Re: [at-l] average food sack contents

I only cooked at night and had five basic meals...

Marrakesh Express Coucous
    great flavors and plenty of dehydrated veggies
Betty Crocker Flavored Instant Mashed potatoes
Angel hair pasta and Knorr powdered sauce packets
    once again, Knorr has some great flavors
Stove Top stuffing
Ramen

I hate cooking so wanted stuff that basically just required boiled water.  I 
hate cleaning so I avoided the Lipton's because those tend to make a mess of 
the pot.

I usually carried one can of something out of town just to have something 
different here and there.  (Tuna, kippers, mackerel, smoked oysters, 
chicken, etc.)

I gave up on hot breakfasts within a week or two of starting.  Even though I 
had always enjoyed oatmeal on earlier backpacking trips, I no longer wanted 
the fuss.

For breakfasts, I ended up with some Nutragrain bars, some of those more 
granola-type bars that have Snickers/M&Ms/ and other goodies added, and 
mostly lots of Poptarts.

For lunches, just about anything...  bagels with peanut butter or hard 
salami and cheese.  I got sick of gorp within the first month or two.  Those 
cheese/peanut butter crackers that you can buy everywhere for a quarter were 
convenient.  I used Promax bars to try to get some extra protein into me.  
Stretch Valley fruit leathers were fantastic (I tried to have about one of 
these a day or some other dried fruit).  I had about two candy bars a day.  
One was usually a Snickers or Nutrageous (the most calories per once carried 
for candy bars, at least) and one of just whatever I felt like.

I also carried butter (not margarine or the squeeze stuff) in one of those 
disposable Glad containers.  Sometimes it was hard to get in some of the 
general stores down south (too expensive so they don't carry it).  That got 
me some extra calories and some great flavor.

In case you're wondering...  butter does not need refrigeration and will not 
spoil.  It can go rancid after prolonged exposure to heat, though.  Ghee 
would be a good alternative and perhaps less likely to go rancid.

I ended up not carrying butter once it got hot but by then, we were hitting 
towns so frequently, I didn't miss it as much.

In the mid-Atlantic states, there were times when we didn't have to carry 
all that much.  There's a lot of  deli-to-deli hiking there (right Mags?) 
and we often just detoured to the general store for sandwiches, subs, pizza, 
etc.

Getting hungry...

Mara
Stitches, GAME99

>From: MMSW00@aol.com
>To: at-l@backcountry.net
>Subject: [at-l] average food sack contents
>Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 15:33:05 EST
>
>I'd be really interested in seeing what thru-hikers list as their average
>food bag contents.  I'm totally unimaginative when it comes to trail food 
>and
>plan to have Ramen, bagels, peanut butter, honey, Snickers, oat meal, 
>lipton
>noodles and rices, and gorp as my staples on the trail.
>In one stretch between two supply points, what was the average contents of
>your food bags?
>Kathy
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