Trail Meals That We Like

Just some ramblings on foods we thought were good while out on the trail. We only ate vegetarian meals so the food notes are limited to meatless stuff:


Good place to buy small quantities of dry ingredients: kingarthurflour.com It's a little expensive, but if you only need a small quantity of something, it may be cheaper than buying a big bag of something and not using half of it.

They have tomato powder, sour cream powder, blue cheese powder, Vermont cheddar powder, and other stuff that was pretty good.

Soy Joes: This is a great meal out of a town stop, because you can buy buns and they won't be too smashed by lunchtime. (or dinner time) Unfortunately, Trader Joes stopped making their Soy Joe mix, but Fantastic Foods makes a pretty good one. All you need is a box of soy joes and some tomato powder--seems like I used about 1/3 cup. Just boil water, add the dry ingredients and let stand for 5 minutes.

We could have eaten reconsituted beans, (or Frito Lay can) and flour tortillas almost every night. Sometimes, we carried those corn tostada shells which kept pretty good because we carried the box too.

Scott and I actually eat corn pasta at home, not for the health benefits, but....dare I say it... because we like the way it tastes. Ok, let me explain: In our opinion, corn pasta is only good when you eat the twists or elbows, and ONLY when you eat it in combination with Mexican style foods. The corn taste actually complements the flavors of Mexican foods, and makes them taste like a tamale pie. A great meal is Fantastic Foods Vegetarian Chili Mix and corn pasta twists. Here's the recipe we like: Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Add 6 oz. of corn pasta twists or elbows. Shut off the heat and let pasta sit for 5 minutes. Add a package of chili mix and let sit for another 5 minutes. This is a great meal. In fact, we are having it tonight. Unfortunately, Westbrea Foods stopped making the corn pasta twists, so we've had to settle for elbows. We don't notice any extra energy when we eat this, but it sure tastes good. Easy clean up too.

The blue cheese powder from King Arthur Flour, although a little expensive, was good with those dried tortellini and ravioli from Trader Joes. This should only be eaten near a water source. Hard to clean up. I think we ate it twice. We liked the K.A.F. Vermont Cheddar Powder better than the stuff in the store.

There was a risotto that we cooked up that was really good, but I can't remember the brand right now. Something from the grocery store that we mixed with powdered parmesan. I think it took 20 min to simmer, but we were using a fuel tab so using tons of fuel wasn't as much of an issue. Zaterians beans and rice are pretty good, but also take 20 minutes to cook.

Oooh, I know something I liked on other trips that we didn't take on this one, but Nutella in one of those REI squeeze tubes on cookies is a pretty heady treat on the trail. It's a little heavy but Mmmm...so good. And it doesn't melt like candy bars.

Oh, yeah, Gouda in the wax rounds is always good. Keeps at least 9 days in moderate temperatures. We carried those small chunks of Velveeta a couple of times. I don't like the plain kind and we couldn't find the Mexican kind in small chunks where we are, so it was kind of gross in my opinion. I think Scott liked it though. For some reason, we didn't eat a lot of peanut butter. I can't remember why. I remember that it leaked out of its tube in the resupply box. We should have waited to package it or actually carried a small jar.

Lipton Noodles and Sauce has some pretty good stuff that we, along with probably everyone else eats out on the trail. We made the Lipton Noodles and Sauce Stroganoff with dried soy chunks, sour cream powder, powdered milk, dried veggies and a little tomato powder, dried onions, and bouillon cubes. Scott really liked this. I thought it was ok, but not one of my top 5 meals. (Scott just read this and couldn't believe that I dissed the strogonoff.) Alright, it was pretty good, but I liked the garlic shells and the shells in the tomato cream sauce better.

We also ate some couscous and tabouli, but they were never our favorites. We eat tabouli at home, but the box mixes aren't the same as homemade. There's too much lemon in them. And, we never felt like eating humus for whatever reason.

We'd still resupply on the trail as much as possible.
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