Date: 2011-11-18
To: Trail Dinners
Miles today: 0.0

I want share with our readers some of our food plans for our coming hike. With the start of our hike now just over 4 months away, we are busy preparing for our 22 mail drops that we are planning. Our dehydrator has been working overtime, drying an assortment of dinners and lunches that we will mail to ourselves. Most of the food that we will eat along the trail will be from our mail drops, but we also plan to rely on some supermarket shopping as well since mail drops are not always practical. A couple of reasons we choose to rely so heavily on mail drops are nutrition and variety. All of our homemade dinners consist of a pasta base of some sort in addition to a variety of vegetables, cheeses, meats, nuts, eggs, and spices. Here is a list of the dehydrated dinners we will mail to ourselves (see picture):Butternut Squash Risotto (Rachael Ray recipe)Zucchini Casserole (from Backpack Gourmet book)Chili Mac (recipe from the back of a pasta box)Spaghetti & Sauce (SilverGirl's delicious sauce recipe)Turkey & Broccoli Risotto (our variation of the Rachael Ray recipe)Tuna Cheese Souffle Casserole (from Backpack Gourmet book)Quick Beef Stew (from Backpack Gourmet book)Macaroni & cheese, ham, peas (LongStride's recipe)Southwestern Lasagna (from Backpack Gourmet book)Pan Fried Whole Grain Noodles (from Backpack Gourmet book)Each of the above dinners for 2 fit inside a one quart freezer bag and weigh between 10-14 ounces when fully dehydrated. When it comes time to prepare each of these meals, all we need to do is add the dinner to our cook pot, pour enough water into the pot to cover the dinner, bring it to a boil, and let it sit for about 10 minutes until all the water has been absorbed. We use a pot cozy that I made for this purpose and it works like a charm, keeping our dinners very hot for at least 1/2 hour even in cold weather. All of the above dinners are very tasty, very filling and between them all, contain a balanced assortment of ingredients that will hopefully meet our caloric and nutritional needs. In addition to the dinners listed above, we are also dehydrating a variety of fruits such as apples, pineapples, strawberries, kiwis, and bananas. A couple of important home made lunch staples will be a Creamy Tuna Spread and Quick Hummus, both recipes coming from the Backpack Gourmet book.As we start to settle into winter here in Massachusetts, our days are now full of many pre-hike planning activities. In addition to all of our food preparations, we are going through our equipment and making final adjustments, organizing things around the house, and going on regular training hikes (tomorrow it's a 16 mile hike on the AT from Cheshire, MA to Mt Greylock summit and back). To add to our excitement, we also purchased our train tickets to Gainesville, GA (arriving on March 22nd) and made a reservation at the Dahlonega Hiker Hostel for the night before our start on the 23rd. Making these reservations really brings the reality of our coming hike to the forefront. We are so excited about our opportunity to thru-hike this beautiful trail and we feel so blessed to have each other to share this wonderful experience with. We are also looking forward to meeting many of our fellow hikers along the way and hopefully forming some lifelong bonds.