PCT Food Review – Part 3 – Snacks

January 19, 2017January 31, 2017 / yogihiker / 8 Comments

In this entry we talk snacks! You can find our breakfast review here, and our mid-morning snack and lunch reviews here.

As a reminder, we actively sought out sponsors for our hike to help offset the higher cost of quality foods. Every company below with an * next to their name either gave us free food or a discount. While we remain grateful to these companies, their generosity has not influenced our comments.

Snacks

We ate snacks while walking, during rest breaks or as part of our meals. There was never a bad time to snack. Like with anything we ate over 6 months, we got really tired of some things, while we regularly looked forward to others.

All the nitty gritty is below!

Dang Coconut Chips* are simply amazing! We absolutely LOVED them. They are crunchy, flavorful and aromatic; and never got old! The Original Flavor (with coconut sugar and salt) is our favorite. Calorie dense, hearty, and sweet, with a drizzle of salt – oh it makes my mouth water writing about it.

Of all the snacks we shared with other hikers (and there were many), this was the clear favorite. Dang coconut chips are unique and really tasty. Calorie dense, tasty and lightweight – a true thru hiker food!

Andy also enjoyed the Salted Cacao flavor. It has a subtle chocolate flavor with a hint of salt. Neither of us liked the Lightly Salted variety. We found it to be rather bland. Having said that, it was a great addition to granola, oatmeal or with freshly picked huckleberries.

Dang Onion Chips* – Unlike Funyuns that are made with cornmeal and artificial flavors, Dang’s onion chips are minimally processed and made with real onions. We sampled their Sea Salt and Salt and Pepper flavors.

Andy enjoyed the crunch and flavors of both of these savory chips while Laurie felt they were too airy but continued to eat them anyway. Andy would include Dang Onion Chips in his resupply in the future, but Laurie would most likely stick with kettle chips.

Go Raw cookies* – We had both Carrot Cake and Raisin Crunch cookies throughout our hike. The Carrot Cake has a nice blend of spices without a lot of sugar. And they surprisingly (or not surprisingly) taste like carrot cake! Laurie loved them in the beginning but lost interest toward the end of the hike.

Andy, on the other hand, preferred the Raisin Crunch cookies in the beginning – they are made with buckwheat groats and he grew up eating buckwheat – but enjoyed the Carrot Cake flavor when Laurie got tired of them.

Initially, Laurie found the Raisin Crunch cookies bland but coveted them in Washington and toward the end of our hike. Laurie would eat all the pieces with more raisins and once satisfied no other cookie had more than one raisin in them, she’d hand the bag to Andy 🙂

Nuttzo* Nut and Seed Butter is an unknown gem. Nuttzo combines 7 nuts and seeds (almonds, cashews, flax seeds, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds and chia seeds or peanuts or pumpkin seeds) into 3 types of nut butters – Original (with peanuts), Power Fuel (no peanuts) and Chocolate (with peanuts).

They come in little 2 Go packets and include no additional palm or hydrogenated oils. They take a few moments of kneading to get the oils to mix with the nut butter, but that’s a very small price to pay for such a quality, nutritious and delicious treat. Nuttzo nut butters also have less sugar than most other nut butters yet are equally delicious. Laurie loved the Power Fuel flavor and Andy LOVED the Chocolate flavor – he likes chocolate! A lot.

The Ginger People Ginger Candy* – Gin Gins Double Strength was a wonderful hard candy on the trail. They are moderately spicy but not overly sweet.

Laurie loves ginger and Andy has taken a liking to ginger since meeting Laurie so we both enjoyed these candies quite a bit! They will certainly be accompanying us on future adventures.

Banana chips – You can’t go wrong with fried and lightly salted banana chips. We purchased these in bulk and vacuum sealed them into smaller bags. Laurie loved these and even found a gigantic bag in 2 hiker boxes in Washington.

