To Save Money Backpacking, Take Food

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DINNER

Most respectable camp dinners start with soup and end with a simple dessert and a beverage. The soup brightens spirits and holds starvation at bay while the main course is cooking. Soup also helps hikers replenish their body fluids-which is especially important in parts of the West, where the typically dry air evaporates body moisture rapidly.

Viewed broadly, main courses follow a single pattern: An expandable, fast-cooking starch is blended with (or served under) a mixture of meat and such enhancements as vegetables, sauces, spices, and toppings.

In fact, you can map out a main-course planner on one page. Split the sheet into three or four columns. Head one column "Starches" and another "Meats." Either lump the rest together as "Flavorings" or give "Vegetables" a separate column. If you can list ten items in each of three columns, you'll have 1,000 combinations, not counting those that use two foods from the same column. Of course, many of these wheel-of-fortune combos will be real gaggers (imagine fried-rice-style Rice-A-Roni with tuna and chili powder), but you'll also have hundreds of real possibilities.

Dinner desserts include the lunch varieties, plus instant puddings and other easily prepared sweets (such as no-bake cheesecake).

Notice that I've not presented any detailed menus, but only broad guidelines for getting better—and better-tasting—backpacking meals for your money. Along the same lines, I offer the following nine hints for planning better, cheaper trail meals.

HINT 1: ANALYZE YOUR TRIP

Every outing presents its own culinary opportunities and limitations. Smart cooks plan precisely—day by day, meal by meal—for the trip at hand. So before you shop, ask yourself questions like these:

How many days? If several strong backs will be dividing the load for a weekend trip, you needn't worry much about weight. (You could probably haul cast-iron pots without undue strain.) On the other hand, on summer one-nighters I often go without a fire. I simply dine on no-cook foods and streamchilled beer, and wake myself up with a walk instead of caffeine.

Nutritional balance is important on long trips (you may even want to include vitamin pills). But for short outings, diet is a matter of choice; after all, you could survive three days on nothing but Fritos and water without seriously threatening your health—though I can't imagine anyone wanting to.

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