fire that
> I changed all my menus to food I could eat without cooking or  
> heating.  I
> didn?t even carry a stove or pot.

I just was hiking with some CDT thru hikers. They were no-cook all  
the way for convenience purposes. But they were also not eating  
poptarts and mashed potatoes. Instead, they were eating all food they  
had dehydrated themselves. It all looked really tasty.

Each meal was a melange of dehydrated vegetables, dehydrated  
potatoes, dehydrated other things like kalmata olives (wow,  
dehydrated olives??? Pretty good!), and often some kind of dehydrated  
grains. Some spices and salt. They'd add water a few hours before  
eating. One of them ate right out of the bag and the other preferred  
to use screw-top plastic containers to rehydrate the meal. Add some  
olive or coconut oil when it was ready. They also ate a lot of salami  
and cheese, dried fruit and nuts. No sugar, no flour, no junk food.  
One of them (Shroomer on the list) even made yogurt from Nido each  
night, warming it in his sleeping bag. Went nicely with his cold oats  
with other goodies that he soaked the night before. I was impressed.

I was glad I had a stove though. Hot coffee for breakfast and a warm  
meal in the rain were nice, as was being able to cook all those  
fabulous mushrooms we found.