Dried fruit – Andy’s mom and Laurie dehydrated fruit. These were amazing and the best snack ever! Fruit is a luxury and is too heavy to carry for more than a day on the trail, making dried fruit feel like gold. Apricots, peaches, plums, bananas and persimmons – those are but a few of the types of dried fruit we enjoyed on the trail.

Salt and onion cashews – we got these at our local natural food store. We vacuumed sealed them to maintain freshness and it worked for over 7 months! You cannot go wrong with salted nuts on a hike, unless you eat them everyday. We included these in every third resupply box, which made them a novelty all the way to the end.

Trail mix – We bought Kirkland trail mix from Costco for Laurie and custom made some for Andy (he doesn’t eat M&Ms). It didn’t take long for Laurie to get sick of trail mix. But this wasn’t the case for Andy. He loves trail mix and still eats it! HYOH right? 😉

If you’re looking to buy quality trail mix, you can do so here on Amazon.

Far West Fungi Shiitake Jerky – These were gifted to us by Laurie’s good friend. We loved their texture and taste. Definitely the winner of the best surprise treat of the trail. Other hikers really loved them too!

Trader Joes Powerberries, Dark Chocolate Espresso Batons and Plantain Chips – all from Trader Joes. Despite the name, there really isn’t much healthy about the Powerberries – but they taste good, and on the trail that is all that really matters.

Andy’s chocolate fix came in the form of Dark Chocolate Espresso batons. They cost a dollar, are very sweet and very tasty. Andy doesn’t drink coffee but loves the taste of these batons.

We also enjoyed TJ’s Plantain chips. Fried, salty and crunchy. Laurie loved them. Andy thought they were ok. For him they are a bit chalky. He prefers his chips to have more crunch and less width.

Lastly, Laurie packed herself a ziplock of candy for almost every day. These candies turned out to be invaluable when she was tired, sad or grumpy. She ate them in the am, around 4pm as a pick-me-up, before dinner and as dessert. Truth be told, she should have packed herself even more candy!

Her favorite candies were Sour Patch Kids and Sour Jelly Bellies. They were heavy but worth every once! Over time, she got tired of (but still ate) Swedish Fish and peanut M&Ms.

We are happy to report that she has seen her dentist since returning from the hike and she has no cavities!

That’s all for snacks. In our next post we will cover dinners. Stay tuned!

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PCT Food Review Part 2 – Mid Morning Snacks and Lunches

January 17, 2017January 31, 2017 / yogihiker / 6 Comments

In our last post we reviewed our breakfast strategy and bars. In this post we dive into our mid-morning snacks, mid-morning drinks and lunch.

Mid-morning snacks

Because 1 – 2 bars around 6am can only sustain a hiker for a little while, we usually stopped for a snack break around 10 am. Sometimes we ate cold oatmeal (soaked in advance to save time), other times we boiled water for hot oatmeal and once in a while we shoved handfuls of granola into our mouths.

GlutenFreeda’s gluten free oatmeal* isn’t as sweet as most individually wrapped oatmeal packets on the market and were both hearty and flavorful. We appreciated the ease of individual servings which pack better into a bear can than a large ziplock filled with oatmeal.

Our favorite flavors were Apple Cinnamon with Flax, Banana Maple with Flax and Maple Raisin with Flax. GlutenFreeda instant oatmeal is especially good for people who are looking for certified gluten free oatmeal.

We had some bulk gluten free granola from Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco but most of our granola came from 18 Rabbits*. They have added more flavors to their lineup in recent months – all of which are all delicious! Our two favorites on trail were 1) Cherry, Chia and Vanilla and 2) Walnut, Flax and Cacao Nib.

18 Rabbits Granola are not too sweet but sweet enough to make you want more. We discovered that while calorie rich and delicious, granola in general is very heavy. Often times we would eat this as a dessert the first night out of town to cut down on weight.

Mid-morning drinks

When we didn’t have oatmeal but still wanted to stop and drink something warm, Laurie enjoyed hot chocolate and Andy drank DōMatcha Green Tea*.

