So You Want to Go Hiking, Volume 3

 

Noah's Unofficial Guide to Not Dying in the Backcountry, Volume 3

Things to Put in Your Belly

We've got packs. We now understand how to sleep. We're on a roll! Here's the thing: as you carry you foldable/inflatable televisions and solar powered king-sized mattresses all over Zod's Creation, you're going to burn a lot of calories. Fitness disguised as a nature walk! But fitness...I mean...lovely and calm nature walks make one hungry. And so one wishes to eat.

But how does one eat on The Trail and without the Collapsible Flyweight Ultralight Minimalist Camp Oven and Microwave Duo? Must one subsist on nuts and berries and twigs and roadkill? What of your blueberry muffins enjoyed with hand-muddled Tibetan tea at that one Zen-like bend in the River Trail?

Pad Thai along the trail with a side of gently-fried rangoons? Lies.

Good news! You can have that muffin - probably - and that lovely tea - kinda - and not everything needs to be freeze-dried or an MRE! Basically, I look at food on overnight or long day-hikes in two categories: 1) meals on a break or a site; and b) snacks whilst you walk. But before we even get to the what-to-put-in-your-face part, we should talk about the how-to-make-it-edible part: 

A Cooker Thing and Things to Put Food On Instead of Your Hands

Some - and I stress some - land through which you hike allows for controlled fires, either in provided individual firepits or group firepits. Find dead wood (everywhere prohibits you from cutting your own wood, and besides, freshly-cut "green" wood doesn't like to catch on fire), pile it up, make fire (we will actually cover this in future episodes of the blog), heat dead thing or plant over it like caveman. But a lot of state and federal land doesn't allow fires, and when you're hiking not in the lovely old forests on my native Michigan but instead in a canyon in the desert, wood is hard to come by. Plus, trying to boil water in your bare hands is inadvisable, as is eating uncooked rice.

So, one needs a source of flame that's not a giant bonfire, and some pots and pans that aren't Gramma's cast iron.

This hiker may have overdone it...

My boys and I carry the MSR WhisperLite. It's small, light, collapsible, and relatively easy to use. It's not exactly wind-proof, but it comes with this bendy piece of metal you can wrap around it if it's windy, and it does just fine. Heats 1 Liter of water to boiling in like 3 minutes. Do yourself a favor: also get a couple 20-oz MSR fuel bottles and some SuperFuel (or "Coleman Gas"), or you'll have this lovely little stove-as-sculpture, that's not cooking your food. I'm telling you: my 12-year-olds can operate a WhisperLite. It's not hard.

As for pots and pans, my boys and I carry the MSR nesting pot set (2 pots, 2 stoves gets 4 people eating quickly), and when we want to get fancy, we have an MSR skillet that will nest under that pot set. Nesting stuff is very important; it makes packing easier and puts all the related things you need in one spot in your pack.

You're already dirty, so...

And finally: I don't suppose you want to eat with your hands. You can, and it's very caveman so to do. Ahhh, the satisfying mush of handling mac-n-cheese with your fingers... Uh, anyway, we carry these mess kits. We don't use the cups, but they are gradated on the inside to be measuring cups, like these hiking companies thought of everything or something. And this kitchen utensil kit is perfect, as it has a little cutting board, measuring spoons, and even some squeeze bottles if you're getting super fancy and want to carry cooking oil, and some dish soap. You are going to want to clean your dishes, after all.

Things to Put in Your Face

Equipped now with your Chef's Deluxe Cooking Set with Sautee and Omelet Pans, let's eat! The goal is

A gastronomic delight!

not only delightful, tasty food; it's also about calories, because you burn more than you think hauling around packs on uneven trails.

Freeze-Dried

The most expensive but the most convenient option is: freeze-dried hiker food. You can't beat this stuff for convenience: heat water, dump water into the package itself, reseal, and wait a few minutes. Voila: dinner is served. In general, one pouch feeds one person (even though it says two servings; nah). Now, not all freeze-dried food is created equal. Some is downright awful. Lucky for you, the Smith Boys have sampled a wide variety of freeze-dried creations, and offer unto you our recommended brands and selections:

