6:31 p.m. on January 24, 2010 (EST)
Invest in a food dehydrator (Open Country/Nesco builds the best for the the cheapest) and make your own dried fruits, sauces and jerky. No preservatives, gain control of the sodium and the nitrates/whatever and eat that food you're hauling around confident in its nutritional value. MSG, what's that? Nothing like being in control of what you can be in control of in my opinion. Let 'em keep their plastic-lined foil "meals". Prep your own food.
Yep, light food is dry food and the best food is the kind you make for yourself. Once you get the hang of it you'll wonder why you didn't do it years ago. Very cool also, with the speed and efficiency of the Open Country/Nesco machines, you'll get 'er dun in just a matter of a few hours, not days.
Yeah, I do think that drying stuff is way smarter than any of the other alternatives. Plus, if you think the opportunity all the way through, you'll end up with sufficient emergency rations available for those times when the weather or other manifestation of The Almighty decides to remind you of your inescapable mortality by turning off the 'lectric and shutting down all the stores and leaving you in the dark alone with your Petzl headlight, 3/4 ounce knife, cuban fiber sarcophagus and SPOT Messenger. Who you gonna' call? You sure they're gonna' show up?
Self-reliance is fundamental to wilderness travel, or even sitting on the couch watching Oprah (mainly because you can't avoid your responsibilities no matter what. And who does that, really, watch Oprah I mean? You gotta' have a mind made of mush to spend your life listening to such drivel.).
Yeah, when you consider all the stuff that can and will happen while you're breathin', well, it'll take your breath away.
Struggling to return to the point of all this, in the case of ground-pounding I think it all starts with the preparation for the journey, which means for me (and likely for many of you) that the hike actually begins at the kitchen table cutting up real food for the dehydrator. Think of it as kinda' like frontier living but with all the modern conveniences. What could be better than that? One could even call it romantic. Certainly fun is involved. And even some arrogance. It's a perfect balance.
And who wants to intentionally contribute to the production of single-use foil packets anyway? Not me and not many of you, at least not if it can be prevented/avoided with just a little bit of effort and a whole lot of satisfaction thrown into the work. Yeah, yeah, I know. Recyclable. Wonderful. Why waste the energy recycling what should have never been made in the first place?
Buy a dehydrator. $50-$70, about the same price as that ridiculous titanium mug we all just gotta' have (and yes, I do have one, though the Heineken beer can gets a lot more use).
HYOH.
Drake