Favorite backpacking foods...convenient, easy, delicious, nutritious?

forest dweller

forest dweller

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Favorite backpacking foods...convenient, easy, delicious, nutritious?

Breakfasts Lunches Dinners Snacks

Gimme all your ideas!

I'm so sick of Mountain House salt bombs I'm tempted to live on 2 lbs of RXBARs per day!
 
hard to argue with oatmeal for breakfast, I add some freeze dried strawberries and a bit of cinnamon to make it awesome :)

For lunch
PB & J on tortillas
EVOO Tuna pack w/ mustard and mayo on tortillas

Snacks
Trader Joe's dried mango (like fruit leather for adults)
Smoked Almonds (scratches a "meat" craving on day 5 or 6)
Honey roasted peanuts
GORP
Lots of other dried fruit for variety (apricots, cherries, prunes, ...)
variety of nuts (cashews, pistachios, peanuts, ...)

My dinners are more of recipes, I can post a couple standards if interested
 
Oatmeal packets and hot choc or cider or mtn house .... Breakfast.

Pb, honey and tortillas or tuna packets .... Lunch

Mtn house hot cider or choco ..... Dinners.

Granola bars, honey stinger chews, cheese, nuts ..... Snacking day.
I lean towards already packaged rather than make your own .... Adds anothet layer of no smell in bear country
About 1.5 lbs per day total....

Done this for many many years
 
Instant oatmeal with added nuts and a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast. A handfull of cranberries or other dried fruit on the side.

Lunches are almost always some kind of crackers (Trisket black pepper, or cheezits--lots of salt and fat!) with salami and a nice hard parmesan cheese for lunch, Add in the dried fruit (cherries are our favorite) and maybe some kind of bar as dessert.

Dinner always starts with miso soup--great for rehydration. Then a freeze dried meal, plus the usual dried fruit and peanut M&Ms for dessert. And we take along a few airline mini-bottles of tasty things for after dinner.

Snacks are our home-made GORP or bars. My wife is a fan of the Nature Valley bars, and if that's all it takes to have her join me on the trail, I'm all in!
 
As posted elsewhere, I'm trying to reduce the number of dinners with extremely high salt and saturated fat. If I can figure it out without a ton of effort... Some stuff ain't the healthiest but it cheers me up! Don't bother cooking if weather's bad. Just eat a bar or 2.

Breakfast: Coffee, 2 Pop-tarts (yeah, I know...but like the energy rush), 2 instant oatmeal packets
Lunch: peanut butter on tortilla, oatmeal/protein bar, beef jerky
Dinner: MYO: Instant noodles with dehydrated veggies/potato flakes, freeze-dried chicken (maybe) or MH Beef Stroganoff (fallback)

Snacks: GORP-like mix, protein bars, dark chocolate, Stingers
 
During the day (not including dinner) I need to eat small bits of food every hour or so rather than bigger meals.

So for trail food my husband and I share:
1 small snack size ziploc per day of nuts (prepped ahead of time at home) - lots of yummy kinds
1 small snack size ziploc per day of dried fruit (prepped ahead of time at home) - figs, dates, prunes, etc. - love the mangoes, baby bananas, and mandarins from Trader Joes
various granola bars, including Cliff's caffeine bars (unfortunately they discontinued most of them but I bought a bunch of boxes beforehand)
1 pack per day of Trader Joe's Manzanilla olives
Honey Stinger lime chews with caffeine (I love these)

For breakfast, my husband has granola pouches (various brands) and Starbucks Instant Coffee that comes in packets. I just have my first granola bar of the day.

For dinner, we used to have Food for the Sole packs and loved those, but unfortunately they went out of business. :( So we're trying to figure out other options that suit our picky tastes (not too garlicky, not too spicy, not too much pasta, etc.) I've read recommendations from previous threads and am going to try those, but we welcome additional advice!
 
Oatmeal is infinitely adjustable, up or down, expanding and contracting with ingredients available or desired. It's also a fairly decent source of protein, for a grain, anyway. Almost as important though it is a good source of bulk and fiber - a backpack full of highly concentrated high calorie high fat trail foods are not always very kind to our digestive systems. Until recently anyway, it was also absolutely dirt cheap. I make a concession to quality and use "old fashioned" oats, they do take a few minutes of simmering but this is of no consequence particularly except a tiny bit of fuel.

I also prefer a good quality powdered whole milk like Peak or Nido, and dairy butter. Rounding it out with honey, maple syrup, or brown sugar and (of course) Cinnamon. The resulting glop is so much better than the chemically enhanced instant packets. Since I rarely if ever make Oatmeal at home, although something I always take on the trail, when I do I'm instantly transported, if only for a second, to backcountry campsites and rainy mornings on the trail, and swear my feet start to hurt. For all that, I've never found Oatmeal to be particularly a "stick to the ribs" kind of breakfast. It seems like it should be. I only wish someone would invent a decent tasting powdered egg. That's one technology that seems to have eluded scientists. Are laying hens allowable on the trail? :)
 
Ted said:
Oatmeal is infinitely adjustable, up or down, expanding and contracting with ingredients available or desired. It's also a fairly decent source of protein, for a grain, anyway. Almost as important though it is a good source of bulk and fiber - a backpack full of highly concentrated high calorie high fat trail foods are not always very kind to our digestive systems. Until recently anyway, it was also absolutely dirt cheap. I make a concession to quality and use "old fashioned" oats, they do take a few minutes of simmering but this is of no consequence particularly except a tiny bit of fuel.

