Have a favorite trail recipe or technique you'd like to share? Please do! We also like reviews of various trail food products out there. The Backcountry Food Topix forum is the place to discuss all things related to food and nourishment while in the Sierra wilderness (as well as favorite trail head eateries).
Rarely will I leave the trailhead without some Knob Creek Bourbon. It's great alone or with hot chocolate.
My wife really likes a drink called a Hot Apple Pie. It is Tuaca and hot cider. At ski bars it is usually served with a whipped cream floater, but this is not neccessary to be damn tatsy.
Baileys for breakfast is unbelievable. 151 with anything is good once the boots are off. My wife mixes up 151, fruit punch and garnishes with snow and dried pineapple; you'd think she was in Maui?
CG
Up until the mid 80's, my choice was 151 with either Wyler's lemonade or Tang. "More miles to the gallon" applies pretty nicely to 151. On the first backpacking trip with my wife, the bottle of 151 I had in the back seat somehow had rolled close to the door, so it rolled out, fell on the pavement and broke when I opened the door. I haven't taken it since, and that probably corresponded with my wife's and my changes in alcohol preferences as we drifted from mixology to craft beer. Over the years we'd bring an occasional bottle of Chardonnay to chill in the lake and on some trips we'd bring both the wine and our stovetop espresso maker on which we'd brew up whatever the Peets variety of our choice happened to be. We reserved the wine and espresso trips for our easier trips and I recall the last time we did this was in about 2000 or so on a trip to the Big Pine Lakes. That was quite a trip because it started with having a bit too much of our homebrewed beer with Roland Knapp at his place the afternoon before the trip. Nowadays the tradition is to take some good chocolate, usually 70ish percent. We very much enjoy this in the morning and it helps to ward off our caffeine withdrawal headache. Judy and I did Ghiradelli's 60 percent with ground espresso beans on the last backpacking trip with out little ones, and it wasn't bad, but I think I like the 70ish stuff better. Some sort of nice cookies, like Pepperidge Farms Milanos are always a good choice in the high country (heck they're a good choice at sea level) and we usually bring some. Another old favorite of mine are homemade muffins or banana bread. I tend to bake these for the kickoff of all of the more difficult backpacking trips. Banana bread has long been the favorite, and I've tried to bake a loaf for the opening day of many trips, but there is one muffin type that I've done that was pretty memorable---these are apricot "surprise" muffins. These are muffins baked with a dollop of apricot jam inside. These kicked off our Edyth Lake 1992 trip.
Drink of choice lately is a flask of margarita... and when I say margarita I mean about 6 parts tequila, one part marg mix, and one part cointreau. Definitely a great card game companion. I love specialty beers and our group usually starts the trip at the cars with one beer and end the trip with another back at the parking lot... A lot of random discussion on the trail has occurred on how to get beer into the backcountry. A couple of the best ideas have been creating a freeze dried version, and having our friend's dog carry a sixer in his doggie backpack!
My first trip I brought Gin and cigars. Turns out I didn't find it as relaxing as I had hoped, so now I don't bring anything, just: fish till dark, eat dinner, sleep, eat breakfast, poop, repeat.
I decided that libations weren't worth the effort in the backcountry, when just being there I feel comfortable and relaxed.
I really enjoy when one of my friends or myself carry in a cheese cake or other instant desert but there is one fomfort food that I almost always have in the evening, hot mint cocoa with an Excedrin PM chaser.
"On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude."
-- Lionel Terray
