Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Backpacking Food

A favorite backpacking dinner for me is one of the quick cook (10 to 15 minutes) pasta dinners from the grocery store (e.g. Knorr's sundried tomato pasta dinner) with a can of chicken breast added. This makes enough to feed two very hungry hikers and tastes far better than the Mountain House, etc. overpriced hiker meals. To minimize garbage space I put the pouch the pasta comes in inside the empty chicken can along with the lid and pound the sides flat with a rock. That fits neatly in a zip lock trash bag that I then place in the bear container.

For breakfast I find it hard to beat the flavored oatmeal in pouches. You can pour the hot water directly into a sliced open pouch sitting in a sierra cup to keep from burning your hand. This minimizes the cleanup (otherwise a big downside to oatmeal).

Hey Bartch-
You can get Mary Jane's Farm on line and in bulk. I order it on line; forget trying to get lucky enough to find some at the store.

Hey Everyone-
You can get really far really fast on Cliff Bars, almond butter, acceleraid and protein shakes. No muss, no fuss, and high high energy.

Just eat loads of pizza when you return, and a Denny's pancake breakfast the morning you leave. You'll be flyin' and not hungery.

Rollin'

Might as well chime in with my favorite...i buy the spicy korean ramen from an asian grocery, and bring along dried ****takes. It took a couple tries before learning that the ****takes need at least a good 4 hours to really soften, so i put them in a filled nalgene well ahead of time, and then use the mushroomy soaking water for the noodles. yum. makes me want to go hiking just thinking about it.

i still haven't found an effective way to do mexican. boxed mac & cheese can taste good when nothing else does, for some reason. pasta and dried tomatos and pesto is good but only travels well for a day or so. i usually have one package of Alpenaire something or other for that one time getting into camp when it's already dark.

lunch is pita and swiss, or triscuits and pepperoni. breakfast is snickers. when i'm cold and achy i just want a little sugar and to get moving again soon. this is all probably hugely weight-inefficient. but it makes me happy so far.

thanks for reminding me...my last hiking buddy with a dehydrator has lost touch. i need to find a new hiking buddy with a dehydrator.

For "homemade" Mexican Food, I will take Nacho chips (yup, the cheesy ones) and crush reasonably to reduce bulk, add them to a taco or enchilada seasoning packet in hot water with freezed dried meat or meat substitute. Really quite instant and quite flavorful.

Snickers for breakfast sounds good (G)

Oh, I guess those were s-h-i-take mushrooms. In this case, I can understand the censor (G)