[pct-l] Stoveless? Do tell!

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

I hiked with some CDT thru-hikers this summer who were cookless. Not  
only that, but they were flour-less and sugarless. No pasta, no  
cookies, no crackers, no junk food. Their food looked really good.

The general system they had was to add water to the next meal at the  
time they were eating the current meal. I suppose in low water areas  
they'd have to add water whenever they could.

Breakfast was typically a melange of oats, nuts, dried fruit or other  
grains. There was always lots of stuff in there. One of the hikers,  
Shroomer, actually made yogurt from Nido in his sleeping bag every  
night. He used starter he bought at one town and after that first  
time, whatever was left in the bag at the end of the day became the  
starter for the next day. He had the yogurt with his oatmeal.

Lunch and dinner were usually the same. Some kind of mixture of  
dehydrated meat, rice or some other grain product or potatoes,  
spices, various dehydrated vegetables and a generous squirt of olive  
oil. Sometimes for lunch, half a block of cheese might be eaten and  
half a salami or summer sausage.

To round it out, they usually had bags of nuts and dried fruit to  
snack on as well. And Lara bars. And Shroomer gets his name from  
finding wild edible mushrooms so we at tons of those.

All the dehydrated things were made at home beforehand.

I was not no-cook but I cooked only my dinner and my coffee.

My breakfast was homemade pemmican and sundried tomatoes. The  
pemmican was terrible but it made me feel unusually strong and  
powerful. I was happy with it even though I struggled to eat it.

Lunch was beef heart jerky, nuts and some homemade bars I made  
consisting of layers of flattened dried banana, coconut/almond butter/ 
beef tallow mixture and date/walnut on top. Very sweet, delicious and  
rich.

My dinners were similar to what they ate, but I cooked mine. Dried  
sweet potatoes, dried chicken, coconut butter, spices (sometimes),  
wild mushrooms, dried vegetables. I melted the pemmican into it and  
that was the best thing I have ever eaten. That made them kind of  
jealous because it was so satisfying and warm.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> Subject: Re: [pct-l] Stoveless? Do tell!
> To: PCT listserve <pct-l at backcountry.net>
>
> I'm also very curious about this, what kind of things DO you eat?
> Thru-hikers and non thru-hikers please chime in!
>
> I think I partially bring a stove just out of my lack of creativity  
> and the
> readily available things you can get to add boiling water to...
>
> Cheers,
> Lindsey