The cost of food will be my biggest expense on the Appalachian Trail, however, there are several things I can do to save money. Buying foods in bulk and divvying them up is cheaper than buying several smaller packages. Also, dehydrating fruits, vegetables and meals will cut down the cost and eliminate excessive packaging.
Thru-hiker, Moss suggested using a dehydrator over an oven since it makes life easier. “Ask your parents if they have any hippie friends you can borrow one from…” she says. However, I want to have my own since I will be dehydrating a ton of food.
Therefore, today I purchased a dehydrator on Amazon: the Excalibur 3500 Deluxe Series 5 Tray Food Dehydrator. Also, Mary Bell’s complete dehydrator cookbook “everything you need to know to make delicious dried snacks, jerkies, fruit leathers, nutritious meals, and even potpourri!” came in the mail today!!
In retrospect Moss would have started dehydrating 3-4 months prior to her departure and only would have made her personal favorites. I have five months till I head out so once my machine comes in the mail I’ll have a month of practice. “My friends on the trail had a really amazing/enabling mother and she dehydrated stuff for them as they hiked - now THAT is the ideal way to travel!” Moss exclaims.
Below are a few sites geared toward dehydrated food recipes:
http://www.wildernesscooking.com/fork/samplerecipes.htm
http://www.trailcooking.com/
http://www.onepanwonders.com/
http://www.trailcooking.com/
http://www.onepanwonders.com/
In preparation for my 1987 hike from VA to ME (I did the southern part in sections), I dried a lot of meat. I would put the meat into a small plastic bottle with a bit of margarine and water then cook it in rice, etc. I was a waste of time! I found I could get by with stuff in stores and did buy almost everything I needed along the way (and this was before you could get tuna in packages). Good luck on your trip. If you look in by blog, you'll find lots of posts about my trip on the AT as I've been trying to clean up my journal and with that and letters, get the story down on paper.
ReplyDeleteHey Sage, thanks for joining my blog and your thoughts! Would you be able to give me the web address to your AT journal so that I can check it out?
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am dehydrating my food is mostly to save money (jerky is sooo expensive and I love it) but also to eat clean. I have 4 1/2 months before I leave, so I'll have plenty of time to establish a dehydrating system. If I wasn't a poor college student I would probably just by all organic goods but I'm excited nevertheless!
Again, thank you and please feel free to keep commenting!