Cooking and Nutrition

It’s a sad fact that many of the grocery stores you used to find in small towns along the Appalachian Trail and other hiking trails have been replaced by gas station convenience stores. The quality of food available has suffered and it can …

Many canister-style backpacking stoves, including Jetboils, have a built-in sparker to light the gas so you don’t have to carry matches or a disposable butane lighter with you to ignite them. It’s usually an orange button along the base of the burner …

Freeze-dried or dehydrated? That is the question. When making your own backpacking meals, is it nobler to buy freeze-dried ingredients or dehydrate them yourself in a food dehydrator? I think it really comes down to how you want to spend your time …

Many people like to eat freeze-dried backpacking meals on overnight trips or dehydrate their own food and make freezer-bag dinners because you just add hot water to them and they don’t require any cleanup. But I don’t mind cooking a hot dinner …

“Oh crap. I forgot to bring my spoon,” said a backpacker I’d just met at the campsite. I know that exact feeling. I’ve left my big plastic backpacking spoon at home on the drying rack next to the kitchen sink too many …

Simple one pot backpacking meals are a great option if you want more variety in your backpacking diet, you want to eat real food with less preservatives, or you want to adapt your meals to seasonal or locally available ingredients that you encounter …

What’s your cooking style on backpacking trips? Do you prefer to mix up your own freezer bag meals using store ingredients or ingredients you’ve dehydrated at home? Or do you like eating soupy, one-pot meals that easy to heat and clean up? …

One of the secrets of successful backpacking is learning how to become extremely organized and to stay organized throughout your trip. That might sound obvious but it’s actually a skill that requires a lot of practice and the development of a set …

When packing food for a multi-day backpacking trip, I try to keep the space it takes up as small as possible so I can bring a smaller, lighter weight backpack. While bringing highly caloric foods helps (over 100 calories per ounce), it’s …

A lot of backpackers own multiple pots, stoves, and windscreens, because like other backpacking gear, there’s often no perfect combination of components that will fit all of your needs. Here are some factors that you should weigh when selecting the components of …

Backpacking stoves can greatly increase your comfort and safety on multi-day trips and in challenging weather conditions. There’s nothing like hot food at dinner to warm you up after hiking in the rain all day or hot coffee after sleeping in a …

Resupply and Mail Drops Mail drops are a common way for long distance hikers to resupply on a long hike. Thankfully, post offices here in the states and abroad will hold packages for pickup by hikers and people who are just passing …

The biggest challenge I face on most backpacking trips is eating enough. The problem is that the food I bring or resupply in towns is boring and doesn’t have that much variety. Ramen noodles, rice sides, couscous, pasta, mashed potatoes, refried beans – …

Reflectix Home Insulation is great stuff for making homemade MYOG backpacking projects. Consisting of bubble wrap sandwiched between two layers of tin foil, it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to find at home improvement stores, highly malleable, and thermally efficient. I’ve also been using Reflectix …