Meals and appetite

Thought it might be interesting for those of you that have not done much hiking or backpacking in the past to get a feel for how we go about eating every day. The main meal, obviously, is dinner. Dinner is typically comprised of either one or two types of meals, either food that is instant in nature, or food that is freeze dried. Seems like most people on the trail like the instant kind of meals, heavy in carbohydrates, typically some kind of pasta. Knorrs pasta sides seem to be very, very popular on the trail and often they'll boil water, put the water directly into the pasta side packet and then seal it again, wait four or five minutes for it basically to cook right in the pack, and then maybe add some salmon or tuna from packets. What you end up with then is a great meal in a bag. Another option that -- and I do this as well -- is basically get some smaller freezer bags and then put within them either stovetop stuffing or instant mashed potatoes or couscous and again boil water, add a cup of water into the freezer bag, let it set, stir it up, and what you've got is instant mashed potatoes in a freezer bag. What I'll do is add tuna fish to that and I've got a great meal. I think my favorite meal on the trail so far has actually been stovetop stuffing with tuna added to it. It's like having Thanksgiving, again, all in a freezer bag. What you try to do is not have any dirty dishes, so you're just boiling water and then adding that water to the container that the instant food is in. That also holds true with instant oatmeal. You can take the instant oatmeal packets and just tear them lengthwise and add a little bit of water, and you've got your instant oatmeal in a bag and you don't have to dirty one of your little cups or pots. The other way to go is freeze dried. Right now, since I'm not doing very well with resupplying, I'm doing a lot of freeze dried meals. Again, the same kind of concept, but it's much more expensive. Those are about $5 each. Boil water, put the water in the pouch, let it sit for five minutes and you've got a meal, beef stroganoff or what have you. So the dinner is the main course. Ramen is probably one of the most popular meals on the trail, and it's oftentimes supplementing one of these pasta sides. In terms of the drinks, typically at night, it might be coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, again all instant. And I'll just drink that right out of the pot.