Mid-day snacks / on the go lunch

[Adam Rothermich]

IME the only bars worth trying are Balance Bars or Clif Bars. And amongst those I avoid anything that is supposed to be chocolate flavored. None of them ever taste like any sort of chocolate I've ever had nor want to find. The exception being one's with chocolate chips (ie Balance Bars Cookie Dough flavor), they normally aren't so bad. The Clif Mojos are much more granola bar in nature, and therefore much more palatable IMO. At the same time, Snickers are cheaper and have more calories and always taste great, especially the dark chocolate one.

Yeah, I really like bars….

Adam

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Btw, on spreadable cheese – I love Laughing Cow wheels (with the wedges inside). It is shelf stable, though often sold in the cold cheese section. They make a tray of little cubes as well.

At Cost Plus World Markets you can find other brands as well, similar in use but fun flavors.

All of these are great spread but also used in hot meals – they melt in like cream cheese!

On homemade bars? How long they last depends on what recipe one uses. A wetter bar won't last 3 weeks. A more traditional granola bar recipe high in fat/low in moisture will, especially if one uses a Food Vac to seal the bars!

[Lori P]

Everything they said!

Bags of chips need to be lanced before you go over 9k in elevation tho. Otherwise you end up collecting them off the granite. :(

I love cheese, any cheese. Gouda, string, cheddar, and some triscuits. Trader Joes is the perfect hiker store, you can get freeze dried string beans, any number of variations of banana chips (I prefer really crunchy or the flattened banana), mangos, pears – the bartlett pear chips and a little mild hard cheese on crackers were lunch on the last dayhike.

Instant hummus in a snack size bag with a packet of EVOO and pita chips were very well received as an addition to lunch on an outing last month. No problems with leftovers.

I've taken some of the TJ breakfast cereals and eaten them like snacks.

My all time favorite are the almonds. Almond bark would be right about perfect for a trail snack. Need to make some for the next trip.

[Bob Gross]

Recipe:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup dried fruit bits
1/4 lb brown sugar
1-1/2 ounce dried milk powder
1/4 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup dark molasses
1/4 cup vegetable oil such as canola
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

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Mix everything together in a large bowl. The first time you try this, you will have a hard time getting it to mix on only a 1/2 cup of water, so you may have to add slightly more. However, mixing it wetter will lead to possible spoilage.

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Preheat a 300 degree F oven. Note that this is not as hot as most baking recipes.

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Turn the mixture into two greased 8×8-inch cake pans and spread it as evenly as possible. Bake for one hour. Remove from the oven, let cool for five minutes, and then invert the pans to remove the bread. Cut each bread loaf into 16 squares. The proper consistency is not rock-hard, and it is a little chewey.

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Stack and air dry the squares for 24 hours. This gets rid of much of the excess moisture that might lead to spoilage. Store the squares in plastic sandwich bags and squeeze out as much of the air as possible. I normally get six squares into each sandwich bag, so the whole batch will require five or six bags, minus however much you ate during the cutting.

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If you make this relatively dry, it will keep for months. It is best when eaten within a month or two. Refrigeration is unneccessary.

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Most of my variations are with the dried fruit. I can do this just with raisins, but it is fun to try to do it with five or more types of dried fruit like apricot bits, cranberry bits, blueberries, etc. Try not to use dry fruit bits much larger than raisins, and make sure that the fruit is dry before it ever goes into the mix. Fresh fruit is not acceptable. This has no egg, yeast, or whole milk, so there isn't too much to spoil. If mold does grow on the bread, that is your sign that you used too much water in the mix.

I've done some trips where Logan Bread was 40% of the total food.
–B.G.–

[BRIAN BOLIN]

Thanks Bob for the recipe. I'm gonna make the bread this weekend and give it a trial run.

[Bob Gross]

You really won't appreciate the stuff until you've been out for about two weeks, and your regular food is getting kind of boring.

If you have a real sweet tooth, you will mix a bit more molasses in, but it's pretty generally good enough without any more. If you mix more milk powder in, the stuff will appear whiter. Basically, it is similar to Holiday Fruitcake.

–B.G.–

[Travis Naibert]

my favorite lunch last summer was fig newtons with peanut butter. Water or powdered drink mix is required to swallow more than a couple per minute.

