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.
No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
Why not? It isn't any more work. Better than eating hard bars all day for weeksOriginally Posted by TheChop
Great,thanks!
-208 Crew
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!
"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
- Frank Scully
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.
-208 Crew
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.
Some knew me as Piper, others as just Diane.
I hiked the PCT: Mexico to Mt. Shasta, 2008. Santa Barbara to Canada, 2009.
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.
-208 Crew
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
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.
"Throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence." John Muir on expedition planning
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!).
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.
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.
2010 AT NoBo Thru "attempt" (guess 1,700 miles didn't quite get me all the way through ;) )
Various adventures in Siberia 2016
Adventures past and present!
(and maybe 2018 PCT NoBo)
Peanut butter crackers, Chewy granola bars, an anything that taste good with honey on it. Great energy snack.
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