[at-l] Hiking food you love to hate...

[wb4pan@mindspring.com (Chase Davidson)]

yo,

	In the last 30 years I have went through a lot of hiker food. A lot of it has made the cycle and come back into use again, maybe more than once. Here are some of my favorites now. I often eat a hot breakfast and hot dinner in cold weather. I do not typically care for traditional foods. I would rather have left over cold pizza than eggs any day. So I eat the same foods for breakfast as I do for dinner. 
	Usually I will choose something that can be prepared quicker for breakfast and spend more time for dinner. Of course the proximity of water helps make the choice too. You do not want to make sticky mac-n-cheese unless you have plenty of wash water or do you? 
	I hate to wash dishes so whenever I can I do my cooking in a ziplock bag. Mac-n-cheese in a ziplock, no pot to clean :-) Grits are just little hard pieces of dried glue I think. Well they do stick to everything, especially your ribs. They work great in cheap ziplock bags. Most of your instant rice, grits, ramin, or them salty Lipton dinners can be cooked in ziplock baggies. Jello / instant puddings work great in baggies too!
	I recently made myself a pot cozy, 1.2 oz. I saw how well Chainsaw's worked when we hiked together last year. I used an old blue pad, and some Locktight 454 glue I had on hand. Later I found that silicone glue sticks to this pad very well. If silicone will hold it will be much better since it remains flexible.
	Ziplock or baggie cooking works great in the cozy. I have done a few experiments using my dried mixed vegetables and corn elbow noodles, seasoning and my dried roast beef. What I have found that works best is to add the veggies to the cold water, bring to a boil, add the corn noodles, meat and seasoning (if you are making something thick like spaghetti sauce you may want to add that powder after everything has cooked) let boil again. Pour all that into a quart baggie. Now, I use a 1/2 gallon
stand up ziplock as a liner, I put the quart baggie inside that, zip em up and put them in my cozy. In about 25 min its ready. Meanwhile my cook pot is free to say heat another beverage or whatever. 

Ok so I have ate my mixed dried veggies at least once a day for a month and did not get tired of them. I never tried em everyday for 6 months though. But veggies are a staple of mine. Also I really like corn noodles instead of the standard white flour enriched noodles.

Mix and match any or all of the following

veggies
corn noodles
stove top stuffing
ramin noodles
ground up roast beef (dried) to add to meals, reconstitute and flavor for sandwiches
taco flavored TVP for burritos
dried pintoes for burritos, chili beans etc.
gravy packages
spaghetti packages with tomato powder included
bagels
rice
peanut butter and jelly
cheese
snickers
mixed nuts
jerky
corn bread
fruit cake
various cans of meat chicken, ham (usually for the first day out)
grits (bacon, ham or cheese flavored)
Lipton's occasionally
hamburger helper cheese burger macaroni(often replace the noodles with corn noodles)
Freetoes corn chips
oatmeal cookies
fig Newton's
Mountain House FD meals (nice for an extra lightweight back up meal)
tuna in the foil pack
summer sausage
raw carrots
corn nuts

well I got to go I am hungry and sleepy, that's all I can think of now. 

chase