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jgoss4
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jgoss4
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 2:19 pm 
Hello, me and my brothers plan on doing the wonderland trail this July. I am wondering what type of foods we should take and looking for some ideas. I plan on doing instant oatmeal for most mornings, and a ton of protein/energy bars.. but other than that I am not sure what to take. I was thinking about buying a case of mountain house entrees for dinner but I am not sure about that. What are you guys going to be taking on your wonderland hikes?

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jenjen
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 2:56 pm 
Hot cereal is hard to beat for breakfasts. Lots of nutritional bang for the buck, and the stove is running to heat water for coffee anyway. (at least if you're like me. Coffee is not optional in my world.) My trail lunches are usually hard salami, hard cheese, tortillas (or bagels), trail mix... Hard salami and hard cheese both hold up really well for backpacking. For dinners I like to mix things up a bit. Trail pasta primavera (top ramen noodles, pesto paste, chopped veggies, a pouch of tuna), dehydrated entrees (look at packitgourmet.com for some tasty options), Lipton pasta sides with some tuna or chicken added, burritos made with instant refried beans and some of the cheese I carry for lunches..... I, personally, save the energy bars for snacks.

If life gives you melons - you might be dyslexic
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sarbar
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sarbar
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 3:11 pm 
Before you spend the money on the meals, be sure you can even eat them. Most of the meals are lacking in calories and are very salty. You can easily enough make your own meals that taste better, fill you up and save $$. Suggestion....be sure to doctor up your oatmeal - start with plain instant and add dry milk powder, a little brown sugar, dried fruit (diced), maybe some finely ground nuts, etc - it will fill you up and stick with you longer. Pack dry vegetables and fruits (freeze-dried is lighter by quite a bit than regular dehydrated) to add to meals. Pack a few small packets of soup (easy to make your own!) in case you have a cold day or have an upset stomach. Plan to pork out at Sunrise on a burger so bring cash. Stick treats in your food caches - ice tea in a bottle is nice (or pop), candy bars - stuff that won't melt. Chips are good too - you may crave crunchy foods!

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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Allison
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Allison
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 3:39 pm 
If you hate oatmeal as much as I do, cup-o-noodles is not a bad brekkie choice either.

www.allisonoutside.com follow me on Twitter! @AllisonLWoods
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sarbar
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sarbar
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 3:46 pm 
On breakfast....also working well is tortillas with nut butter and toppings of choice, they carry well even in heat. If you haven't been to this site, do check out Minimus.biz - you will find plenty of things to lust over for eating!

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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Slugman
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Slugman
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 3:52 pm 
I'm not much of a breakfast eater, usually I choke down a bagel or cliff bar with my morning coffee. So I often eat two lunches, though relatively small ones. For dinners I usually use a pre-made mountain house type dinner, though lately I've been "cutting" them with extra minute rice or noodles to make two dinners out of one. For lunch, I like taste, nutrition, and simplicity. My favorite by far is Trader Joe's jerky, which comes in beef, organic beef, buffalo, or turkey, and in original, pepper, and teriyaki flavors. They are soft and easy to chew, no nitrates or nitrites, not too salty or over-flavored. I combine some of that with Mini Babybell or Mini Bonbell cheeses, the little ones that come each in their own wax covering. They stay good for quite a while without refrigeration. Lastly I have some sort of chip, perhaps a corn chip, or maybe a peanut butter cracker type of thing, or even pretzels. On shorter trips, or early on in a longer trip, an apple makes the perfect desert item.

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grannyhiker
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:06 pm 
Breakfast--cold cereal (I detest hot cereal), either raisins or freeze-dried berries , sliced almonds or chopped walnuts, dried milk. Meusli and Grapenuts are my two favorites. I put this in a sandwich bag. In the morning I add cold water and mix thoroughly until all the powdered milk is dissolved. That way i don't have to fire up my stove in the mornings, saving time. If it's a really cold morning, though, I may go ahead and brew a cup of tea in my cooking pot--I drink out of the pot. Lunch--not a formal lunch but a continuous snacking throughout the day--nuts, dried fruit (freeze-dried on trips of 7 days or more to save weight), cereal bars, Odwalla bars, Hydralite drink mix. Dinner--usually a home-dehydrated dinner. You can make up many different dinners with supermarket ingredients. Click on the website in Sarbar's post above for details and lots of recipes. Each night's dinner is in a freezer bag. I boil water, pour it into the freezer bag, stir, close the bag, put in a cozy to keep warm and let it sit 15 minutes. In the meantime, I brew herbal tea with the remainder of the hot water. While the dinner is rehydrating in its cozy, I sit there and sip my tea. I then eat my dinner out of the freezer bag. When dinner is over, the empty freezer bag goes in my garbage sack, I lick the spoon, rinse and dry the pot, and I'm done. I hate washing dishes! I'd rather go watch the sunset! Sarbar is my heroine!

