The trail food you just can’t stand.

[spelt with a t]

It's a time-honored trail staple, but not for you. What is it?

Mine is peanut butter.

[HkNewman]

GORP … Grew tired of that 10years ago

[Bob Gross]

Boiled, waxed okra.

–B.G.–

[Dylan Atkinson]

Bob,

I've never even considered okra for trail food. Did you actually consume this on trail or was this a result of force feeding while in the South?

[Ken Thompson]

Jerky

[Valerie E]

Gatorade. Oooooooowww, tummy ache!

[spelt with a t]

Seconding the call for follow-up on that okra. The face I'm making right now…

[Bob Gross]

Force feeding.

Okra and possum grits.

I believe Mountain House had to quit making meals of it because of the Geneva Convention.

–B.G.–

[Nico .]

My preferences change periodically, but for the last year or so, jerky has been pretty much unpalatable. Have also revolted against canned/pouch tuna.

Despite the above items, savory/salty foods are winning out recently over sweets.

[Ian]

I'd rather eat a pinecone than try to gag down another Cliff Bar.

[Mobile Calculator]

…

[Bob Gross]

Something that you really ought to do before you go out on a serious solo trip:

Find some kind of food that you can eat under any conditions. Preferably, it should not require any cooking or complex preparation. Ideally, it is moderately high in calories, and easily digestible.

Sometimes your appetite will fail, your cooking apparatus will fail, and you still need to gain some calories to get through a night without suffering.

–B.G.–

[James Marco]

Yup, peanut butter.

[spelt with a t]

Bob, for me that would be eggs. Preferably fresh or boiled, but freeze dried works okay too.

Roger, I think it's the brown rice syrup they use in the Clif bars. They all taste like slight variations on that rice syrup, blech. I can eat one or two if I have to, but in larger doses my tastebbuds would doubtless rebel.

[Mitchell Ebbott]

Do y'all remember PowerBars? Once upon a time, Clif bars were a gift from the culinary gods!

[Steven Paris]

Powerbars. Wow.

I lived in Boulder and rode all the time when PowerBars came out, so we carried those all the time. It didn't take long before I could only tolerate the berry flavor (which sounds pretty gross right now).

I went to Bolivia a few years ago to visit a friend and also lost my appetite for a few days (altitude, traveling) and it wasn't until a little roadside market was selling Pringles cans that I was able to really eat anything.

[D M]

Oatmeal. Knorr side dishes.
Uggghhh.

"Find some kind of food that you can eat under any conditions. Preferably, it should not require any cooking or complex preparation. Ideally, it is moderately high in calories, and easily digestible.

Sometimes your appetite will fail, your cooking apparatus will fail, and you still need to gain some calories to get through a night without suffering."

–B.G.–

I found it, it's called tsampa, roasted barly flour the Tibetan food staple. Mix with anything you like and a bit of oil (I use coconut) warm or cold water add salty or sweet and you've got sustenance. Even good as a soup or in tea.

[Lori P]

Peanut butter, instant oatmeal, Mountain House anything, Clif Bars or tuna.

I'd rather eat paper towels seasoned with cardboard.

[Ken Thompson]

I find that I'm going more non cook. Don't want to be bothered cooking something I may not want to eat. Bring a wider range of snacks instead.

So weird how what sounds good at home tastes like #*!& in the field sometimes.

[Jordan Cerna]

I tend to stay away from any 'wet' food ingredients such as PB, cream cheese and jam. After overseeing trip prep for youth trips anywhere from 20-40 people and seeing all that stuff come out of 5 gallon buckets makes you never want to eat that stuff again. Trail or not.

[David Thomas]

>"Do y'all remember PowerBars?"

The saving grace of PowerBars was that nothing can happen to a PowerBar during a caving trip (cold, wet, muddy, crawling on your belly while resting on top of your snack) that changes its basic PowerBar-ness.

It ain't much. But 8 hours into a caving trip, it hasn't changed. That's not true of any other food-like object.

I always imagined that a peanut-butter-grinder, fed with rice, nuts, HFCS, sawdust, and left on way too long would extrude PowerBars.

[Elliott Wolin]

Wheat-Tex TVP-based vegetarian backpacker's meal, in the 1980's, despite my huge appetite back then I went to sleep hungry. I haven't tried TVP since!

[Dave Heiss]

Ha! I had the same experience in the early 80's with some Mountain House freeze-dried chicken salad. I like chicken salad, and I was hungry, but this stuff was beyond disgusting. Waaaaay beyond…

[spelt with a t]

In college I used to buy whole boxes of Powerbars from the surplus store. 5 months or 5 years, they never really get stale. I finished the last ones years after graduation. I've reached my lifetime quota, I think.

[Rick Reno]

They're just like Bit'o'Honey, only nutritious! Just one PowerBar and you're good for hte whole afternoon- mostly because it takes alla fternoon to chew it up!

[Author]

Posts