• Packit Gourmet; yowza, some good stuff here. My boys would murder each other for the All-American Works Burger if we didn't bring enough for everyone (requires you to pack your own tortillas, which is brilliant), the Poblano Corn Chowder is outstanding, the Pasta Beef Bolognese is lovely, and the Burrito with Fajita Chicken was a great meal. Explore these guys; we haven't had a bad one yet. The Breakfast Tacos are also a big hit.
• Good To Go; some more just amazing meals, taste- and convenience-wise. Pad Thai was outstanding, and made so much that 1 pouch fed 2 of us. I loved the Mexican Quinoa Bowl. The boys loved the Smoked Chili and the Corn Chowder.
• Mary Jane's Farm; I mean, the name is...funny? If.. anyway. Lovely Garlic-Pesto Fry Bread, and the breakfast Bac'Un Scrambler (vegan, for the vegan cultists) were superb. Pack that frying pan I talked about for these.
• Backpackers Pantry. Haven't had a ton from this company, but the Three Sisters Stew was lovely and filling.
• Mountain House; is...fine. Not amazing, but for younger palates who normally subsist on chicken nuggets and Chef Boyardee, Mountain House hit the spot. Chili Mac was a hit and the Chicken Fried Rice was both enough for 2 people, and a nice supplement/side dish to other meals. The Scrambled Eggs with Bacon was actually pretty good.

The other benefit here is waste. Remember: you pack everything on trips in the backcountry, including your trash. When you're done with these, just mush that little packet flat! 2 days on the trail not-quite-filled 1 gallon-sized ziplock as our trash bag. Perfect. 

Home-Made

What you're trying to do here is replicate home-cooked meals, understanding you can't (well, you shouldn't anyway) pack a cooler. Eggs will actually keep a couple days - put them in hard plastic, though, because...EGGS - and cheese and sausages and apples even longer, like all those Lord of the Rings movies (I mean the food lasts as long as the movies...). That stuff just takes a little more room and weight than the freeze-dried stuff, but if it's a luxury you can handle, then luxuriate away.

I mean, I guess you can pretend...

How is one to satisfy their carnivorous cravings if one can't haul slabs of steak and ribs on the trail without all the flies and rot? Ah, the modern era provides us with plentiful pre-cooked options! WARNING: don't pre-cook your own chicken and put it in a ziploc. You will barf and die. I have not experienced this barf-and-death scenario, because I have a brain.

Canned chicken, beef, and fish if fine, but the cans are just a little clunky and have sharp edges when it comes to packing your trash. But the modern era has delivered unto us many lovely options of pouched, pre-cooked meats to add to your home-made/trail-made meals! This is handy because it saves you from having to hunt and/or fish it yourself, which will almost always lead to disappointment and starvation.

I have several homemade hiker recipes, which turn out to be pretty darn similar to this guy's stuff. Using various combinations of minute rice, dried beans, couscous, spices, and lovely meat-in-a-pouch, you can eat like an experienced trail king! Seriously, this dude has put some of the most common homemade hiker recipes all in one place, and carrying a box of minute rice and such is light and will cover several meals.

I really respect this blog's thoughtfulness on trail food ideas. They've really thought about calories and ease and weight, and anything I type - apart from prolonging this slog of a post already - would be repetitive. This is some amazing advice on "what the Hell should I carry??" Well, everything, that is, except item #41. That's some bullshit. Don't you dare "brew beer on the trail." I have a whole other blog about beer brewing I should reawaken. Anyway...

MREs

Don't.

Snacks

Can you walk and chew gum? At the same time? Then this is for you! 

Dried fruit, peanut butter cups (not the candy, but those little cups of actual peanut butter), trail mix, Cliff Bars, granola bars, granola. These are the staples of eating-and-walking. Honestly? Stay away

Actual mountain of Skittles

from the candy, and I don't just say that as a diabetic who gets jealous of all the people enjoying Skittles. Processed sugar offers empty calories that will give your energy peaks-and-valleys and no other nutrients that you're burning away as you haul your U-Haul of stuff through the woods.

A Note on Trash

What you carry in, you carry out. My boys and I carry gallon-sized Ziploc bags as trash bags for 2 reasons: 1) that forces us to stay minimal in what we bring that needs to be thrown away; and B) they close easily, which matters...because animals.

Animals like your smells. Everything from mice and moles to raccoons to bears, and maybe crocodiles. And while you'll probably be fine as you walk around in the daytime with your packs on and your tiny trash bag in it - and your uneaten food - it's what you do with your trash at night that counts.

This is so exciting: our next post, dear reader, and I just can't wait: Trash and Poo - Your Guide to Wilderness Waste! 

Good times. So, there be it: filling your face in the woods! As always, we hope this has been informative, and we wish you the best for not dying in the backcountry!