When you’re carrying everything you need to get by for multiple days on the trail it can be challenging to figure out what goes in the backpack and what stays behind. If someone doesn’t grow up backpacking, learning to pack for and prepare food in the backcountry is often one of the most difficult skills to master.

Mountain House, a popular freeze dried food company, would tell you that you need to pack nothing more than a stove, a single pot and a lot of their meals. Though, Mountain House freeze dried Neapolitan ice cream is surprisingly tasty; if you are sharing with a group try to get your hands on the strawberry section first.

Turns out we don’t need half a cup of pulled pork, each.

– Julie’s notebook, Day 2, Florence Pass

Other people might suggest taking ramen noodles and power bars, which is also a viable but bland option. While these ideas will certainly sustain a person for days or even weeks on end, they aren’t great at feeding much more than your belly.

The four of us have taken a bit more creative path to dining while adventuring. We take a strategic and sophisticated approach that includes the creation of a schedule, assigning each meal to one person. Other considerations include weight distribution and the sacrifice of space in our packs, but we’ve decided it is definitely worth it. 

Our first morning in the Wilderness we treat ourselves to breakfast burritos. They have been prepared in 6” tortilla shells, wrapped individually in tin foil, and frozen the day before we depart on our adventure. Twenty-four hours later they have thawed and are ready to be heated and devoured. Eating a warm homemade treat that first morning makes carrying them through the first day completely worth the effort.

Hands down our favorite lunch has become Thai chicken wraps, but unlike the breakfast burritos we make these fresh on the trail. By spreading peanut butter on a tortilla we create a base that will hold the other ingredients in place. Next we add chunked or shredded chicken to the mix, and thinly sliced cucumber and yellow or orange bell pepper strips tossed to the top complete the dish. Wrap and enjoy.

We have experimented with a lot of dinner options over the years and we have learned a lot of lessons. Two of the evening meals we continue to come back to are a pasta, sausage, avocado dish, and a Stovetop stuffing, Craisins, and chicken feast. It can be a bit tricky keeping an avocado bruise-free and intact for multiple days in a backpack, but as long as it’s kept at the top it makes the trip quite nicely.

When you hit the trails this summer I encourage you to get creative with your food and try making a new meal. You never know, you might like it so much you want to make it again at home.