28 Days-We ought to eat all our provisions now

"I think," said Christopher Robin, "that we ought to eat all our Provisions now, so that we shan't have so much to carry."  Winnie the Poo by A.A. Milne

Some goodies, including a 4 pound bag of chocolate chips

On Sunday after spending two hours at the gym walking six miles with my pack I went up the street to Sam’s Club to do a little whole sale shopping with a member card borrowed from my Aunt (Hi Sandy!).  I didn’t have a list, just the plan to go up and down every food aisle slowly.  At this point I know what I like to eat while on the trail, but I still took my time.

I started at the candy aisle and quickly added a large can of peanuts to my massive cart followed by a 48 count box of Snickers and a 24 count of PayDays.  In ’09 I bought four boxes of Snickers and didn’t finish them off until November of ’10.  I took a Snicker vacation in ’11 and I’m ready to return to them.  I might have to go get a second box—I’m not sure yet.

190 dollars of food in one box.

I went there looking for breakfast foods and snacks.  Since I was last in a whole sale store in ’09 I think the selection of food increased.  I found everything I expected, but I found some of it in different flavors than “original.”  I’m pretty happy with the variety of food I picked out and I even found a few things to add to my homemade and dehydrated lunches and dinners—like a giant bag of bacon bits.  I think any of my dinners would benefit form a handful of bacon bits.  Sadly, they only had tuna in cans.  Hopefully a grocery store puts tuna packets on sale soon.  They had some potted meats and yard long pepperoni sticks, which I’m not interested in.

I accidently stayed a half hour after closing time—I blame the Nutterbutter cookies that I stood in front of debating if they should be in my cart or not (I went with not) for too long.  I rang up with 190 dollars of food that all fit into one big box—it looked like more in the cart.

Almost 7 days of food with 4,453 calories.

Sunday I bought the food so Monday I took it and spread it across my floor in tidy little categories.  Awhile ago I had broken my maps into section for mailing and I used them for the base of my food planning.  I started small with drink mixes and some food that I had left over from last summer ridge running.  I have nineteen drops planned—and that counts what I’ll have in my pack on day one.  I quickly laid out breakfast, second breakfast, morning snack, afternoon snack, drink mixes, and hot chocolate powder.  I might have over done it buying two boxes of hot chocolate mix.  I ended up with 140 envelopes hot chocolate and I plan on being out there for 150 days.  I had planned on bringing tea as well, but I’ll wait and see. 

For one 7 day section that I prepped I ended up with 4,453 calories of snacks and breakfasts which breaks down to 636 calories a day.  Besides missing lunches and dinners I’m missing half my breakfast for that section.  I’m planning on having half oatmeal and half breakfast bars in each drop.  Each section I prepped yesterday is also missing goldfish crackers, cookies, and gorp (that’s what the 4 pounds of chocolate chips are for).

Most of my drops.

A lot of people don’t do food drops because they worry about getting bored with the food in the drops.  That doesn’t worry me at all.  It’s never been a problem on my other hikes—my Snickers vacation wasn’t due to boredom, I simply ran out of them and without a Sam’s Club card of my own I didn’t feel like replacing them.  I try to pack a smidgen less than what I’ll want to eat:  if I’m out for seven days I bring six candy bars.  That way I have the option of bringing a different type of candy out of town or making do with an extra handful of peanuts.  A little bit of hunger makes me appreciate my food a lot more. 

The dehydrator has been humming along, but I’m no where close to done yet.  I had to toss one mistake, but since then I’ve made three batches of artichoke soup and today I’ll be making a Thai dish—or at least the veggies and the sauce for it.  And while that dries I’ll be at the gym walking.