View Full Version : Breakfast and Lunch
We have dinner planned,but for breakfast,will oatmeal provide the needed energy in the morning?Or is there another light alternative.For lunch,I'm thinking about snacking on granola bars whenever.Any other options?
swjohnsey
01-25-2011, 09:49
Maybe oatmeal plus some other stuff. For breakfast I eat 1/2 c oatmeal, 1/2 c raisins, 1/4 c sugar, 1/4 c powdered whole milk, cinnamon and nutmeg, about 750 calories, 15 g protein.
Peanut butter is high in calories and protein, keeps forever. I eat peanut butter and jelly on flour tortillas for my lunches (usually a couple) during the day.
If money isn't a factor diet/snak bars from folks like Weight Watcher are good. They have a little more nutrients than just a plain candybar or granola bar.
Carry some kind of bread. Bagles, english muffins, tortois or the round flat breads. They all keep well. Put peanutbutter on it for lunch snack. I always had a jar of peanutbutter with me. Also carry a chunck of hard cheese. That also keeps well and you can also use that for lunch & snack.
Farr Away
01-25-2011, 12:03
There are several threads in the Cooking and Food forum about breakfast. Here are three that I found with a quick search:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=59613 (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=59613)
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57092 (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57092)
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=59991
-FA
bigcranky
01-25-2011, 16:30
Oatmeal is good, I like to add nuts (walnuts and pecans are good) and dried fruit and whole milk powder (Nido.) Grits are good in the morning, too, just add some cheese and some pre-cooked bacon. In either case I usually eat at least 3 packets for breakfast. Then I'm hungry again an hour down the trail, which is when I enjoy my second breakfast of pop tarts. In warm weather I eat granola with dried fruit and whole milk powder for breakfast.
For lunch I like some variety. My favorite is a large packet of tuna, a large flour tortilla, several mayo and mustard packets, and several slices of American cheese. Mmmm, a tuna burrito. Delicious. Other days I like peanut butter, or cheese and crackers, sometimes powdered hummous mix, that sort of thing. Flour tortillas are very useful for all sorts of meals; I like them better than bagels on the trail.
I snack all day long. GORP is great -- I just mix whatever I feel like into little ziploc sandwich bags and eat that all day long. Nuts, dried fruit, jelly beans, chocolate chips, M&Ms, pretty much any little bite size things in a bag. I also like a combo of Cheezits and pretzels, especially if I can find the spicy Cheezits. The cheese pretzel Combos crackers are great. Bars are also good -- the best, of course, are Snickers bars, followed by Clif bars, Lara bars, and any other candy bars.
For extra energy in the morning or early afternoon, nothing beats chocolate covered espresso beans. Love those things.
But all of that stuff's weight does add up.For a week of hiking,is that really logical?And we definitely don't want to stop at pickup points.
swjohnsey
01-25-2011, 17:13
My food for a days weighs about two pounds. The alternative is to go hungry.
But how much did you have?
Spirit Walker
01-25-2011, 17:16
You'll be in town about every three days - so food weight isn't that big an issue. It's one area you really shouldn't scrimp on. We always eat cold cereal with dried milk for breakfast -usually a granola type if we can find it, but also raisin bran. A lot of hikers go for kids cereals. There has to be enough weight to give long lasting energy which some light cereals like cheerios don't do for me. Lunch is usually english muffins with cheese and a meat like Karl Buddig ham or turkey or tunafish. I also like peanut butter sometimes but my husband won't touch nuts. Protein lasts longer than something that is just sugar like candy bars or granola bars. We also eat cookies and dried fruit for lunch. Granola bars make a good mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack - but they'll only give you an extra mile or two before you're hungry again. Homemade logan bread will give longer lasting energy if you have somebody to mail you some from time to time.
OK,but we're hiking for 7-10 days,and only planning on freeze dried for dinner,granola bars for lunch,and oatmeal for breakfast.I've talked to other people who went on the trail,and they carried all 10 days worth of food.Can it be guaranteed that those things will e for sale in towns?
johnnyblisters
01-25-2011, 17:57
OK,but we're hiking for 7-10 days,and only planning on freeze dried for dinner,granola bars for lunch,and oatmeal for breakfast.I've talked to other people who went on the trail,and they carried all 10 days worth of food.Can it be guaranteed that those things will e for sale in towns?
It depends on where your hiking. Do you have drop off/pickup locations set?
Well,we're still planning a route,but even if we could only stop once in northern Virginia,is that realistic?
bigcranky
01-25-2011, 22:31
OK,but we're hiking for 7-10 days,and only planning on freeze dried for dinner,granola bars for lunch,and oatmeal for breakfast.
Wow, I would be very unhappy hiking for a week on that food list. For me it's worth every ounce to carry good food, and resupply more often. In general I carry around two pounds of food per day.
But the trail we're going on is relatively far from towns
But the trail we're going on is relatively far from towns
I think the point is that you're going to be carrying x amount of food - why not expand your variety a little instead of eating oatmeal every breakfast, granola bars for every lunch and dehydrated for ever dinner?
Oatmeal, granola bars and dehydrated meals will work if that's what you're dead set on doing of course. It's not illegal or anything. :)
bigcranky
01-26-2011, 08:01
But the trail we're going on is relatively far from towns
Where are you hiking?
We're open to ideas.So far,I'm the only person that knows about any of this.The same basic crew were canoeing in canada for a week,and we had about the same,but some meat and bagels and that kind of thing because we had 2 very large barrels of food.I'll see what everyone else wants.And even then,what they bring for food is their call,as long as they can carry it.
