High Sierra Topix

Trader Joes has started carrying some exotic freeze dried fruits (I like the pineapple and mango, but they have some really weird ones that I've never encountered before), and they add some (extremely lightweight) zest to the usual dense, high calorie items like cheese and jerky. Traders dried (and tart) Montmorency cherries also go great with various hard cheeses.
CG

Single serving tuna or salmon packets. Either throw on some bread with 2-3 mayo packets, or just squeeze the mayo or mustard packets into the pouch and eat with crackers. Caddis got me eating Spam again. Tried the turkey spam single serving packet this year with bread/mayo - delicious! Never thought I'd say that about Spam...the flavor made the extra weight worth it.

I ran ten days a few summers ago up in the Bob Marshall wilderness on this combo. The dry salami stays good a surprisingly long time, even in high temps. It's edibility was questionable on the last few days though! The dry salami is the key though. Summer sausage goes bad in two days.

Flour tortillas, the small Babybell wax cheeses(red), italian dry salami, and a small bottle of Tapatio or Chipoltle Tabasco. Slice and dice and grill in a small skillet with a touch of crisco or margarine.

I can fire off a couple Quesadillas for lunch in 10 minutes flat. Almost feels like you are eating normal food and to have some decent flavor a week into a trip is pretty nice.

Gotta have something to look forward to at lunchtime! We try to have a variety of things to keep it interesting and maybe nourishing and hopefully lightweight-ish. For the first couple days in we'll include perishables like apple slices (no core to deal with), peeled oranges, small bag of carrots, string cheeses in those individual packets, maybe even pb & j sandwiches.

For later in the trip we like the little lunch kits of tuna salad with crackers, you end up with the small metal container to carry out but the tuna on crackers are esp tasty! Some of our usual staples: trail mix with a yummy assortment that has bits of yogurt, chocolate and dried fruit thrown in; a daily ration of some flavor of Crystal Light powder for the drinks (this can also be utilized later in the day at happy hour for mixer with rum, tequila or whatever); hard cheese and crackers (some that fit into the empty Crystal Light plastic tube container thing for better transport); granola bars; dried fruit like sliced apples, mangoes, or whatever; pb & j on tortillas; and usually something sorta sweet to wrap it all up, like part of a super snickers candy bar or clif bar, something like that.

Doesn't look so exciting now, but out there those things can be the mid-day highlight, besides the scenery and company, of course.

Nobody's mentioned peanut butter on dried apricots, which is one of my favorites (absolutely requires a full water bottle, of course ). Peanut butter generally seems to me like a good, reasonably healthy, tradeoff between calories and weight.

-B2

BSquared wrote:Nobody's mentioned peanut butter on dried apricots, which is one of my favorites (absolutely requires a full water bottle, of course ). Peanut butter generally seems to me like a good, reasonably healthy, tradeoff between calories and weight.

-B2

Unfortunately, some of us (me) are alergic to peanuts. it wasn't always that way. I ate peanuts as a kid and loved them. i guess I reached my limit.

My lunches vary tremendously from lunch to lunch and trip to trip. Cheese is usually a common denominator. I usually (but not always) have some sort of crackers to go with the cheese. I also commonly have some sort of nuts: almonds, pine nuts (really high fat content, so quite nice), pistachios. Dried edamame are also pretty nice. Sometimes I'll have some cookies to go with all that. There are other times when all I eat is a Clif Bar or two. Finally there are times when I catch fish and cook them for lunch (did this twice on the Tunechuck trip this past summer). Peanut butter or peanuts would be on my list too, were I not also allergic to peanuts.

I've been going with the mountain house/ backpacker pantry dinners for this past summer. I have to admit that I am getting majorly burnt out on them now though. I think my favorite would have to be the teryaki chicken with rice and the Japaneese noodle bowl. It's nice because the dinners are very easy to make, clean up, and they pack a lot of carbs and calories in one of those bags.
For snacks, I usually have trail mix with mixed nuts and lots of m&m's. I like to take snickers and paydays with me. If I'm doing a deathmarch to get to a particular place, I take a couple Cliff Shots or Gu packs with me. Last trip I took some Dry Salami and Cheese and it really hit the spot.