View Full Version : cheapest meal plans and CKT
petedelisio
03-29-2019, 13:14
Cheapest meal plans for long distance hiking or short...
Sure big tub of oatmeal, peanut butter, Ramens, instant potatoes...
Seen people on here scoffing at the big jars of PB,,, but that's how I always rolled. With a loaf of bread and bag of bagels tied to the pack if no flat bread. I don't loose near as much weight as many, and chowing down hardy... It goes with everything.
Any tips for foods like rice/grains besides precooking and dehydrating … keeping fuel savings and time in mind. Haven't messed with cold soaking rice before, am going to do some testing on it and maybe grinding it and dried beans up to a powder.
Your recommended seasonings for this type of fare.
May attempt a CKT of the AT or CDT
I may take it to the extreme with leaving most of my current gear behind and start over fresh with almost no gear intended for backpacking, except for a bag or quilt. This includes clothing.
MuddyWaters
03-29-2019, 13:18
Food you dont want to eat, is worthless.
Cost cannot be a primary criteria in my book.
One of my favorite trail meal "standards" , is dehydrated blue runner red beans/minute rice/tabasco and precooked bacon or even spam in it. Its cheap. And good.
Minute rice works great. Likely works good cold soak too.
Uncooked beans can have a toxin that is destroyed by cooking. Just grinding and soaking doesnt cut it. Only 5 raw kidney beans can make you sick
petedelisio
03-29-2019, 13:22
Food you dont want to eat, is worthless.
Cost cannot be a primary criteria in my book.
I'm not going to take food I don't wont to eat.
I've never had food I didn't want to eat in my pack, and had to dispose of except the occasional banana that got smooshed, or taste was tainted from norm some how (often times even then I can still eat it happily) or throw some ramps etc. in it to fix it up.
Oh and the occasional nasty protein bar I picked up out of a hiker box or somewhere.
chknfngrs
03-29-2019, 13:27
What’s a CKT?
petedelisio
03-29-2019, 13:28
What’s a CKT?
Cheapest Known Thruhike.
trailmercury
03-29-2019, 13:55
Cheapest Known Thruhike.
Seriously? Sounds miserable.
Cheap and healthy don't usually jive.
I would employ a mix of a few maildrops of home dehydrated foods (jerky, fruit leather, fruit, dinner meals) with some town resupplying, and packing out takeout/leftover restaurant food from town.
Don't forget about dumpster diving, yogi-ing and hiker feeds, those a really cheap!
What constitutes cheap? spending less than 1000$ on food for a 4-6 month hike? 750? 500?
lonehiker
03-29-2019, 13:56
Seen people on here scoffing at the big jars of PB,,, but that's how I always rolled. With a loaf of bread and bag of bagels tied to the pack if no flat bread. I don't loose near as much weight as many, and chowing down hardy... It goes with everything.
Sounds as if you have already figured it out.
peakbagger
03-29-2019, 14:57
Burrito shells are a lot less volume than bread and have a very long shelf life. Any area with an immigrant population will have them in the local stores. Fine right out of the bag, better if you heat them up over a campfire or in piece of aluminum foil over a stove. Long ago one of my thru hiking friends knew a fellow through hiker who bought #10 tin cans of mountain house meals, I think it was dehydrated beef stew. He just put it in ziplocks and sent it to himself for resupply. Hard to beat dehydrated potatoes with instant gravy mix.
4eyedbuzzard
03-29-2019, 18:16
Cheapest meal plans for long distance hiking or short...
...May attempt a CKT of the AT or CDT
I may take it to the extreme with leaving most of my current gear behind and start over fresh with almost no gear intended for backpacking, except for a bag or quilt. This includes clothing.
Extreme CKT (Cheapest Known Thru-hike)?
