When you say, "Oh, I want to hike the PCT," you never really realize how much food you are going to need. I mean, you can sit here and go, "Sure, I will be out for about 150 days," but that really equates to something in the ballpark of 900 meals. I know not all of those meals are going to be made on a camp stove, but still. It's a big number. Then you have to add in the dog food for the trip, which is a pound a day, plus water. Yep, there is a lot of food going on.
The way we have decided to break it down (and please remember, this is all up in the air since we haven't even left yet) is that we will probably do about a third of our food through dehydrated meals I have made, about a third of our food through commercial freeze-dried meals, and about a third of our food through purchasing at stores along the way.
That pares down the number of 900 to 300 breakfasts, 300 lunches, and 300 dinners for the two of us, or 100 of each meal type for me to make. Yep. It's kinda crazy. I'm thinking we will probably do more snacky stuff from shops along the way for lunch, but that is still a huge number. And I am making quite a bit of it. In my food prep, I have skewed my prep to mainly focus on breakfast and dinner, since we have quite a bit of other stuff from pro-deals (oh the glory of pro-deals), such as jerky, fruit leather, candy, and such for lunches. That really looks like something in the range of 140 (my working number) for breakfasts, and how many dinners I am able to pull together.
In reading books about the trail, Damon came across a decent idea (at least in theory) about how to keep us from going insane for meals, breakfast especially. In Hiker Trash, they talk about how they have multiple types of breakfast (oatmeal, granola, eggs) and different variations on each of them so they rotate through. Each week, at least this this plan, they would only eat each type two to three times, and then each one of those times would be a different riff of the meal, rather than the same things over and over again. I like it. I have taken and added a fourth category to Oatmeal, Granola, and Eggs: Couscous. I know it is very similar to oatmeal, but it does have a different texture, though I plan on doing many of the same additives and variations that I am doing with the oatmeal.
That means I have to make 36 (I like round numbers) meals of each of the four types. I have six flavors of oatmeal/couscous, three flavors of eggs, and five flavors of granola. That all ends up meaning that I have to make six of each type of oatmeal/couscous, twelve of each type of egg, and seven (though I will probably make eight, just because I'm the person who likes symmetry) of each type of granola. Yes. Lots of meals. I'm not going to mention just how many I have done right now. Just not doing it. I'll post my recipes in a later post (either when I have the bandwidth before leaving, on trail, or when we get back with reviews of the recipes). I do have some other meals that are somewhat supplemental to these of various things I have put together. The plan with those is to just toss them in whenever and use them when we are getting sick of our rhythm.
While breakfasts are actually fairly organized, dinners are not. I'm just plowing through all of the food I have dehydrated making whatever I can out of my recipe books. I'm using Recipes for Adventure, as well as a compilation of all of the different recipes I found through googling backpacking meals (and a bunch of other keywords. Yay Google). I'm trying to make sure that I keep an even count of meals, though that is not always the case. I also am really trying to make sure that I add in protein and veg to every meal. I am doing this mostly by the dehydrated food I have made (or purchased in the case of broccoli). I succumbed to a moment of just get it mailed to me, though I probably could have ended up making myself.
I'm not even thinking right now about how we are going to make all of my meals, plus what Damon has purchased, plus what we purchase in trail towns harmonious, but I guess that is part of the trail. I'm just going to go with it and utilize all of this as a good starting point. If we don't like it, we see what we can swap for in hiker boxes or we do tradesies on the trail. At this point, there is a lot of stuff up in the air, though I am learning to live with that.
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