Date: 2012-03-11
To: The Food Issue
Miles today: 0.0

Three days to go! I've been having some trouble sleeping because of all of the things I don't want to forget. I get up to make a list and then go back to sleep. Eric and I have been hiking or walking every day (sometimes with our full packs ¢ it may look a little silly). Other than that we have spent a lot of time finalizing our mail drops.Understandably, we get a lot of questions about our FOOD. It's a very important component to our trip, so I've dedicated this post to it. We're sending ourselves 12 drop boxes (we added one recently), which ends up to be a third of all our meals we'll be eating (46 day's worth of food out of approximately 150 days on the trail). Sending food drops has its advantages and disadvantages. Some hikers like sending themselves food drops, some hikers don't.Pros: possibility of eating healthier, or catering to dietary needs, possibility of saving some money by buying bulk or sale items Cons: you are a slave to post office hours when shipping to post offices, could get sick of the meals you've packed for yourself, how much food you actually need might be different from the initial proportions you've packedWe'll be eating a lot, and trying to eat food with a lot of calories. Eric did most of the research on healthier eating, and on what foods were the ¢best bang for the buck¢ as far as calories per oz. Obviously weight is a big issue. We made some bulk buys of quinoa and quinoa pasta, Bear Valley Pemmican bars, and lots of veggies. We used healthier options like whole grain rice or lentils instead of the instant white kind, etc. Breakfasts, we decided, will consist of either Carnation Breakfast Essentials (a delicious chocolate drink) mixed with dried milk and protein powder, pemmican bars, a ¢Grand Slam¢ (ode to Denny's), granola with fruit and milk, or Crunchy Nuggets with fruit and milk (it's an off brand of Grape Nuts). We're forgoing popular things like instant oatmeal, which while they cook quickly, have little nutritional value. We're learning to think in calories, and we hope our breakfasts are at least 500.Lunches will basically be continual snacking throughout the day. For lunch we packed some sausages, a variety of granola-type bars (clif, pemmican, protein), tuna packets, peanut butter and jelly on tortillas, GORP, girl scout cookies (thanks to my niece, Katie!), and some yummy baked snacks I made (we call them yum balls). We are also packing some supplements such as Emergen-C, candy, multi-vitamins and glucosamine.We dehydrated most ingredients for our homemade dinners, and we came up with a few menu items I think we'll really enjoy on the trail. Lasagna, roast beef and mashed potatoes with veggies, quinoa and beef (with veggies), tuna and quinoa, quinoa pasta mac&cheese and peas, cheesy rice and broccoli, and what we call the ¢fiesta bowl¢ (rice, beans, green chiles, taco seasoning, chicken or beef and cheese). Essentially, we had to cook almost everything as if we were going to eat it, then dehydrate it all and vacuum seal it into individual bags. It took a long time, let me tell you! We got dried milk, butter and cheese powder, and used lots of seasonings. The dehydrated meals are made by just adding some hot water and waiting for it to reconstitute. No cooking needed which saves time and fuel on the trail.There is so much more I could say here about our food (I didn't even touch on our inevitable calorie deficit issue - we could be burning 5,000+ calories a day), but I must stop somewhere. Sometimes I look at the plans we've made for ourselves 4 months from now and I just laugh because I know they aren't going to work out how we think they are. Eric and I have spent so much time reading, thinking, and talking about the trail. It's time to start already!