Food for Thought

 I have mentioned how my friend Ken is obsessed with backpacking now.  Well he is recruiting a loyal group of followers with him.  One of those people is another friend, lets call him Gary.  Our recent backpacking trip in the Oklahoma hills at Mcgee Creek park had Ken doing all sorts of everything.  So to help Ken out the other friend, lets still call him Gary decided to get the food for the trip.

 Gary came up with an amazing set of meals for our backpacking trip.  Since the trip was only two night and one of those on the trail "Gary" mixed shelf stable home products that were trail worthy.  Now if you have never been backpacking before you have to understand what trail worthy is and why.  The main part about backpacking is that everything is on your back and that includes your food.  Well most weight of food is made of water so to reduce your weight you reduce the water in your food and that comes in the form of dehydrated items.  The next part of trail worthy is that the food is safe at room temperatures.  You would not be able to backpack a half gallon of ice cream into the woods.  that is why you have astronaut ice cream, they take out the water and add something to keep it solid at room temperature. 

 "Gary" started our meals with a base camp breakfast consisting of scrambled egg burritos and coffee.  We had this because we knew the boys would take a while to get their gear packed up and ready to go.  Lunch was on the trail and the above picture and below picture are of my lunch pack which consisted of a bagel, package of shelf stable meat (mine was pepperoni), condiments, and 3 clementines.  Now this is not your typical trail meal but like I stated earlier we were using items from around the house that are kept at room temperature.  We were also playing with the idea of cost.  Your typical "backpacking meal" runs any where from two bucks a serving just for the entree to ten dollars for the meal.  With several more backpacking trips on our calendar "Gary" and Ken have been hard at work finding ways to avoid the dreaded REI purchases that cost a pretty penny and do the meals from grocery store items.

Our dinner Saturday night consisted of a "Gary" original meal which started with an appetizer of snap beans then the main course had ramen noodles (we did not use the spice packet it comes with), a home made pesto, and a package of chicken breast chunks all mixed together followed up with a rice crispy treat for desert.  This was a real delicacy for the trail.  Breakfast the last morning was oatmeal with dried cranberries, cherries, and raisins tossed in and made fancy with a couple of mini moos and two packages of honey.

Overall this trips meals were very diabetes friendly and the only thing I missed from our last trip were the boiled eggs.  I would recommend doing meals like this for any one trying to keep their backpacking on a budget.