56 Breakfasts in One Tub

  Progress is being made on food. The 56 backpacking breakfasts are complete. They all fit in one tub, which is drop-dead perfect! (Yes, I'm using the trailer table-top for a makeshift island in my kitchen for more temporary work space)

Want to see what's inside? From upper center clockwise, they are: Fruit torte and nuts, Grapenuts and citrus slices, rice pudding and fruit mix, Paul Bunyan Bars and spotted applesauce, artisan crisp breads to be eaten with cheese from the "lunch" pack, and bacon-cheesy grits and mixed nuts. More description below the picture. Each meal include a fake juice pack, because I like to drink something tart first thing in the morning and an instant coffee pack which will dissolve OK in cold water. I prefer the coffee bags, but they just sit and get wet in cold water, never actually making coffee.

Remember, I am planning to not carry the stove (except maybe the first few winter days). So everything has to rehydrate in cold water.

1. Fruit torte with trail mix- I made these up long ago. You spread jelly into a slab and dehydrate until sticky and will hold together in a sheet. Cut and stack with graham crackers. Various nut mix packs included. 6 meals

2. Grapenuts- I really like this breakfast a lot. It's good hot or cold. Grapenuts cereal with some powdered milk, a tiny bit of sugar, and butter buds. Add water and let the cereal soften. Recipe from The Back Country Kitchen. Dried grapefruit, oranges and tangerine slices. 14 meals

3. Rice pudding- With instant rice, this rehydrates fine cold, although you can make this hot as well. Rice, milk, sugar, butter buds, and a little dried fruit. I variously threw in apricot bits, raisins, cranberries, bananas, and maybe a couple with prunes. A small package of dried melon pieces included. Dried melon is like candy! Mixed cantelope and honeydew. 14 meals

4. Paul Bunyan bars are my adaptation of a recipe from The Well-Fed Backpacker. They are basically a peanut butter and bacon bar. Perhaps my favorite trail breakfast. The spotted applesauce is applesauce leather with raisins. 7 meals (because I had these in the freezer and they survived the great thaw event- yes I checked. They are fine.)

5. The artisan crisp breads were a fortuitous find at the store across the street. They sell a lot of discount foods with damaged packaging. I saw these, and knew there had to be some use for them. They are hard to describe unless you've seen them. They are thin slices of bread that are heavy with fruit and nuts and then baked until crispy, but the fruit keeps them a little chewy. They are probably shelf stable for years. I tried to think what to pair with them. Looked for shelf stable packets of something like cream cheese. Nope, everything needs refrigeration. Tried one with just regular cheese which I always have in my lunch bag. Yum! So I bought all they had (these would usually be out of my budget, but were deeply discounted). 9 meals

6. Cheesy grits with bacon. This was just a fluke find, and it is great. I was across the street again, and saw a box of instant cheesy grits. I wondered if they would rehydrate cold, and they do! I threw in some imitation bacon bits (real ones get rancid), and there were 5 more meals. Learned that I really like these. I added a pack of either fruit or nuts.

If you have been counting, this leaves me one meal short. I had a package of apple-yogurt-oatmeal bits left over from another trip. I was going to make more of this, but then found the grits, so that saved me a pile of work. I didn't picture the one sad-looking-but-fine package of the yogurt bits. 1 meal

And, since I'll be eating these at sunrise... here's today's morning event.

In other news: it's all other news. I did a vendor event all day. Did OK- not stellar. I spent a lot of time quietly fussing because I could have been home working on the trailer. Came home and worked for 2 hours, found out what my next problem will be, so now I have overnight to figure out the solution. I'll be working on something yet when I finish this post. And I didn't even have the vendor event on the list, so I get to cross off no BIG ITEMS, but I did cross off one small one, and foisted another off on a willing friend. However, I added more small ones. 26 BIG ITEMS to do (36 done), and 36 small ones to do (22 done). 24 days to go.

See 56 Main Meals