Anything worth doing……

I’m one of those people for whom the axiom “anything worth doing is worth over doing” was written. If something is important to me, this ethos will, nine times out of ten, guide my actions. In no place is this more apparent than my cooking.

Nearly all of the food I’ve prepared for the PCT came from the recipe book ” Lipsmackin’ Backpackin'” by Christine and Tim Conners. It has a great variety of recipes and advice regarding preparation and nutrition. I highly recommend it – with a caveat – I haven’t actually eaten any of the food yet because I’m still weeks out from starting my hike. But from a ‘you-don’t-know-what-you-don’t-know’ pre-hike perspective, it’s been extremely helpful to me.

As you can imagine, backpacking recipes are based around non-perishables (nuts, pasta, instant potatoes) or food that is pre-cooked then dehydrated and later reconstituted with water on the trail. I have a food dehydrator. It was given to me over 15 years ago by Betty’s Mom when she and BILS bought a new one. Truth be told, it would have been a lot cheaper to just buy one locally rather than ship a used one across country (as evidenced by Betty’s Mom’s annoyance at the time), but then there’s a reason she’s my favorite relative (not counting HH).

Over the years, I didn’t use the dehydrator very much – perhaps once or twice in 15+ years. Yet it moved with me twice, took up valuable cabinet space and collected dust. I even bought additional accoutrements for it at a kitchen store several years back, not knowing when I would actually use them. (They were on sale.)

When the stars aligned to make 2018 the year of my PCT quest, the dehydrator came out of its spot in the back corner of the top shelf cabinet. You know, the one where you need a step ladder and then have to crawl inside just to reach it. Aside from the first few nights, when I unplugged it fearing it would start a fire in the middle of the night, it has been running non-stop since.

Admittedly, I’m a novice at dehydrating food, particularly food that won’t be eaten for months. It’s one thing to dehydrate food for next week’s camping trip. It’s another when your entire diet for 6 months is being prepared in advance. Per the internet and common sense, dehydrating food is no guarantee against spoilage. Residual moisture or any number of things can lie in wait, ready to spring to life in the confines of a sun-soaked, overheated backpack. Can you say food poisoning? And miles from medical attention?

So, as a way to mitigate and prevent future illness or, almost as bad, not having enough food between resupplies due to spoilage discovered on the trail, I set up a non-scientific experiment at home. I would spend a lot of money and time preparing food in January and February, store the food in a closet and then do a visual/smell check before divvying it up into resupply boxes in early April. It made sense to me. I was sort of (but not really) recreating the conditions inside my backpack: time, darkness and relative warmth. What could possibly go wrong? (A question I imagine will be answered in a future blog post.)

I’m aware my experiment was not, uh, shall we say ‘fool-proof.’ In fact it may be the very definition of ‘proving a fool.’ So to ease my mind a small, negligible bit, I proceeded to dehydrate the ‘$#%^’ out of my food. To the ‘so dry I might break a tooth’ point. To the ‘it will take more water than can be humanly carried in the California desert’ point. To the ‘it and cockroaches will be the only thing left after nuclear war’ point. If a recipe said dry 8-10 hrs, I opted for 24-36 hrs. When the fruit leather recipe said “until leathery and still pliable”, I made a brittle jerky that had a slight fruit flavor. Moisture would not spoil my food, not if I could help it.

You may be thinking what about vacuum sealing? Wouldn’t that help? I consulted YouTube and even had plans for a Costco run to purchase one, but in the end the budding thru-hiker in me won out. Vacuum sealing could provide some protection, but it for sure added weight. For those of you scoffing right now, you have to understand: ounces make pounds. And to a long distance thru-hiker, even hundredths of ounces add up. I’m not a gambler, but to me foregoing vacuum sealing is worth the risk.

So yes, I might die of starvation, unable to produce enough saliva to gum the food down after my teeth have all broken/fallen out. But, hey, at least it’s not food poisoning.

The nearly antique dehydrator working overtime

Pliable? Not a chance.