Chow down at all the hiker feeds in the south - that should see you most of the way through Damascus. Then stock up on discarded food at all the hiker boxes you come across. Pick ramps, fiddleheads, mushrooms and other edibles through Virginia. Steal eggs from bird's nests. Insects are also a plentiful source of good nutrition and there are plenty of plump and juicy June bugs out there after you're out of the southern hiker feed frenzy. Hit up the trash cans for discarded food in SNP at all the waysides. That should get you through Harpers Ferry and into NJ/NY until the June bugs peter out. Lots of road kill at road crossings from NJ right through MA, and hey, if no one's looking while going through the Bear Mountain Zoo, well... Being older, you should also be able to play the sympathy card with the younger millenials and Gen Z up until about VT to supplement any local fauna you rescued from Bear Mountain, they're pushovers for a friendly Grandpa type. Then it's gonna get a bit tougher. New Englanders are notorious cheap - even the liberals in Vermont. Tell them the gov cut your SS and food stamps. Hit up food pantries all along the way. There's one in almost every town of reasonable size. Also, see if you can raid the dumpster behind Lou's Bakery in Hanover - good stuff. Fill your pack with preppy leftovers from the incoming Dartmouth freshmen class. If successful, you can then get work to stay and eat through the Whites in the AMC huts. That'll get you into Maine. Now, when you finally get to the 100 mile, you'll be able to fish for food, but until then you'll have to hit up food pantries and yogi food from other hikers. Time to turn on that AARP charm again. If that doesn't work, kill a moose. They aren't really all that tough for their size - just big. Try for a younger, smaller calf. YOU GOT THIS! :D
I’ve been experimenting with FBC recipes lately. Basically add hot water to food, put in reflectix cozy for 30 minutes. Here is some of what I’ve learned.
-anything in the grocery store with “instant” or “quick” in the name. Instant rice, quick barley, instant potatoes, etc.
-couscous and many pastas
-Emergency Essential brand mixed vegetables.
-Harmony House brand dehydrated beans.
Mix and match; doesn’t have to be all one thing.
I’ve been practicing with 1:1 ratios, that is 2 cups dried whatever to two cups hot water.
If too much water is still present after 30 minutes adding either instant potato or powdered cheese (Emergency Essential has several varieties) quickly absorbs the excess.
Starchild
03-29-2019, 21:09
Cheapest Known Thruhike.
Was anyone suppose to know what CKT was, or was it for us to ask? Is this a known term?
TexasBob
03-29-2019, 22:14
Cheapest Known Thruhike.
So who holds the record now and how much did they spend? If you don't know what the current CKT is, how do you know what you have to beat to claim the CKT?
MuddyWaters
03-29-2019, 22:34
Animal spent $1000 if i recall correctly
Carried his food in a 5 gal bucket.
might not be the record in recent yrs ,but I bet it's close enough that there's no difference that matters.
Unfortunately cheap hike is almost synonymous with mooching... A lot.
fastfoxengineering
03-30-2019, 00:53
Animal spent $1000 if i recall correctly
Carried his food in a 5 gal bucket.
might not be the record in recent yrs ,but I bet it's close enough that there's no difference that matters.
Unfortunately cheap hike is almost synonymous with mooching... A lot.A met a dude who was carrying a 60lb pack living out of hiker boxes. It was clear he had little money. But he was honest. Whenever there was a hiker box he let others take what they wanted and then he stockpiled up on it.
I thought it was funny when he pulled out two freezer bags full of PROBARs and was trying to give me some lol. Said he was sick of em. There must of been 30
Some days he went hungry, other days his pack was burdened with all the food that would fit.
He had walled up the FT then rid a bicycle to the AT. I never saw him after PA.
Sent from my SM-J737V using Tapatalk
Cheap almost always means freeloader, want a vacation - pay for it yourself
4eyedbuzzard
03-30-2019, 08:52
On a serious note, Weathercarrot hiked on $1100 in 2011 - https://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/content.php/177-Ideas-for-an-Inexpensive-Thru-hike-(Hiker-Advice
Others have claimed similar costs.
There was a guy not too many years ago who claimed $850 or so - including a few 6 packs and some packs of smokes, but that didn't include quite a bit of food and lodging supplied by family and others along the way. I can't find his video at the moment. He even posted a spreadsheet.
I don't believe any of those included gear and transportation.
