[pct-l] Canister stove for thru-hike

[linsey]

You wrote:"I didn't like the fact that I had to eat dehydrated food but seems like I'll have to :-) Just doesn't seem asnutritious and tasty as normal food but maybe that's just me.."Dear Simon,Let me respectful disagree with the list members opinions that real food has no place on the trail.  In his books, the great Ray Jardine impressed upon me the importance of eating higher quality food while distance hiking.He extolled the virtues of carrying fresh fruits and vegies like potatoes etc for their restorative value.  His praise was also high for home dehydrated fruit and spaghetti sauce, but he also cooked  bean and grain meals from hand cracked grains.  Please consider reading all he has to say about food in his three distance-hiking books/manifestos.The best tip I got for prepping fresh vegies was from PBS's Oregon Field Guide when they profiled distance hiker Lint (this is googleable/viewable).  He takes a bite out of a carrot, potato etc and chunks
 it with a couple chews and spits it back in his cookpot.  BRILLIANT.  While I don't personally cook cracked beans on the trail, I do use whole grain cornmeal mush, and use home dried beans of all kinds cold soaked with dried greens including kale and nettles and dried squash plus olive oil and vinegar OR turn it into a hot soup with Kombu seaweed. BTW, the fastest record setting PCT hikers eat beans every day, usually with olive oil and corn chips and dried salsa.Other snacks I enjoy are chia seeds dissolved in water with dried lime powder and maple sugar, homemade cereal energy bars packed with fruit/nuts/carob/honey, "Spiru-tein" protein powder with Spirulina algae and whole fat powdered milk.  I buy all my trail candy on sale after the holidays and have enjoyed Snicker's free hikes.Anyway, you will find that freeze dried foods and ramen just don't satisfy on the long haul and IMO anyone who thinks it does hasn't tried quality fuel.  Food weighs so
 much out there that I want it to give me the most energy possible--to this end I try to thoroughly chew each bite fifty times (chewing is the first stage of digestion).  It always seemed worth it to carry some fresh fruit out of town at least, and now that I know the bite-to-prep trick of Lint's I will experiment with more vegetables...My trail food is inadvertently vegetarian, but I eat whatever in town.  For some reason, in town I often find  myself wanting a box of sugar coated Shredded Wheat cereal and a gallon of homo milk.  PS Look up that distance hiking story with Lint on PBS (see above), he also demos the greatest umbrella mounted bug net for tarp camping that I've ever seen.Sincerely, Lollygag