I also prefer a good quality powdered whole milk like Peak or Nido, and dairy butter. Rounding it out with honey, maple syrup, or brown sugar and (of course) Cinnamon. The resulting glop is so much better than the chemically enhanced instant packets. Since I rarely if ever make Oatmeal at home, although something I always take on the trail, when I do I'm instantly transported, if only for a second, to backcountry campsites and rainy mornings on the trail, and swear my feet start to hurt. For all that, I've never found Oatmeal to be particularly a "stick to the ribs" kind of breakfast. It seems like it should be. I only wish someone would invent a decent tasting powdered egg. That's one technology that seems to have eluded scientists. Are laying hens allowable on the trail? :)
Click to expand...

I should have mentioned above that I actually use Bob's Red Mill Old Country mueslix (assorted grains and nuts) way better than instant packaged oatmeal.

For eggs, check out OvaEasy. You add water and it looks just like scrambled eggs before they are cooked. I've done omelets in a bag on the trail to avoid the cleanup, but you could scramble them in a pan/pot if you wanted.
 
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If you're willing to MYO, or at least do some assembly:

Minute Rice
Instant Refried Beans
Taco Seasoning(or Sazon)
Cheddar Cheese
Fritos

aka He who must not be named Beans & Rice


is pretty good for dinners.
 
Breakfast - Oatmeal, Breakfast "shake" or both and a Death Wish Coffee packet for coffee
Lunch - Peanut Butter/Almond Butter, Honey and Trader Joe's has some fantastic tiny (non-dried) bananas, so you can do an Elvis tortilla. Jaeger sausages and trail mix as snacks
Dinner - I don't mind Mountain House, though there's a high-end grocery store by me that does fancier ramen that's really good and I could see having as a dinner option.
Desert - I love mixing sour patch kids, gummy worms and jelly belly candies together and taking a handful. @Bob had some delicious raspberry/blackberry gummy candies on our trip to Yellowstone that I think he said he got at the dollar store. I saw them at a convenience store recently, so they're not a dollar store exclusive..
 
My go to, time to sit by the fire or under the stars dessert this past year. Add to a zip lock pre-trip and then I just add water in a Talenti jar so I can shake it up and mix it real good. Funny thing is I don't eat much sugar when I'm not on the trail, but have come to enjoy this at the end of a long backpacking day!

- 1/2 cup Dark Chocolate & Peanut Butter Love Crunch Granola
- 1/4 cup Nestle Nido or Peak Dry whole Milk
- small box of raisins

Approx 500 calories. I mix it up with the other varieties of Love crunch as well. For winter, I'll add hot chocolate and marshmallows.

I ordered some Caramal Pecan Apple Granola from Alpen Fuel that is around 700 calories. Should be here in a few days. Same idea to eat as a dessert at the end of the day. I'll report back on how it tastes.
 
love the Bob's Red Mill stuff for breakfast -- most grocery store instant cereal is so unbelievably sugared that I can't eat it (same with many of the freeze-dried breakfasts)
 
Green olive packets.
Tuna creations.
Nut rolls. A personal favorite. My dad would always bring them when I was a kid and I am carrying on the tradition.
Orchard bars. They are kind of hard to find these days, but they are my preferred "bar" option on the trail. Just fruits and nuts.
Kippard snacks. Another tradition from my dad. Kind of heavy, and I don't always take them, but they always taste good when I bring them along.
Summer sausage.
Dried vegetable mix. Dried beets, Dried Okra. Dried Carrots, etc...... Can be found in the bins at Winco. I find myself really craving vegetables while backpacking and it's hard to find anything that provides them in any substantial quantity, so I find these a good option.
 
What I've been going with lately:
Breakfast- oatmeal packet (peaches and cream!) and a Clif Bar
Lunch/snacks- Complete Cookie, trail mix, granola bar, peanut M&Ms, Smokehouse Almonds
Dinner- Peak Refuel.

And having high sodium when I'm a sweaty mess a lot of the day isn't too bad. My shirt looks cool with my white salt stains!
 
Bob said:
I lean towards already packaged rather than make your own .... Adds anothet layer of no smell in bear country
Click to expand...
This is the main reason I do Mountain House, Peak Refuel, etc. for dinner. I don't want to have to clean dishes when I'm backpacking in grizzly country. Too much of a hassle, I don't want to drink gray water from cleaning, and I'd feel irresponsible if I dumped it out on the ground since it's an attractant for bears and lots of other animals. Nice to keep everything self-contained in the pouch, even if the food is usually mediocre.

Lunch for me is usually lazy. Just bars, trail mix, applesauce or dried fruit. If Jessica is along, I'll class it up and bring a summer sausage, crackers, and hard cheese.

Breakfast also is usually lazy. Pop-Tarts and instant coffee (Verve is the best out there).
 
even for trips without bear issues, I'm pretty reluctant to take canned fish on backpacks-- one drop of that oil spills and it's herring smell basically forever
 
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