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.--E.Abbey
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yaki
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yaki
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:12 pm 
Here's a list of our menu from our Wonderland Trail hike last summer. There were 3 of us ( myself, husband and 11 YO daughter). Most of the recipes came from Sarbar's Freezer Bag cooking book and website. For snacks we had trailmix, pringles, jerkey and cookies. I ate all this and still lost 10 pounds. biggrin.gif Day 1 L sandwiches, chips fruit D potato soup, fruit, hostess pies Day 2 - B Oatmeal L @ Longmire (we'd be passing through Longmire around lunch time so we just ate lunch there) D- salmon chowder for Jamie, teriyaki chicken w/ rice for Curt and Emily Day 3 B - Morning potatoes L - peanut butter and honey honey on bagels D- potatoes and cheese with broccoli for Jamie and Emily, curried Thai chicken and rice for Curt Day 4 B- breakfast rice L- chicken tomato wraps D- thanksgiving on trail, apple pie pudding Day 5 B- coconut berry oatmeal L- rice and bean burritos D- chicken carbonara for Jamie and Curt/ Taters ham and cheese for Emily Day 6 B- breakfast potatoes L- south western chicken wraps D- chili / piggy pie pudding Day 7 B-breakfast rice L- peanut butter and honey on bagels D- bacon and potato chowder/ FD ice cream Day 8 B-oatmeal L- tuna wraps D- out (ate dinner at Sunrise cafeteria) Day 9 B- Breakfast potatoes L- rice and bean burritos D- thanksgiving on trail , fruit pies Day 10 B- breakfast rice L- chicken wrap

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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:23 pm 
On longer trips of 5-6 nights I usually carry 2-3 Mt. House meals. Mt. House is my favorite of the "freeze dried meal in a pouch" manufacturers but there are only a few of their varieties I like. The Lasagna, Beef Stew, and Chicken & Rice are pretty good. They used to make an oriental chicken dish that was really good but they don't make it any more... Keep in mind that the pouches usually say "serves 2" but that's assuming you plan to carry a bunch of other pouches of their stuff to make a several-course meal. I don't know anyone who actually does that. I'll eat one whole "serves 2" pouch and usually wish I had more. The main advantage to these things is weight and convenience. That said, there are tons of other options that cost less, are tastier, and weigh only a little bit more on your grocery store shelves. I try to aim for stuff that takes very little cooking. I don't want to carry a lot of fuel either. This usually rules out pasta as it takes too long to cook plus there's the question of what to do with the water from it after it's cooked - I don't like pouring food-scented liquids on the ground near my camp site and I only ever carry one pot so no good way to store it and use it for something else like sauce. I don't like oatmeal at all, but I do like Cream of Wheat so I usually have that for breakfast and mix in sugar, cinnamon, and dried fruit. I've used brown sugar in the past but it weighs more than regular sugar and some cinnamon. I like the powdered milk idea too, I'll try that next time. If I'm going light and don't want to have to cook I'll buy granola - the good stuff that has lots of calories and dried fruit mixed in. That makes a decent cold breakfast though like JenJen I almost always have coffee in the morning. Look for the noodle bowls that are designed to be cooked in the microwave and come with a couple packets of extra stuff like a flavoring oil and veggies. Take them out of their packaging and just put them in a ziploc. you only have to get water to boiling for these. Add something like a can of chicken or pouch of tuna (why don't they make 6 oz. pouches of chicken like they do tuna???) to make a reasonably hearty meal. I have made chicken quesadillas in the backcountry before and they were great. Tortillas, shredded cheese, can of chicken, a sprinkling of taco seasoning mix (the kind that's supposed to be added to ground beef) and some Tapatio. Trail mix is good stuff but heavy. A little goes a long way in the calorie department though. You can make your own from the bulk food bins which is how I do it as the prepared stuff almost always has something in it I'd rather it didn't. These things are great with a little peanut butter between them. There are lots and lots of options. Go wander around the biggest supermarket you can find and use your imagination keeping weight and ease of preparation in mind.

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Allison
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Allison
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:42 pm 
Chainsaw--drink your pasta cooking water. If you need to sex it up, add any flavor of bullion. I like the tomato/chicken ones and the bacon ones. General thing about dried milk--Nido brand is not a skim milk. Tastes better and it's full fat. Best place I've found to find it is at Asian grocery stores. HT Mart in Oak Tree for example. Also this thread looks like a good place to mention Ova Easy again. Good dried eggs, the best really. They have them at the Greenwood Market on 85th and 3rd NW in N SEA. (also GM is a union store)

www.allisonoutside.com follow me on Twitter! @AllisonLWoods
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sarbar
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sarbar
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:48 pm 
Walmart's with grocery sections (and Supercenters) carry Nido, as do nearly all Hispanic grocery stores. On pasta cooking water - if done right one can cook pasta and have no wasted water. http://www.trailcooking.com/recipes/one-pot-chickpea-pasta http://www.trailcooking.com/recipes/garden-veggie-couscous http://www.trailcooking.com/recipes/one-pot-pasta-and-chicken http://www.trailcooking.com/recipes/pesto-tomato-pasta http://www.trailcooking.com/recipes/cherry-chicken-couscous And so on! smile.gif

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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sarbar
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sarbar
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PostSun Jun 05, 2011 4:50 pm 
Also on cooking pasta: If you cook your pasta at home (shave off about 3 minutes cook time), rinse and then dehydrate it (in a dehydrator or an oven) you will "instant" pasta. All it needs is to sit in hot water for 10-15 minutes. Just cover barely and you use less fuel and no watching the pot for boiling over....

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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forest gnome
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forest gnome
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PostMon Jun 06, 2011 8:50 am 
PAKLIGHT trail foods....spell it packlite/skumpin.. ENERTIA trail foods (coleman has a few of their meals) packit gourmet trailfoods... search those for some edible food..oh allso hawkvittles.com?

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sarbar
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sarbar
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PostMon Jun 06, 2011 8:53 am 
Packlight is doing some new changes these days as well! Packitgourmet is always a safe bet.

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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jenjen
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jenjen
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PostMon Jun 06, 2011 9:06 am 
Packitgourmet's polenta with cheese and sausage is the breakfast food of the gods. It's also the dinner food of the gods. The stuff is just plain tasty! Packitgourmet also carries little packets and pouches of all sorts of useful stuff. If you like hot sauce, check out the 505 Southwestern chili sauce they sell.

If life gives you melons - you might be dyslexic
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