[pct-l] trail food

[jjolson at uwyo.edu (Jeffrey J. Olson)]

My favorite dinners are a compilation of cheap, healthy components.  There 
are four basic levels.

The first level is the base; pasta, instant rice, cous cous, polenta (grits) 
or potato flakes, my favorite.  4 oz for the first couple weeks, 6 oz for 
the rest of the hike.

The second level is a dehydrated soup; split pea, black bean (with extra 
salt) or my favorite, curried lentil.  2 oz for the first couple weeks, and 
3-4 oz for the rest of the hike.

The third level is the "binder."  I never knew about binders until I got 
disgusted with prepackaged freeze dried food - mostly price.  The binder is 
the ingredient that ties everything else together.  Rice and black bean soup 
mix gets old real fast.

The bind I favor is parmesian cheese - Kraft or some other generic version. 
The stuff lasts forever and has good fat content.  For the first two weeks - 
2oz, and 3 oz for the rest of the hike.  You can carry oil or margarine, 
fake and tubbed, but I've found that good old Kraft Parmesian makes me smack 
my lips as I wolf down dinner.  I usually include an ounce of 4% dehydrated 
milk as another binder.

The fourth level is where you get creative, and can use the dehydrator. 
Anything goes.  An oddity I like is to include dehydrated blueberries, an 
ounce or two, in a dinner once in a while.  Vegetables, etc.   Whatever the 
imagination can concoct.  If you use potato flakes, include fake margarine 
and about three ounces per person of soy baco bits.  That's a lot of baco 
bits, believe me...  They are salty and absolutely wonderful.  Potato flakes 
makes the greatest volume per weight, but there are some issues with the 
hypoglycemic spike some people might have to consider.

I package dinners at home in the same manner.  Use a gallon freezer bag to 
put the rice/pasta/cous cous in.  Then put the soup in a quart freezer bag. 
Put the cheese in a quart sandwich bag.  Put both quart bags in the gallon 
bag, seal the gallon bag so there is the least air in it as possible, and 
then secure with a small strip of duct tape.

I know all these bags sounds wasteful and lots of extra weight, but being 
able to get the water to boil, put in the instant rice, let it cook for 20 
seconds, mix in the soup, turn off the stove, or some favorite order - makes 
controlling the process easier.  Finally, you can either add the parmesian 
just before serving to the whole pot, which means you have to spend more 
time cleaning it, or to your individual servings, which means you only have 
cheesy residue on your cup.  I fknow all this as I weight and measure and 
bag and tape.  Experience has me do what works for me.

You can vary your dinners so you don't have the same dinner but twice a 
month.  I found I preferred more curried lentil dinners and fewer black 
beans.  I really liked potato dinners once a week.  They make a LOT of food 
for the weight, and taste so, so, good with the margarine and baco bits. 
I'm a little suspect about the potato dinner's nutrition, hence they are a 
treat - once a week.

This stuff is all bought in bulk.  The idea of shopping as you go has its 
fans, but I don't like leaving the trail, and I know what I will eat on the 
trail.  Mac and cheese it ain't...  My package disappeared from the Big Lake 
Religious camp and I had to hitch into Sisters for a resupply at the store 
at the edge of town.  $50 for five days.  I figured that I was spending 
about $4 a day if I ate nothing but bulk food.  My folks live in the bay 
area and shipping the food was not that expensive.  I so appreciated my next 
food drop at Timberline Lodge...  The store bought stuff just wasn't the 
same.  Where were the baggies?

When I added the mealpack bars, or power bars, or any of the "someone else 
does the work" foods, the cost easily doubled.  That said, I'm a convert to 
the 4oz bars you can buy for less than a buck at http://mealpack.com/.  You 
get 440 calories for less than a buck!!!  You have to buy a minimum of 50 
bars, but that's not a big deal.

On my solo hikes now I don't cook, and eat four of these a day.  Ummm... 
For dinners without cooking, I'm a big fan of fareast mixes.  I used to shop 
at Ballard Market in Seattle, and the choices for a week long solo hike in 
the bulk bins still make my mouth water.  There is nothing like the sensory 
experience of chewing up 8 oz of far east mix while lying in the tent or on 
the pad, staring off into space, tired, aching, ready for sleep.

