No-Cook Food Plan, with detailed quantity information

[Amy Lauterbach]

We finally wrote up the no-cook menu we use for wilderness backpacking trips, and posted it at our new site DoingMiles — No Cook Food Plan

This menu won’t suit everybody, but it works very well for us and might be a good place to start for people who have never planned food for a no-cook trip.

Amy (and James too)

[Greg Mihalik]

Amy (and James too) –

First of all kudos for your most excellent reporting! It really is first class stuff.  Thanks.

About how many calories are you aiming at per day? I know “it depends”, but a range of what to expect from your list would be appreciated.

 

 

[Amy Lauterbach]

Greg,

Thanks for the encouraging words. DoingMiles is definitely a labor of love.

We came at our menu in an entirely different way than most. Rather than aiming at a calorie count, we simply iterated many times. On our first joint backpacking trip I made a list of food we carried in, with weights. And then I weighed all the food we carried out. It was 30 pounds in and 8 pounds carried out. The next trip I used that information to modify the list. After every trip we have a conversation — “a few more nuts next time”, or “no more TJ Wasabi peas”, or “more dry cherries and fewer dry apricots”. After every trip I modify our menu. But the modifications are now very minor, for example 1.2 oz of cookies + 0.6 oz of chocolate versus 1.0 oz of cookies + 0.8 oz of chocolate. The only thing that routinely changes is exactly which varieties of bars each of us can still look forward to eating. One that seems to taste ok for a year will suddenly join the “oh no not another mumble bar” club.

I don’t have any idea of the calorie count for this menu, nor do I know how many calories we eat at home. I know there are many articles and posts that analyze the calorie and nutritional content of various options, but we don’t think about it that way.

On a one week trip we each lose about a pound of weight. We don’t feel deprived, but we are certainly not eating like kings. The menu would not work as is for a multi-week hike, for example we hiked the Arizona Trail and the Colorado Trail in 2016 and we used this menu (via resupply boxes) but we doubled the cheese and also ate big restaurant meals and quarts of ice cream a couple times a week, and we left each town with a bag of potato chips, some gummy worms, and a few yogurts.

I should have mentioned, and may add to the article, that we each weigh 135 plus or minus a few pounds, and we average 18-19 miles per day when walking on trails. We walk a lot and put in long days at a very leisurely pace. Our buddy Alan D mentioned that our slow and steady approach may be more efficient than other styles – I have no idea if that’s true.

I’ll collect questions and comments and then I’ll probably modify the article so it more thoroughly addresses the things people want to know.

Amy

[Greg Mihalik]

OK. Got it.

I’m now wiser, and inspired.

Thanks.

[David Noll]

Very interesting. Definitely something to think about. I’m not sure if I could live w/o coffee.

 

[Matthew / BPL]

Good post, Amy. Your blog is great.

[John S.]

While it is always interesting to see no cook menus, some of what you say does not apply. The majority of people cook at least an evening meal and the majority of people do not have problems with bears. Just because you cook does not mean it takes forever to pack your meals. Hike start times are not affected if you only cook an evening meal. Yes, pack weight may be less for no cook but if you require alot of water for clean up (I use a few mls) you have the wrong menu ; ). I’ve never eaten freeze dried food in my 13 years of backpacking.

[Dena Kelley]

Thank you for the read. May I ask your method for keeping the food cold that needs to stay cold?

[Greg Mihalik]

Curiosity made me do it. From  CalorieKing , with a few assumptions –

I have always appreciated a warm meal in the evening, especially when the weather is cold. But this Does intrigue me, and Does give me a starting point.

Thanks again.

(Of course I acknowledge all sorts of caveats, YMMV, HYOY, N/A, etc.)

[Amy Lauterbach]

Greg, I was secretly hoping somebody who knew how to navigate the calorie data would come up with an answer.

John, To be clear, we are not in any way advocating a no-cook menu, or any other practice. HYOH. We found something that works for us, and others find what works for them. Sounds like you are similar to the vast majority who like to cook an evening meal.

Dena, we expose our food bag to the night air, and then insulate it before sunrise, as described in the article. We don’t attempt to achieve cold, but we do achieve not too hot. We select firm and aged cheeses, as described in this MSR article. We only carry non-perishable meat. Chocolate is our most heat sensitive item, and our method works fine for chocolate.

[ben .]

this is great, and pretty close to what i do.

i’d love to hear more specific brands of crackers, jerky, fish, bars, cheese, etc. that have risen to the top over the years.

is the tang/lemonade for taste? or is it somehow part of the grand, unified plan as well?

