[harrymalamute]

You either love Spam or gross out on it. Harry and his canine companions like Spam single's rolled in a tortilla shell with string cheese. I like big calories so the military MRE's, just take the main coarse beaf stew, chicken ala king ect. can be eaten hot or cold. it works for soldiers i'll work for you. find at army surplus or a friend in the military. Always snausage cheese and crackers. small frequent snacks to keep the engine running but doesn't take excess time to get back on the trail. must have stove- coffee-coffee-coffee

[brianle]

"you don't save weight often with no-cook" I don't think that's universally true, and it goes beyond just looking at how many days you're out for. I don't cook for breakfast (or lunch) anyway, so for me the incremental weight and hassle of stove, windscreen, possibly bowl or plate to eat off of, fuel, cookpot, possibly something(s) to help clean the pot and possibly plate/bowl --- that's significant weight and hassle for just cooking dinner meals, and particularly on a relatively short trip. Some no-cook dinner meals don't add much or at all to food weight. A primary example is idahoan brand mashed potatos. While of course a bit nicer when hot, following someone else's recommendation I found it quite acceptable to eat these cold. It's not intuitive, but after trying it I was sold. My other "go to" meal that I can easily resupply in a fairly modest grocery store is foil packets of tuna along with some sort of cracker or other bread item. Initially I would try to put the tuna on the cracker and eat these together, but this became too messy and too much effort, so for me it's --- eat some tuna from the foil pouch. Take a bite of cracker (or pita bread or whatever you've got). Lather, rinse, repeat. Augment with the stuff I eat for breakfast and lunch as appropriate. I've walked out of trail towns iwth a packet of hot dog buns and some sort of package of sausages; eat these for lunch and dinner (cold) for the first couple of days, works fine, added a bit of variety to my trail diet. For fairly short trips, I now think it's a bit loony to make a big production out of putting some calories into my body. Keep it simple and don't be too picky on the trail --- I can have a nice steak or whatever along the drive home from the trailhead if I'm inclined.

[Kim Brown]

Do you just soak the potato mixture in water to moosh it up, or is it crunchy when you eat it? I did a no-cook weekend once (maybe 3 days, but I think it was only a weekend) and it drove me nuts to not have something hot to eat. An alcohol stove (aluminum V8 can, not one of those fancy heavy ones), windscreen, a bit of fuel & matches weights too little for me to do without. Of course, if out for prolonged periods of time, I may get used to it, but I personally don't see the point in going through that withdrawal period for what I do.

[brianle]

"Do you just soak the potato mixture in water to moosh it up, or is it crunchy when you eat it?" When cooking I use the FBC (freezer bag cooking) method, and I do just the same thing I would do if it were hot water: put the instant potato powder into a ziplock, add water, then knead it for a while to get all the powder hydrated, keep kneading it a bit until it's set up. It's only 'crunchy' if I fail to knead water into all of the potato powder. If I'm feeling so-inclined, I might put the freezer bag inside my clothing for a while so that it eventually comes up to at least body temperature, but I rarely bother, it's just sort of altering perception and expectation. If I think of it as eating a hot meal 'cold', I'm less happy than if I just think of it as --- eating. Something that is in fact tasty as-is. "Of course, if out for prolonged periods of time, I may get used to it, but I personally don't see the point in going through that withdrawal period for what I do." We're each of us different, no universal right (or wrong) answers here (!). My current thinking on this is sort of the reverse, however. For short periods, it strikes me as not worth the hassle of messing with stove and fuel, at least if I'm solo hiking (my wife still wants a hot dinner). For longer trips, perhaps 3 - 4 weeks or longer, and particularly if my food resupply food selection is limited (gas station mini-mart, that sort of thing), a stove can add more options to increase the variety. For example, Knorr side dishes generally need to be cooked (at least for me), so when something like that is available and not too many other dinner options are, a light stove is a nice thing to have. Cooking gear for me weighs about 8 oz plus up to an ounce of denatured alcohol per night on the trail; not too bad a hit for some added meal flexibility on a long trip. On the CDT this year I ate cold for about the first thousand miles and didn't miss the stove (and enjoyed in fact not having to mess with it), yet when I got it after that I was happy to have it. Go figure.