Non cooking food for breakfast and lunch

[misterfloyd]

Hello to all,

It is the time of year where I start asking a lot of questions. Thank you all for your comments and what I would consider help.

Food is my last greatest weakness not being able to plan well.

Last year for breakfast I packed oatmeal and pop tarts for breakfast. Not bad, although poptarts are heavy, and I want to get a little lighter in the food dept. I like both, but I was hoping to save the cooking part until I reach my destination.

Lunch I packed tortillas, and had summer sausage (sorry I'm a carnivore, and it got worse as I went ). I also had ramen noodles and peanut butter and ate them like rice cakes. Gotta tell you I don't want to do this again!. It also seemed that Tortillas are heavy as well.

I have gone through various lists that people have posted, and copied them down. I always bring way too much food. But I'm at a loss for other alternatives for the above.

I'm going through the smokies to Damascus. I want to avoid Gatlinburg in not resupplying there. Hence the reason to pack lighter.

Any suggestions, comments, goodwill, is greatly appreciated and accepted.

Best,
Floyd

[bigcranky]

Lunch ideas:

Crackers, cheese, jerky. I like the Ritz mini-tubes with a single serving of crackers, 8 tubes to a box. They don't seem to crush easily. Cheese can be anything - Cracker Barrel sharp cheddar lasts several days, and individually wrapped cheese sticks last a week or more. I love Trader Joe's Buffalo jerky, but any dried meat or summer sausage will do.

Tortilla, big packet of tuna, and some mayo packets. Add some cheese sticks, too. One of my favorite no-cook trail meals.

Tortilla, peanut butter, Nutella. Sprinkle with gorp or granola or dried fruit. Also good spread on crackers instead.

Tortilla, turkey pepperoni, mozarella sticks. I buy the turkey pepperoni in the little bags -- turkey is a lot less greasy. This is great with a couple of mustard packets too.

Powdered hummus mix. Mix up with some water, spread on crackers or tortillas. Really great if you bring a cucumber out of town with you. Totally sumblime if you have a lemon or a lemon juice packet to add to the mix.

Deli meat and cheese in a tortilla. This is good for the first day out of town -- grab some prepackaged deli ham or turkey in the cold section of the supermarket, and some sliced cheese. Good with mayo and mustard packets.

Subway foot long Spicy Italian, fully loaded. Get it on way out of town, wrap carefully (double or triple bag it) and stop after a couple of miles for a great lunch.

Breakfast ideas:

Any kind of cold cereal with dried fruit, nuts, and powdered milk. I like my wife's homemade granola recipe (printed here), but I also like Grape Nuts, commercial granola, and any other not-too-fragile cereal. Any kind of dried fruit is good -- cranberries are cheap and plentiful, but dried sour cherries are terrific. I like walnuts in mine, or pecans. If I have the opportunity, I prefer to pre-bag the cereal with the fruit, nuts, and powdered milk ahead of time in ziploc bags, and just add water, shake, and eat from the bag.

You already know about pop tarts

Have fun!

[Rocket Jones]

Cook and dehydrate quinoa, then treat it like granola. Dried cherries, nuts, a little brown sugar and powdered milk. Add hot or cold water to the Ziploc.

[chiefiepoo]

Been munching the Nabisco BelVita breakfast bars for the past two years. Dried fruit and dry cereal other days.

[mad4scrapping]

I love the idea of putting the powdered milk in the bag with the granola and then adding water! Brilliant and simple.

[whatnot]

No-cook breakfast (I eat this nearly everyday on and off the trail): Pour into your water bottle 2 or 3 packets of oatmeal, add crushed raisin bran, fill with creek water. Give it a few shakes and let it sit while you pack up your gear. Then drink it down. Sometimes I add Instant Breakfast powder to the mix.

Sometimes I just eat a Snickers bar, drink a bottle of water.....and go.

[daddytwosticks]

Not light by any means but full of calories and taste: fried apple pies from Krispy Kreame.

[slbirdnerd]

I had been looking for breakfast food too and found a couple things: Nature Valley Breakfast Biscuits, which are new and less like a granola bar. I got the blueberry, they are really good. Also, Quaker has Oatmeal and Yogurt Sandwich Biscuits which I got and they are a good option too. I can tell you I found these is weird places in the store so you might have to ask.

[garlic08]

Carrying fatty food is one way to lighten up your food load. Fat has twice the calorie density of carbs (9 cal/g vs 4). Nuts and nut butters are a good bet in any kind of weather. Cheese is good for the first few days in warm weather. Everyone likes tortillas because of the high fat content (shortening or lard), but they do have some water weight as well.

