This trip I tried to go light on the food prep side, and heavier on the food itself. I found a little alcohol stove (about two ounces), and made a windscreen for it out of aluminum cans I found at the trailhead. For the food, I carried more fresh stuff than I typically would: it was an excellent trade-off.
Starting with the best, here are the fresh foods I would pack again and again:
garlic
pecorino
ginger
bell pepper
carrot
apple
onion
lime
I always bring along naan for cleaning pots with (it’s much more fun to eat than to scrub). And of course, there’s lots of dry stuff that makes sense. My favorite dry items:
dried refried beans (Rainbow Grocery)
couscous (which I didn’t take this time: tried bulgur wheat instead but bulgur is too finicky for an alcohol stove)
roasted, salted pumpkin seeds (roasted sunflower seeds work well too)
raisins (or, even better, currants)
rolled oats (which can be added to anything–not just breakfast)For general cooking I always bring vegetable oil, salt, pepper. (Olive oil is too ’specific’ a flavor–but oil-cured olives are good to bring to add to the vegetable oil.) This time I added honey, which was nice for breakfast and I even added it to the salty stuff to put a little dimension into the one-pan dishes (as if Mountain House dinners didn’t have tons of corn syrup in them). And of course you have multi-purpose taste-it/drain-it whiskey. Next time I’ll bring vinegar too, and a poblano pepper in place of one of the sweet bell peppers, and maybe peanut butter. Clif bars is cheating.