[Amy Lauterbach]

oh, our menu is the opposite of a grand unified plan. It’s the mundane random plan. We find we like the flavored sugar water while hiking. We never drink it at home, but it suits us while on the trail.

We pack the food so we each get to eat our favorite nuts, fruit, crackers, chocolate and bars. The preferences change over time.

My most recent find on dry fruit is the Trader Joe’s dry mandarin orange segments, which we both ate daily for the 60-70 days we were on the AZT and CO Trail in 2016.

As to crackers, we also don’t usually eat crackers at home as we tend to lean toward paleo (see the comment my paleo brother posted on the article). When hiking we don’t give any thought to healthy eating. Jim has been on a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish run for since early 2016. My current favorite is Trader Joe’s Everything crackers and Trader Joe’s Giant Inca Corn Nuts. I just discovered the Sonoma Creamery items referenced in the article and I’m very optimistic about them; time will tell whether they are still appealing after a month on the trail. The Sonoma Creamery Bacon Cheddar Crisps are 150 calories per oz, with 10 grams of protein per oz, and I think they taste great. We tried Moon Cheese but couldn’t imagine eating that on a regular basis.

We tried the Trader Joe’s Sesame Sticks that is a staple of our buddy Alan D and we couldn’t get them down; Jim called it dog kibble.

I buy my jerky at Costco. It’s cheap and some of the varieties they carry don’t have bad additives. I buy vacuum packed smoked fish at the grocery store or the local fish market and I choose the brand that has the least packaging for the desired amount of fish. For the smoked fish I buy at the Fish Market, I cut it into single-meal portions and take it to the butcher at my grocery store who is kind enough to vacuum pack it for me; very kind of him. I buy Proscuitto at Costco, two 6-oz packs for $12, because it’s half the price of the alternatives. Bar preferences rise and fall. The only one that’s been on my list for a long time is Clif Chocolate Mint.

I think we do less analysis than many BPLers. If we still look forward to eating it, and if it is compact and has a reasonable protein and calories-per-oz value, then we keep eating it. If we finish a trip and feel like we didn’t have enough to eat, we increase the portions for the next trip.

[Tipi Walter]

Thanks for this thread as I want to copy it and your blog link to read on my next February backpacking trip . . . as I sip hot nettle and peppermint tea in my tent using my . . . simmerlite cookstove.

To me, backpacking food is all about Variety and a stove and cooked food offers more variety.  Plus, on long expedition style trips carrying dehydrated foods-ready-to-cook actually saves weight because there’s no water being hauled as with many snack no-cook foods.  All the water I use as replacement to my dehydrated meals comes from the woods itself, i.e. and not carried.

Plus, eating a no-cook diet puts alot of strain on the teeth and teeth will crack, snap apart, break, and lose crowns on occasion, due mostly to eating no-cook meals.  Just something to consider.  Cooked food is softer food.

In April 2015 I pulled a no-cook trip of 19 days and while liberating at first, I started missing the morning ritual of hot tea and hot oatmeal and getting to use my home dehydrator to create awesome meals-ready-to-cook in the field.  Just some thoughts.

And finally and in reality, my backpacking trips are now both No-cook and Cook.  How so?  Some days I snack and don’t cook, other days I pull out the stove for two hot meals a day.  In fact, on a long 21 day trip (with a food load of about 45 lbs) I carry two food bags—a Cookables bag and a Snackables bag.  I’m pretty much always snacking no-cook foods, and still have more variety in my cookables bag.  Both are needed.

[Matthew / BPL]

Amy, have you tried TJ’s seed crackers? I find them to be absolutely delicious with  Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

You can make them yourself too.

[d k]

Hi, Amy –

I don’t see mention of breakfast – do you just eat randomly from the day’s food, or eat bars, or just skip it and wait for lunch?

Debbie

[David Thomas]

Dena: “May I ask your method for keeping the food cold that needs to stay cold?”

Amy: “we expose our food bag to the night air, and then insulate it before sunrise, as described in the article. We don’t attempt to achieve cold, but we do achieve not too hot. We select firm and aged cheeses. . ”

I can confirm that is a very effective method.  Sleeping bags and sleeping pads are very good at insulating (you’d hope so!) and with a little thought to keep your pack out of the sun when possible, the average temp of the stored food can approach that of night time lows.

