Prepwork

I never really realized just what went into preparing food for 20+ days on trail. My original though while still just kicking around the idea of this trip in my head was to buy light weight freeze dried backpacking food for the majority of my trip, the food is really tasty, it is light weight, and it is dead simple to prepare. There is however, one main drawback, it is incredibly expensive when compared to other food. At five to nine dollars a meal there was just no way I could swing it, at that price I would have been looking at over $150 for dinners alone. Instead, I will be relying on the staple foods of long distance backpackers, instant potatoes, ramen, pasta sides, and peanut butter.

 

Just a small selection of the foods I will be packing. At first I thought this red tote would be more than to stash away all the food I would need for the trip... Boy was I wrong. In my closet I now have an overflowing tote and boxes of food next to it, I am still slightly panicked that I don't have enough.

 

It is kind of interesting, as you start to buy backpacking food you get into a mindset of looking for the most calorie dense food for its weight. These large size Honey Buns are 360 calories per serving and weigh in at 3ounces.

 An average days food fits into a gallon freezer bag and consists of a mostly granola bars, cookies, and trail mix. Breakfast is some kind of cereal and powered milk with instant coffee, lunch is a tortilla with either rehydrated humus or peanut butter, and dinner consists of Ramen, Knorr pasta or rice sides, or instant potatoes. I am also going to be carrying an 8oz bottle of olive oil to add into any meal I can. 

Each days food comes out to between 3400 and 3800 calories, this will still not be enough to keep me from losing a bunch of weight.