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Re: [at-l] Attn: veggie thru-hikers

Oops.... I reread the note I just posted and realized that I wanted to add
some more stuff.  Sorry for the duplication.

-- Jim

At 07:01 AM 5/12/98 PDT, Nicole Markee wrote:
>What do the rest of you think?  If you didn't eat dairy, eggs or meat, how
>would that change your food bag?

Hardly at all.  I'm not even a vegetarian, much less a vegan, but my
standard trail fare is nearly vegan.  The only exception is that I use a
fair bit of powdered milk, but it wouldn't bother me at all to switch to a
soy product (I rather like them).

Kahley's reply was right on in my experience (which is up to 10 day trips,
no long distance AT stuff).

My usual feed schedule looks like this:

Breakfast:

Usually cold.  I often eat museli with powdered milk (Soy in your case).
The nice thing about museli is that I can add either hot or cold water
depending on how I feel that morning.  I've also made my own way bread (I
mailed out a recipe a while back, you might find it in the archives) which
was wonderful with peanut butter.

Munchies:

Lunch is the meal that starts after breakfast and continues until bedtime,
with a break for dinner.  I don't have a sit down "lunch" per se, just
semi-continuous trail snacks.  Vegan trail snacks are real easy....
granola, nuts, raisins, etc.  "Corn nuts" are good, especially in
combination with something a little sweet like honey nut cheerios (which
may or may not be vegan).  Home made way bread is good here too.  I doubt
you'd have any problems there.

Dinner:

Vegan dinners are EASY on the trail.  My usual dinner looks like:

	starchy base (instant rice, couscous, quick grits, instant potatos,
		pasta, etc.)
+
	dried veggies (spinach, carrots, mushrooms, onions, collards,
		zucchini, celery, leeks, etc.)
+
	beans (instant refried beans, instant black beans, cooked & dehydrated
		lentils, cooked & dehydrated small beans)
+
	dried fruit (raisins, etc.)
+
	seeds and nuts (sunflower seeds, almonds, etc.)
+
	spices (garlic, onion powder, chili powder, curry powder,
		vegetarian soup stock, tomato powder, etc.)

Usually I start with cold water and the dried veggies, bring that to a
boil, add the other stuff, and return to a boil.  Then I let it sit until
the starch does its thing.  You don't need to boil pasta in lots of
water... If you use just enough water to rehydrate the pasta you'll get a
sticky, but quite edible, output.

This does just fine for me on my week long hikes.  For much longer hikes, I
gather that getting enough calories becomes a real issue.  The only way to
get concentrated calories is by eating lots of fat, and the only things I
mentioned with appreciable amounts of fat are the seeds, nuts, and some of
the snack items (like roasted "corn nuts").  My guess is that on a really
long distance hike I'd end up taking some extra virgin olive oil in a small
bottle (something with a really leak proof top, like some of the small
Nalgene bottles).

As for drying, you can dry anything.  The trick is rehydrating stuff.  I
find that almost anything works well as long as it is cut very thin or is
small to begin with.  For example, cut your carrots into slices maybe 1/16"
thick.  If you cut things very thin, they will rehydrate well and quickly.
Beans rehydrate reasonably well if you cook them first and then dehydrate
them.  Lentils do very, very well.

Have fun, and try out your recipes at home first.  Once you get the hang of
it, you can just mix and match and it gets really easy.  Actually, I
sometimes try out trail food at lunch... it's better, cheaper, and
healthier than what they serve at the cafeteria.

Have fun.

-- Jim 
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