Laurie LOVES hot chocolate almost as much as mac & cheese so this was always a nice treat for her. Sometimes she would make it a double and sit cooing about how wonderful life was.

Andy enjoyed his green tea, but not with the same enthusiasm as Laurie with her hot chocolate. He added coconut milk powder to his tea for extra flavor and calories. He enjoyed it very much until we encountered the heat of Northern California. The coconut milk fat leaked out of the little zip lock bags and covered his food bag and all its contents with grease. No Bueno.

Lunches

For lunch we had:

Tuna or Salmon packets with mustard (occasionally with roasted seaweed)
Prather Ranch Beef Candy*
Prather Ranch Landjager*
Tanka power packs*
Epic bars
cheese and crackers
homemade salami and crackers

We especially liked Luke’s Crackers* for their taste and crunch when having tuna, salami or cheese. They have the right amount of salt and taste more like a chip than a cracker.

We looked forward to and got very excited when we found these crackers in our resupply boxes even if they were all crumbs!

Our favorite meat products by a country mile were the Prather Ranch Landjager and Beef Candy. We absolutely LOVED them! No matter where we hike next, we will be taking them with us.

The Landjager is a delicious German style meat stick that comes in a pack of 3. Andy usually devoured them in less than a minute while Laurie (trail name Saver for the first 1,000 miles of our hike) would save at least one stick to have with dinner. And she says she has no self control..

The Beef Candy is moist, sweet (but not overly so), savory and very tender. Beef Candy was the hardest thing for us to share on the trail. We both loved them very much and knew the other loved them too. And since we love each other we did share them – some of the time.

Prather Ranch also makes a Hot Beef Candy if you prefer a spicier beef jerky. Andy liked it and found it to be mildly spicy. As he put it, “It had just the right amount of kick.”

Tanka Power Packs – Initially these were great. They are hearty 4oz servings of buffalo meat in a vacuumed sealed bag. We liked the Orange Peel flavor best. The Slow Smoked Original and Spicy Pepper flavors have wild rice in them which offer a rather odd crunch, not to mention that they gets stuck in your teeth. But these were minor details once we got used to them. (You can only purchase these direct from their website here. Other Tanka products are available on amazon and other retailers.)

The wonderful thing about Tanka is that these power packs provided variety to our diet filled with sweet bars. Laurie appreciated their meaty taste up through the Sierra, at which time she got tired of them (and Andy got tired of them by Oregon). Again, this may have been due to the fact that we didn’t have enough variety and burned ourselves out too quickly. Having said that, in Washington Andy started liking them again – especially the Orange Peel flavor.

Epic bars – Similar to Tanka bars, these provided a nice variety to our sweet bar selection. Due to our late order of these bars, we didn’t start getting them in our boxes until Oregon and by that time we were wildly excited for something new and different.

We appreciated the variety of flavors and found Wild Boar to be our favorite. The Venison and Pulled Pork were too salty. Andy loved their Beef Liver Jerky too but Laurie could only handle 1-2 pieces max.

That’s it for this post, the next post will cover dinner and snacks. Stay tuned!

PCT Food Review Part 1 – Breakfast

January 17, 2017January 31, 2017 / yogihiker / 9 Comments

Generally speaking, thru hikers think about food more than anything else – including the next water source! It’s on our minds every minute of every day. Our thoughts are consumed by our hunger and our cravings. No matter who you hike with or how amazing the scenery, the conversation will always come back to food.

“What will I eat in town?

What will I buy for the next section?

What awaits in the box I sent myself?”

What goodies do we have in here?

In the this series of posts we hold nothing back as we review everything we ate on the trail. We are going to break down our reviews into 4 separate posts. In this post, we will cover breakfast. The following posts will include mid morning snacks and lunches, dinner and bars.

Before we get started, there are a few things you should know.