Some variations, I carry sliced almonds for my morning oatmeal. To change up on the peanut butter I also bring almond butter or cashew butter and smear onto a tortilla or other type of flatbread.
Yes food weighs a lot. On the other hand your pack weighs less each meal.
If you don't carry enough food you will regret it or at least be crabby :p
Yeah,I guess we're just going to have to carry it.Oh well
Farr Away
01-27-2011, 11:23
Someone else on here posted that for breakfast, they pull out all their remaining breakfasts and eat the heaviest; repeat at each meal. Made a certain amount of sense.
I keep things standard for breakfast and lunch and let the dinner meal be the variation meal. Of course I eat the same thing over and over and over again. If I wanted good food I wouldn't hike into the woods. Two mojo bars for breakfast, trail mix and jerky during the day and freeze dried at night.
Everything tastes great if you're tired and hungry. Except Clif bars. Those things get old fast.
If I wanted good food I wouldn't hike into the woods.
Why not? It isn't any more work. Better than eating hard bars all day for weeks :p
Delta-Dawn
01-28-2011, 16:30
Do you like grits? You can get instant grits with cheese, bacon or ham in it. A little variety from the same boring oatmeal every morning. And grits are good! :)
Yeah,we discussed that.Basically,I'm telling people what I would do,and what equipment,food,etc I would get,and they can modify off of those plans.And that was an option.But I'm sure everyone will rather those than oatmeal. :)
For breakfast I liked to eat Grapenuts made with Nido, some walnuts or pecans and some dried fruit. I didn't like a hot breakfast. For second breakfast, I liked pop-tarts/cookies/peanut butter/cookies or poptarts with peanut butter/other snacks.
For lunch the best lunch for me was crackers and hummus. Something about hummus really kept the hunger away. Instant pudding also sometimes was the only thing that would make the hunger stop for a while. I called it "dropping the pudding bomb" on the thing I called "the beast", which was my insatiable hunger. It worked.
We won't be stopping to resupply at all,so right now,we're looking at oatmeal/grits with whatever other extras.Powdered food would be great too,just for weight and size.
Mountain Mike
03-24-2011, 23:21
Oatmeal is my staple breakfast on the trail. Hard to beat calories to weight ratio. I buy in bulk & just change it up a little now & then with dried fruits, nuts, cheese & even drink mix. Fast quick & light. Canoeing I will do pancakes & more extravegent meals
garlic08
03-25-2011, 09:04
Are you aware that fats contain about twice as many calories per unit weight as carbs? Common fats in backpacking foods are nuts, cheese, and meat. That's why you see those in so many hikers' menus. Common carbs are oatmeal, grits, bread, rice, potatoes, and pure sugar. Carbs act fast, giving quick energy, but burn out quickly too so you need to eat often. Fats burn more slowly and last longer, and most important in weight considerations, contain more calories for their weight. But it's really hard and probably unhealthy to eat nothing but fat. That's why most experienced hikers add nuts to their oatmeal, cheese to their bread, bacon to their grits, sausage to their tortillas, olive oil to just about anything.
Do some math: Carbs contain about 100 calories per ounce. Fats contain about 200 calories per ounce. Many backpackers' menus combine these for a total of about 130 calories per ounce or more. If a hiker with a light load on easy terrain burns, say 3500 calories per day, that hiker would need to carry about one pound ten ounces of food. If that hiker didn't carry that much food, the extra energy needs would come first from body fat, then from unneeded muscle. That's why most thru hikers look way different in Maine than they did in Georgia.
If you carry oatmeal, you can vary the flavor a lot by using different ingredients and rotating them (cinnamon sugar/nuts/dehydrated apples vs. sugar/nuts/dried strawberries for instance). Also, I have found no matter what I eat for breakfast, my body is screaming for a "Snickers break" every morning between 9:30-10:00 when I hike. You may want to plan on some kind of a substantial snack in mid-morning (or plan on 1st and 2nd lunch!).
max patch
03-25-2011, 09:41
Some hikers are able to basically skip lunch by grazing out of their gorp bag all day. That doesn't work for me.
While I also eat something every hour or so I find I hike better and feel more satiated if I actually stop and eat something different for lunch. I ate basically the same thing every day (except for day 1 when leaving town), bagel with peanut butter and jelly or honey, and a hunk of cheddar cheese. Don't know why it works but it does for me.
ShelterLeopard
03-25-2011, 11:38
We have dinner planned,but for breakfast,will oatmeal provide the needed energy in the morning?Or is there another light alternative.For lunch,I'm thinking about snacking on granola bars whenever.Any other options?
I snacked during the day mostly (like you said, instead of a solid lunch). One thing you might like to change up breakfast is either dry cereal with powdered milk (like NIDO)- it is very light, and it you tie it on top of your pack, it won't get crushed. It was a good treat. I had grapenuts or raisinbran.
Also couscous is great for breakfast. I would fill my mug maybe 2/5 with couscous, then hot water, put the lid on and let it sit for a couple minutes. Then when the water is all absorbed, I added dried cherries and brown sugar. I wasn't a huge fan of breakfast, personally.
My two breakfast splurges (weight-wise) were frootloops with REAL milk. Carried in a nalgene, then the weather got cold and the rest of it froze, and breakfast sandwiches. Bagel, one fried egg, canadian bacon, and swiss cheese, all melted/cooked in my frying pan. Yes, I carried fresh eggs. It was delicious and filling, but I didn't do it until about 2 months into my hike, and at that point, I didn't even notice the extra weight.
hikerhobs
03-28-2011, 19:06
Peanut butter crackers, Chewy granola bars, an anything that taste good with honey on it. Great energy snack.