I finally weaned myself away from the prepared dehydrated food of AlpineAire and Mountain House. It's tasty enough, but at $5.00 and up per meal is a bit expensive. It's also bulky, owing to the extra gas they put in the bag to protect the contents. Furthermore, the packaging is heavy and generates a lot of trash to pack up and tote around until you can burn it in a campfire, if that's even permitted.

This year I studied the supermarket aisles more closely, and was pleased to discover that the energy to weight ratio of most dehydrated foods, including grains, is around 100 calories per ounce, or about the same as cheese. I eventually settled upon the combination below. I ended up taking 14 lbs of food yielding 17100 Calories for the week, nearly 2500 per day (see my worksheet). Although that's considerably more than my normal intake, my energy expenditure was higher still: I lost 4 lbs during the trip.

Breakfast: Bacon, Eggs, RyKrisp, Peanut Butter [1]

Lunch: [2] Maruchan Noodle Soup (the noodles in the cellophane wrap, not the instant lunch in the styrofoam cup.)

Dinner: Cereal with powdered milk

Trail Food : Granola, Jerky, Trail Mix [3]

Snacks: Granola Bars, Crystal Light

Spare Food : Oatmeal

Larder: Butter, Flour, Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Dill.

Notes:

(1) The eggs and bacon reduced the energy to weight ratio considerably, but I took them anyway because their satisfaction index is so high. There's nothing like real, fresh, hot food. Eggs and bacon will last a week or more without refrigeration, eggs because of their sterile containers (their shells) and bacon because it's smoked. Still, I think of that extra weight every time... Maybe next year I'll take something else instead.

(2) In practice, I didn't stop for lunch. I ate the trail food during the day and had both the cereal and the soup at night.

(3) The trail mix I chose had a high fruit content, mostly apricots. This turned out to be a big mistake. I nibbled on it constantly while hiking, unaware - at first - that the acid in the fruit was wreaking havoc with my teeth at the gumline. After two or three days of that regimen, it began to be painful to brush my teeth. After I got home, a fluoride treatment twice a day eventually hardened the enamel sufficiently that the pain went away, but permanent damage has been done.