5 days to go: Mail drop packages ready!

Well, this is what 75 days worth of food looks like! When it comes to long-distance hiking there's basically two schools of thought when it comes to resupplying....

1. You can have friends/family  send packages to you as you go OR
2. You can just go into towns as you hike and shop whenever you need to

I decided to take a hybrid approach. After hiking for a few months on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) I know I really appreciated the food I had sent myself (...mostly because I hate to shop). But, I also know that I got sick of certain things and it was a bit tricky to get the quantities right. Also, being a vegetarian, it can be difficult to find healthy and nutritious meals along the trail that give you enough calories.

 

So, this time I decided I'd pre-package and send myself about half my meals so I'll have a lot of variety along the trail. This broke down to about 75 dinners and breakfasts, and 50 lunches. In total, I'll be eating 135 days on the trail, which is the equivalent of 540,000 calories, or more than 1,156 Big Macs! 

 

My homemade dinners include....

- Mac & Cheese with Veggies

- Fettucine Alfredo (recipe here)

- Noodles with Red Sauce

- Thai Peanut Rice noodles w/Veggies (recipe here)

- Beans & Rice

- Mashed potatoes and Beans

- ...and various mixtures of the above foods

To get some extra protein I sometimes added TVP (textured vegetable protein) or supplemented with Tuna packages ... maybe I'm more of a pescetarian these days.

Breakfast is mostly my homemade maple-nut granola (over 25 lbs of it!) with the addition of powdered dry milk ... or sometimes just energy bars! Overall, I shot for about 2 lbs of food per day which will be 3500-4000 calories per day. YUM.

Lunches are way more variable and include everything from peanut butter (my favorite) to dried fruit, nuts, crackers, tuna packets, energy bars, trader joe's snacks, and so on. Also, lunch is really a subjective term since I'll basically be eating non-stop from breakfast to dinner to get enough calories. When I hiked the PCT I lost about 15 lbs so I'm going to try and avoid that this time!!

All packed and ready to send out!