Varsity level cold storage can include snagging some snow in a water bottle when you go over a pass or starting with some of your food frozen.  Frozen food doesn’t weigh any more or less than warm food, so you can pre-freeze your soft cheese, meats, even raw meat, in a bundle and keep that together in the middle of your insulation.  In spring and fall, you could be still thawing things out 1-2 days later.

I met my wife on a backpacking trip (only 6 miles in) and I brought ice cream sundaes, kept cold with dry ice.  I’ve served cold champagne at a wedding of friends on top of Half Dome and the bride and groom later did a backpacking trip with live lobsters.

But my most common use of cold-storage tricks is to have my first two days of food being more like at home because it is cheaper and my gut seems to like a gradual transition to backpacking food instead of an abrupt change.  Things a turkey-cheddar-cream-cheese-roast-beef-avocado tortilla wrap.  A few items are marginally heavier than UL backpacking options, but I’m only carrying then for a day or two so the pound-miles aren’t much.

 

[Matthew / BPL]

That wrap sounds good. My favorite first night meal is a big ham and asiago sandwich on whole wheat bread. I wrap it in foil with a couple mustard/mayo packets. I don’t make campfires often but I have warmed this sandwich next to one up a couple times. Delicious.

[ben .]

amy/jim/your intern/whoever, thank so much for the ideas.

i’ll throw in my own recent discovery: clif “nut butter filled” bars.

i’ve tried two or three flavors and all have been good. they’re ~130 cal/oz compared to ~105 cal/oz for regular clif bars.

[Amy Lauterbach]

Ben, Just us chickens here, no interns:)  Jim is busy planning the route details for our next outing, and I’m busy trying to get our backlog of trip reports rewritten and reformatted and posted on DoingMiles.

Debbie, We don’t eat before we start walking. We eat bars and nuts and fruit and chocolate throughout the day, each on our own schedule.

[John Vance]

I am amazed at the options for food choices and eating styles folks come up with.  40 years ago we didn’t have many prepared choices and couldn’t seem to freely think about coming up with some of our own.  I had granola, GORP, jerky, salami, Kendall mint cakes, lots of Brachs butterscotch candies, bullion, chocolate (remember those Tropical Hersey bars?), and alternating Mt House Chicken a la King or Chili with beans for most of the PCT.

I really like the no cook approach but typically don’t get to deploy it unless on a solo trip.  My daily eating habits are mostly no cook as well and have been for a couple of decades.  I am fortunate in that I don’t need much variety in my diet and quite often find that I get more variety out in the woods than I have at home.

[Amy Lauterbach]

Greg – thanks again for the calorie table. I’m inspired to do some work to incorporate that kind of data into our DoingMiles article.

I took another look at our selection of bars. The most important thing for Jim is diversity, so he has 15 or 20 different bars that he mixes up. I’m more particular, so I just looked at the bars that I plan to take on our next long hike – six weeks, using shipped resupply boxes. Listing calories per oz for each type:

104 Clif Cool Mint Chocolate
114 NuGo Dark Mocha Chocolate
120 Zone Perfect Double Dark Chocolate
122 Luna Dark Chocolate Mocha Almond
131 Clif Nut Butter, Chocolate Hazelnut Butter
149 Kirkland (aka Costco) Nut Bar, Almonds, Cashews and Walnuts

Average is 123 calories per oz, a little higher than Greg’s chart. The Clif Cool Mint Chocolate is the lowest, but I’ll continue to carry one per day because 1) I still like them and 2) I can carry it until mid-afternoon in an exterior pocket and it won’t melt.

[Katherine .]

Amy & James – great post. thank you!

Tipi — Have you experimented with cold-soak methods? It would address your concerns of water weight (you’re only carrying the extra water for a couple hours per meal while rehydrating) and the meals are soft on the teeth. I have not yet, but am considering it.

[David Thomas]

>”Have you experimented with cold-soak methods?”

I do that.  In the form of Tabouli.  Adding more olive oil bumps up the calories with the highest calories/ounce food possible.  You can buy the prepared mix at the store, or make up your own.  First, maybe second day, we have actual fresh tomatoes in the mix.  Later in the trip, sun-dried or dehydrated tomatoes add a bit of color, flavor, fiber and nutrients.  Likewise, fresh parsley early, dried parsley flakes later in the trip.

For cold-soaked chopped grains, reconstituting with coconut-milk powder and a pinch of green-, red- or yellow-curry paste give it a Thai flavor without carrying any extra water weight.  That also works with dehydrated black/red beans.  Which you can heat up after cold-soaking or simply serve as a cold bean salad.

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