[jennlin]

What food/snacks do you bring when you go hiking? I'm thinking of daylong hikes or short one night trips. What kind of cooking utensils do you bring? Just wondering how "normal" I am.

[Grinch]

Summer sausage, smoked gouda cheese. I also bring some cliff bars or something like that, but nothing tastes as good as the cheese and sausage.

[Dane]

Clif bars, fruit leather, snickers, various trail mixes from trader joes, tiger's milk bars, summer sausage and extra sharp cheddar... For overnighters I bring a small pot, spork, and freeze dried dinner.

[reststep]

I have found that grapes taste really good. I put them in a plastic container. Sometimes I will take fresh orange slices once again in a plastic container. Chocolate really seems to hit the spot when hiking. I buy the large Hershey simi-sweet bars and break them up and put them in a plastic bag. I always, well most of the time anyway, start out with a power bar in my pocket which I nibble on as I hike.

[moosefish]

If I'm with my kids (all under five years) I darn well better have M&Ms and hot cocoa. M&Ms are generically referred to as SHiBs, Special Hiking Bites. The "fun size" packs are ideal, but there ain't a lot of fun to be had in such a small bag in my opinion. I love pot noodle at the end of day of hiking. Must be the salt or the knowledge that if the combination of hiking and the pot noodle doesn't kill me nothing else will. Getting back to the car I almost always crave potato chips and Coke. Mmm... salt.

[sarbar]

Potato chips=potassium. That is why you crave them It isn't the salt necessarily! I pretty much carry whatever catches my eyes or I am in the mood for. Almost anything can be made trail-do-able food wise

[moosefish]

[sarbar]

[jennlin]

POTATOES are a good source of potassium? that's got to be one of the greatest things i've heard all my life. i was always told to eat bananas for potassium. potato chips from now on! what i normally bring for lunch on a day hikes is a sack of fried chicken from qfc or albertsons. we just keep it in the paper bag that they give it to us in (we ask for no box), then double plastic bag it. we also get potato wedges and sometimes corn dogs too....whatever we can find in the hot food department at a grocery store lol. when we come upon a spot appropriate for a fire, we'll stick our chicken on some branches and heat it up. delicious. warm day/summer hikes i like to bring a bag of salad too... as for snacks, we usually bring fig newtons, granola bars, squished and broken potato chips, and some sorta fruit to make us feel better about our lunch.

[sarbar]

Apricots are also a great source of potassium I get the packages of single serving dried apricots at the store, fig bars from Trader Joes (in the granola bar section), tater chips, I often carry homemade cup of soups to have for lunch (I bag them up in snack sized bags, for one cup hot water). I love carrying bagels and artsy cream cheeses/Swiss cheese for dayhikes. Fresh fruit is good also. Love grapes, Raspberries......I often carry fruit on day 1/2 of trips. On backpacking trips I bring my homemade Fauxbaker and make hot cake and biscuits (yes, easy to do!). I eat a lot of pasta nowdays. Beans. Olive oil. Mashed potato recipes. I do eat the recipes I post every week on my blog. Tested by me and the kidlet

[Stefan]

--apples - when you are done through em in da bushes --dried fruit - less weight --pretzels - salt and bread that is good all the time --Johnsonville Cheddar Brats - eat them right outta the bag, no cooking needed-most excellent! --Halva--kinda expensive but tasty and very high in fat--very good for energy for the next day. Those Polish guys who did the winter climbs of 8000 meter peaks used to eat this stuff all the time. Good for after dinner. --a sandwhich with ham and cheese and some red peppers and alfala sprouts --Sweet Maui Onion potato chips, best damned potato chips on planet Earth --also best pasta is angel hair pasta when cooking. it takes the least amount of time to cook and uses up the least amount of fuel.

[yukon222]

Sliced summer sausage Sharp cheddar cheese Smoked almonds Gatorade, water Something sweet - hard candies or Gummi bears Adult beverage, perhaps Yukon Jack :-) I don't bother with a stove for a dayhike or single overnight trip.

[jennlin]

oh yes..i forgot about the gummi bears. my bf is obsessed with these and gummi worms. stefan -- good tip with the angel hair...i'll have to try that sometime...doesnt the dry pasta break while in your backpack? how do you protect it?

[BeyondLost]

[Quark]

Ditto the halvah, Stef. The marbled is scrumptious. Cashews, home-dehydrated fruit, cooked hamburger patty or pork chop or chicken, a few hunks of cheese, and on a dayhike sometimes I throw in a yogurt drink. Payday candybars or Cadbury chocolate. For a cold rainy day a thermos of spicy tea; ginger or Good Earth Sweet Spices. I usually forget about it, and unearth from the bottom of my pack the following weekend, but there's a 25 percent chance I'll remember, so it's worth taking it. For overnight, I dehydrate pasta and vegies if I'm taking stuff I made myself; otherwise those lipton pasta dinners and a small packet of tuna or the Red River salmon packets that REI sells are good. You don't have to cook them for the 9 minutes they say to; I boil 'em for about a minute after adding them to the boiling water, then take the pot off the flame and let it set about 3-4 minutes and they finish cooking that way.