My favorite no-cook meal, on or off trail, is rolled oats with walnuts, raisins, and powdered milk. Rolled (old fashioned) oats are already cooked (parboiled) in processing and can be eaten cold.

The best way of lightening your food load you've already alluded to--don't carry any extra. Like most, I used to carry an extra "emergency meal," until I went hungry a few times on my PCT hike and managed to survive somehow. I learned that food doesn't really fall into the emergency category for me.

[astrogirl]

I don't cook on most trips. For breakfast, I usually have a protein shake with instant coffee thrown in.

The rest of the day, I'll eat a chicken/tuna packet with mayo and/or mustard, GF bagel, cheddar cheese, trail mix, dried fruit, nuts and candy.

[goody5534]

BOBOS Bars...Bobos Oat Bars | Moist & Delicious Hand-Made Treat

[misterfloyd]

Thank you all for your helpful hints. I will take note of these.

I love snickers, and I will look into the nature valley biscuits as well. I love oatmeal so the previous suggestions are great. I love the Krispy Creme one!! I really appreciate them all and try them out!

Unfortunately, I cannot drink milk in any form. Not for any medical reasons but for the taste. Haven't had it in over 20 years in a glass. I have thought about a protein shake as well.

Thank you again for so many ideas.

Floyd

[Odd Man Out]

For me, I like PB and J on a tortilla for lunch. Jam is the one food with lots of water I'm inclined to take. It turns out tortillas are about the same.

BTW, don't think of food as "heavy". What is key is calorie density or calories per gram. When I look up the data, I found that tortillas are in fact "heavy" in that they have a relatively low calorie density - same as fruit jam. But they do have a good balance of fat, carbs and protein. Jam is pretty much sugar and water, but I feel like I'm eating fruit, so that make me happy. Pop tarts on the other hand come out pretty good. They have a low water content, about the same as instant oatmeal, but a higher calorie density due to their fat content (data below is for brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tart). Now if you put a pad of butter in your oatmeal, it would come out about the same. Here is the nutritional data for 100 g of each. If you calculate how "heavy" each one is (grams per 100 calories), you find tortillas and jam are the heaviest at 35 grams. As a reference, oatmeal is 27 grams. Pop Tarts are light at only 23 grams. If you want a really light pack, pack PB at only 17 grams, or about half the weight of tortillas and jam.

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[Odd Man Out]

BTW, the data comes from http://nutritiondata.self.com/
The water weight is estimated by subtracting protein, fat, and carbs from 100 (assumes water is everything else).

[mtntopper]

packitgourmet.com has a lot of no cook meals

[nastynate]

My go to breakfast is a Probar superfruit slam and some coffee. Hot or cold depending on my mood. Lunch is usually another probar or a couple snickers and dried fruit. Handfull of jerky. Not the cheapest, but I'm not a thru-hiker and don't get out a ton. So I like the convenience.

[SoCal Mike]

I make the trail bar recipe in this post and eat them for snacks or breakfast (they are great with coffee):

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-...thread_id=5110

[Dogwood]

When it starts getting hot outside I feel less need for a hot b-fast so I often eliminate cooking that meal by going with a nutritional bar such as Bobo's Oat Bars as Goody suggested or a Pro Bar or something equivalent w/ about 300-400 cals. I might nosh a packet of Justin's Almond Butter or Peanut Butter and some dried fruit or other nuts with the nutritional bar. Under these conditions I'll sometimes have a pre mixed baggie of oatmeal, powdered milk, dried fruit, nuts, etc and add water to the mix the night before to have ready to eat in the morning. Get up and go.

[Dogwood]

BTW, you say you can't drink milk in any form but there are different types of milk with different tastes and nutrition. For example, try powdered vanilla or chocolate soy milk, powdered coconut milk(YUMMY!, I've even bought powdered coconut milk packs at Walmart), goat's milk(takes some getting uses to just as it initially took time to get accustomed to drinking cow's milk! but I've been noticing it more often in packets in larger mainstream grocery stores under the brand name Meyenberg's Goat Milk), powdered vanilla rice milk, hemp milk(I've only seen this in liquid form), etc

[jimmyjam]

My usual hiking breakfast is two cheerios bars and some honey. Lunch is either tuna or pnutbutter on a wrap or oreos dipped in pnutbutter

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