I'm thinking I would blow through those budgets before ever reaching Damascus. I'm a sucker for a good rib eye, or pizza, or ______, washed down with a few pints.
garlic08
03-30-2019, 09:07
Oats, nuts and raisins make an inexpensive meal or snack. I met a thrifty hiker who ate nothing but that, along with some PB for added fat. I tried it for several hundred miles but it didn't work well for me.
Mastering the art of the near-0 is key. As I recall, Weathercarrot was very good at that.
And a faster hike is a cheaper hike. I like to spend a little more money on nutrition to keep me moving well every day. Town meals include expensive salads, worth it over the months of an AT hike.
If you get sick or too tired to walk, there goes your budget.
MtDoraDave
03-30-2019, 09:42
Any tips for foods like rice/grains besides precooking and dehydrating … keeping fuel savings and time in mind. Haven't messed with cold soaking rice before, am going to do some testing on it and maybe grinding it and dried beans up to a powder.
As others have said, a CKT sounds miserable. If a person were to challenge him/herself to "CKT without mooching or being a bum", it still sounds miserable (and possibly unhealthy nutritionally) but at least they wouldn't be putting a burden on the others around them.
To answer the question I bolded above, bring the rice/grains to a boil, cover, insulate (coozy/cozy) and let sit for 10 or 15 minutes. If not done, bring to another boil (will only take a few seconds because it's still pretty hot) and repeat. Cold soaking rice and steel cut oats works well, cutting your time down, but some beans are still hard as rocks after soaking and won't cook quickly. Either avoid them or eat them firm.
Your stove almost HAS to be a twig burning stove, because fuel is free.
CKT sounds a lot like my normal life. I eat reasonably healthy but cheap, budgeting $1200 to $1500 a year for food at home, with another few hundred a year for eating out on special occasions. I know that I'll have to up that budget when I finally get hiking, but my budget brain is not going to be happy about it. ?
Here is another part of that equation- who is providing/ paying for your health care - another thing you are expecting those who work/ pay taxes to subsidize for your vacation?
Here is another part of that equation- who is providing/ paying for your health care - another thing you are expecting those who work/ pay taxes to subsidize for your vacation?
The OP is 69. I'm guessing he has Medicare. So yes, it is subsidized.
4eyedbuzzard
03-30-2019, 16:45
Here is another part of that equation- who is providing/ paying for your health care - another thing you are expecting those who work/ pay taxes to subsidize for your vacation?
The OP is 69. I'm guessing he has Medicare. So yes, it is subsidized.
So, it would seem not to matter what the OP is doing - working, hiking, or just sitting about - his primary healthcare would be the same. It doesn't sound to me like the whole CKT thing is a very healthy nor a very enjoyable endeavor, but it's his vacation [from retirement?], not mine.
Oats, nuts and raisins make an inexpensive meal or snack. I met a thrifty hiker who ate nothing but that, along with some PB for added fat. I tried it for several hundred miles but it didn't work well for me.
Mastering the art of the near-0 is key. As I recall, Weathercarrot was very good at that.
And a faster hike is a cheaper hike. I like to spend a little more money on nutrition to keep me moving well every day. Town meals include expensive salads, worth it over the months of an AT hike.
,
If you get sick or too tired to walk, there goes your budget.
When coming into town on a long hike the thing I look forward to most is a good salad, and after that fresh fruit.
MuddyWaters
03-31-2019, 05:33
Subsidized? Most of us paid into the system for decades.
Medicare A is only part of the health care plan.
Medicare B has to be paid for out of Social Security $$$$.
You can still get hit for costs not covered by A & B. Private insurance can take care of the Medicare shortfall. Definitely not subsidized.
Prescription Drugs are totally the responsibility of the patient.
Show me the subsidies.
Wayne
When my dad got sick
He maxed out medicare and supplemental insurance
If he had not died, he would have been broke
Died owing over a million in medical bills.
Theres limitations to medicare, significant ones when you become ill and need hospital care. Old couples get divorced to protect half their assets for surviving spouse.
Lentils, quinoa and butter free salt pepper
See if the clown @ Mickey Dees will sponsor a Hamburgler thru hike. Trail name Hamburgler.