The cooked dinners are easily inhaled.  The far east mix has to be chewed, 
and water drank, or it gets stuck in the gullet, and then you choke and get 
all flemmed out trying to get it to go down, or if it's bad enough, to go 
up!  I enjoy nothing more than putting my butt on the ground and eating fast 
hiking food really, really slowly.  To generate enough saliva to swallow - 
that is the goal...!!!  And when I find myself licking the bottom of the 
baggie for the last salt, I know I'm not too full, but I'm satisfied...  The 
cat with the chesire smile.

This whole cooking thing seems like such a time consuming, effort filled, 
depression creating experience.  You're tired.  You're setting up camp and 
getting water and changing clothes and looking for good food-hanging trees, 
and then  you have to cook!

I am so relieved to stop, put up the tent, change into sleep clothes, get 
into the tent, and munch far east mix and fall asleep.  I suppose that's why 
I hike alone.  No one else I know has a "trail centered" approach to 
backpacking.  They all are "camp centered."  I don't like camp stuff.  It's 
spinning the wheels til you get to go to bed.  Sure, it's fun sometimes if 
you're on a week trip.  But anything over two weeks, forget it. I'd much 
rather stop at noon, take two hours, wash clothes, digest peanut butter, 
take a nap, get a tan on my butt, and marvel at the view than take a half 
hour lunch and hike til five, and do the camp thing.

One of my most memorable noon experiences was walking up from Milk Creek - 
1500' or so of brush, wet brush that day - and stopping at a stream with a 
view up Glacier Peak once I got to the top.  I got out my butt pad, ate 
lunch, pulled out stuff to dry, and fell asleep watching the mountain go 
through its shadow/sun cycles.  I woke up disoriented with the fog/clouds 
spilling UP from Milk Creek far below, the wisps changing the temperature by 
10 degrees every ten seconds.  I felt no compunction to get up and go, and 
lolled around for another half hour, dozing, watching the clouds, pulling my 
dry sleeping bag over me, snuggling, luxuriating in a prime moment in 
being...  If I was hiking with a lover, this is when we made love...

And if I'd been with someone other than a lover, they'd've wanted to get up 
and go and get to a camp, down in the valley, in the forest, where it was 
cold and damp and cloudy...  I made my camp down off the ridge, but I set up 
the tent next to the creek, a half hour from dark, ate my far east mix, 
stared at the little burbling waterfall, and fell asleep...

I know there are countless paths walked in the wilderness, and mine is but 
one of them.  The sense of being alone for days on end, speaking only in my 
head, finding the compassion for myself to let all the worldly crap flow 
through me without driving me to act from it - this is the sartorial bliss 
that is possible.  I admit I fail routinely to be mellow, to spend two hours 
"lolling" at lunch while hiking.  I'm either driven by deadlines on a 
shorter trip, or by food drops, or my own sense of not wanting to face the 
demons lurking inside.  They have voices and faces and they are all me...

So it makes sense that I want to have four levels of food, to put it all in 
three baggies, to vary what I cook each night so I don't eat the same thing 
but once every two weeks.  The planning and motions involved in sorting bulk 
food are all emotional preparation for giving up control.

It's like getting out of bed, slipping on the fleece in the 45 degree house, 
the slippers, and shuffling into the kitchen and turning on the light with 
the dimmer switch - the light is low.  Grind 3 quarters of a cup of 
caffeinated beans, and a half cup of decaf beans.  Fill the pot with water, 
put a filter in the filter holder, and go take a dump.  The coffee is done 
grinding by the end of the dump and I transfer the ground coffee to the 
filter, put the filter on the brewer, turn on the machine, and go get the 
papers outside where it is very dark and very cold.

All the preparation of food deals with the sense that being alone on the 
trail for any length of time is going to be hard.  To have any routine that 
connects me with home will comfort.  Lots of little baggies with different 
kinds of food in them is really, really comforting...

So while I don't cook when alone, I do put my food in lots of baggies.  I do 
chew not just to be able to swallow, but to remember that I chose to eat far 
east mix because I like to chew.  I'm a happy boy when I chew my food.

The order in the planning and packing and parsing and boxing is all a grand 
preparation for being in a life where there is no order, no planning other 
than to get through the next day, no parsing other than holding emotions in 
check.  Knowing I will open a baggie with food in it while I'm putting the 
food in it is both spiritual and absurd.  But what isn't???

Jeff Olson
Laramie Wyoming, where winter threatens...