[Nick Gatel]

Fig Newtons!! Gosh I haven't had those in years. I think I'll take some on my next trip. Are they normally stocked in stores (my wife does not allow me in the grocery store with her – as I am a pain in the butt)?

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Yep, Fig Newtons are as popular as ever!

BTW, I like to get the single stack boxes you find in C-Stores……those rock (a single sleeve of them, enough for a weekend).

Or better, ditch the wife for an hour and go shopping. Most popular cookies comes in double packs these days (in boxes of 6 to 12 or so). You can get FN in double packs that are perfect for hiking. I carry them at least once or twice a year as my cookie. Just look in the cookie aisle. You will be shocked at the choices out there. As I said everything comes in small packs now.

[Robert Blean]

If you use a sports drink, don't forget to count its calories. If it contains 6%-8% carbohydrates, that is already best caloric uptake and enough calories to be included in your calorie budget.

Doing that has advantages of maintaining electrolytes, providing calories steadily instead of in bursts, and easy to get a few calories as you feel you need them. You may find you do not need to eat as much during the day.

Disclaimer: Works for me on short trips. I have never done anything on the scale of a PCT trip, though, so I do not know how tolerable it would be over a long time. Also, since its calories are pure carbohydrate, it caloric density is poor — only about 100 calories per ounce.

— Bob

[Travis Leanna]

Bob, I can second the experience with sports drink/electrolyte enhancements. I drank the stuff during a desert hike, and not only did it really hit the spot when I got thirsty, I found that I didn't get as hungry during the day.

[Robert Blean]

A couple of notes on sports drinks:

* If the expense of commercial ones is off-putting, it is not that hard to make your own that works well

* I just looked at some Gatorade powder, and note that its CHO is about 5.2%. 8% is fine — you can get there by adding an equal amount of maltodextrin to the gatorade powder. That would be 1.4 cup Gatorade powder and 1/4 cup maltodextrin per quart. That both brings it up to 8% and adds complex CHO for more even energy flow.

— Bob

[Bob Gross]

Before you go too far trying to reinvent the wheel, I suggest that you tune into the ultramarathoners. Those crazy people run 50 or 100 miles a day, and they obviously have to ingest a lot of calories and liquid to keep going. Realize that some of them have proprietary mixtures to drink, and it gets pretty exotic. They tune it one way for a hot day, and tune it another way for cool weather. They mix with every kind of energy gel stuff (GU, etc.), flat Coke, pinch of baking soda or salt added, and so forth.

Hell, I just gulp some water and munch a Cliff bar, and I'm good.
–B.G.–

[Robert Blean]

Bob G,

Yeah, I have done some of that in my various home made versions too.

Do you have any good suggestions for where to look and see what the "crazy people" are doing?

Do you think their ideas have much value for long strenuous UL days?

— MV

[Bob Gross]

I don't know where the ultramarathoners are online.

A friend of mine is an ultramarathoner and used to compete in the Western States 100 Endurance Run, so a bunch of us used to crew for her in the race. Think about doing 100 miles of trail, with 18,000 feet of elevation gain, and finishing that in 15-24 hours.

I would make a point of being at a checkpoint when the elite front runners came along. Once they were checked in by a race official, they would briefly sit down while their crew would change their shoes, stuff cookies into their mouth, change water bottles, check on GU levels, test or replace flashlight batteries, and then push them out onto the course again. Yes, it was like a pit crew at Indy. I paid particular attention to the runners who were doing the best and what they were consuming, the 50% flat Coke and 50% cool water with a pinch of salt, and so forth. That was quite popular on a hot day. On a cool day, it was more of the thicker powdery carbohydrate and protein mixes in tepid water. If it got cooler yet, everybody was into bananas and then more cookies dipped in peanut butter. The whole secret to being a successful ultra runner is the ability to ingest food and water and being able to digest it while you are continuously on the run.

I would think that if you were trying to do something extreme, like covering the whole JMT in a few days, you have to do extreme things like I mentioned. Most of us, I suspect, aren't doing anything that extreme, and we are moving along through boring trails until we get to some scenery, and then we pause for a photo and lunch.

Come to think of it, I could use a cookie with peanut butter right now.
–B.G.–

[Laurie Gibson]

@ Bob Gross,
Thanks for your recipe! I've made it twice, and the bars disappear. How do you measure 1/4 tablespoon for baking powder and salt? That's a non-standard recipe measurement–do you just approximate as I did, using a little less than a teaspoon?

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