Food

I made a variety of my own trail dinners and breakfasts and resupply snacks/lunch on the trail. This is mostly because pre-prepared trail meals are pricey and you are extremely limited in your variety if you are vegetarian. I've been focusing on creating meals that are filling, have texture and are nutritious (with an emphasis placed on protein and calories). 

This is my trail soup, meal option #1. I started out only being able to eat half of one of these in one sitting, it took until the end of Oregon before I could eat a whole one in one sitting. I dried all the ingredients separately and combined them into 5 oz serving bags. I was a little skeptical of this meal when I first tried it but every time I've had it on the trail it gets better and it's really starting to grow on me. I never got tired of it, the whole way to Canada, I would make more of this for future hikes, that's how much I still like it.

Ingredients: Tomato powder, cous cous, chick peas, carrots, corn, spinach, multiple kinds of beans, lentils, tomato pieces, garlic and onion.

I also love lentils and rice so that is meal option #2. My trial trail run of this meal was a huge success because it smelled just like home. I found out just after the Sierra that adding powdered hummus to this makes it even more delicious.

Dried Lentils: lentils, turmeric, onion, and garlic 

The third option is Annie's Macaroni and Cheese. There are three different cheese varieties of this dinner so that is a nice way to change things up a bit too. Plus Annie's is delicious. Annie's night was always my favorite night. I'd save my Annie's for those extra hard days. 

I met someone on the trail mixing peanut butter and hot sauce with ramen to make a Thai type dish. I liked this idea and made my self some "flavor packets" to mix with ramen or rice noddles bought in town. These have powdered peanut butter, curry powder, garlic powder, dried onion and a soy sauce packet. I ended up hating these and ditched them in hiker boxes along the way, at least there were not that many of them.

This is making me drool already...

I looked into making my own granola bars as well because even buying them in bulk gets expensive quick if you are trying to snack all day to keep up a steady stream of nutritious energy.

 Ingredients in frame, before the bashing.

 After squishing it with a board and a big mallet.

Granola bars! I ended up getting a little tired of these. They were pretty good with nutella though, or if I was really hungry.

I also experimented with making my own smoothies for breakfast. This is the beginnings of a banana peanut butter smoothie.

I first puree the fruit (bananas or berries) and put the in the dehydrator for about a day and dry them up nice and crispy. I then throw them back into the food processor with powdered milk (and sometimes some powdered peanut butter for variety) and turn the whole thing into a powder. They have turned out pretty tasty, and I did enjoy them the whole way to Canada although I rarely ate them for breakfast, this was more of a 10 AM break snack.

These are banana peanut butter and banana berry.

Smoothies became too much work to do so I started making a second breakfast option: Chia Seed Pudding. Which made me feel full, but I ended up not being able stand this breakfast option after only a few weeks. Awful. never want to see a Chia seed again!!

Hot chocolate mix and Chia seeds. Cow approved & delicious, I mean disgusting.

I ate my homemade meal the whole way and I liked it. I bought new snacks and granola bars and the odd fresh vegetable or fruit to change it up along the way.  My favorite snack was dehydrated hummus with water, olive oil, and crushed up cheese its. I also loved Oreos and flavor blasted goldfish. I still love my soup, lentils and especially Annie's, but it feels weird if I don't eat it out of a bag.