1) Laurie is gluten intolerant and Andy reads the nutrition labels of everything he eats. This meant we packed all our food in advance and Andy’s dad graciously shipped all our resupply boxes to us along the trail. We only bought fresh foods in towns or whatever packaged foods we were craving, but never fully resupplied in town.

2) We actively sought out sponsors for our hike to help offset the higher cost of quality foods. Every company below with an * next to their name either gave us free food or a discount. While we remain grateful to these companies, their generosity has not influenced our comments.

3) We love to eat. We care about the quality of food we ingest and put a lot of time and money into making sure we ate real food rather than junk. Most hikers expend anywhere from 4000-6000 calories/day (depending on speed, terrain and distance walked). The typical thru hiker diet consists of Idahoans, ramen, snicker bars, pop tarts, trail mix and Clif bars. We wanted real food. We carried at least 10 – 25% more food than most other thru hikers. Our packs were heavier but we never went hungry.

We strongly believe our eating habits allowed us to complete the hike without any major sickness or injury. Our bodies changed but neither of us lost more than 10 lbs. Our food plan provided our bodies with adequate nutrition to build muscle mass rather than destroy and waste away with the long days and constant pounding. Nutritious food allowed us to stay healthy to enjoy each section of the trail.

Breakfast

We usually had a bar for breakfast once we hit the trail. Some mornings we ate in our sleeping bags before braving the cold of the morning, but most days we ate on the go. We rarely made hot breakfasts.

Initially we had a 3 box rotation of bars, oatmeal and granola but quickly learned that eating a bar on the go was most efficient. For 90% of the trail we rotated between 3 types of bars: Amazing Grass*, ProBar* and Think Thin. Chocolate melts and becomes much more arduous to eat while walking later in the day so our breakfast bars ended up being the most chocolatey ones.

Amazing Grass* – We both loved these bars before, during and after the trail. Unfortunately, while we were gone Amazing Grass revamped their lineup and the bars we loved are no longer available. Gone are the days when the first two ingredients of their bars were dates and almond butter.

Now the first ingredient is brown rice syrup. And the new bars have crispy brown rice in them for some crunch. This must be what people want but Andy is disappointed because he doesn’t like bars with unnecessary fillers.

Having said all that, we have since purchased their new flavors and tried them. We both like the Chocolate Almond Butter bars. They have good ingredients and taste green (but a palatable green) with a sweet aftertaste.

Only Andy enjoys the Chocolate Peanut Butter and Dark Chocolate + Sea Salt bars. Laurie is still not ready to eat Peanut Butter and has an aversion to anything resembling trail mix. So essentially, the bars may be good but Laurie’s palate hasn’t fully recovered.

Andy loved ProBars* for breakfast! His eyes lit up each time he saw the orange packaging in a resupply box. Despite being very sweet, Andy savored each one – particularly the Koka Moka, Superfood Slam and Wholeberry Blast flavors. The coffee flavor and chocolate chips in the Koka Moka bars, the chunks of fruit and nuts in the Superfood Slam and Wholeberry blast bars are things that he really enjoyed.

He looked forward to these bars every morning he had them and never grew tired of them. In fact, when he found them in a Grocery Outlet a few weeks ago at steep discount, he bought a box! He may seem like a hypocrite for criticizing Amazing Grass for using ingredients that ProBar uses, but this was his treat. And the difference with ProBar and Amazing Grass was that Amazing Grass used to be different.

Think Thin – Prior to hiking the PCT Laurie enjoyed these bars, particularly the Chocolate Brownie because they taste more like a brownie than a protein bar. They are loaded with protein but contain fillers and sugar alcohol. By Oregon, Laurie no longer got excited when she saw these in her box because of their chalky consistency and artificial taste. She continued to eat them since she knew Andy didn’t like them and wouldn’t trade with her. Once in a while they are decent but as an every morning bar, they got old really quickly.

In our next post we will cover mid-morning snacks and lunches. Stay tuned!

Andy and Laurie Hike

PCT 2016 post hike