What do you eat!

Breakfast Soy and Linsead Pita bread toasted with a small tin of Sardines Cup of Tea Lunch Salami (heat treated) and a cheese or peanut butter sandwich Pre dinner Toasted Pita bread with Kapiti Kikorangi Blue Cheese and salami, with a Central Otago Pinot to compliment it Dinner Kaweka meal and toasted Pita bread (really like the Chilli Con Carne but they appear to have taken it off the menu) Snacks Nuts, OSM and the occaisional sweet thing And before you all start none of this is really that heavy to carry including the wine which is decantered into a platypus wine carrier.

I left out that I'm prone to carry a bit of Pinot with me as well (the very reason I bought a 1-litre Platypus)

Gluten-free makes things an exercise in ingenuity. I sort of evolve. Breakfasts and dinners are pretty light and standard but the lunches need to be appetising. Right now it's lettuce used to wrap stuff such as hummus, boiled eggs and fermented mayonnaise. Sometimes it's GF tortillas with pregrated cheese, pre-frozen salmon (cheaper) and salady fillings. Long trips are a challenge weight-wise so it's dehy hummus, with pestoes. The trick is to incorporate as much fat as possible. Fermenting the mayonnaise helps it keep better. Make your own mayo and add whey from a pottle of yoghurt. This inoculates it with a friendly bacteria that helps keep the bad bugs at bay. On my last trip, I'd forgotten half my lunch so it was freshly combined advocado, smoked marlin and feta with lemon juice! My main challenge right now is keeping things fresh for the multi-day trips. This means freezing what I can, transporting it to the road end in a chiller bag with a frozen ice pack, stowing it in the pack under the down jacket which is loose but protected in a supermarket bag, keeping it outside the hut till bedtime, then as low down as possible and when eating it, keeping it in the shade. When I get a food processor I'll be experimenting with making my own snack bars as the commercial ones are full of sugary crap. The manufacturers do this deliberately to make them more addictive. My 50 year old neighbour died from a sudden heart attack from her addiction to these things after they'd given her insulin dependent type 2 diabetes.

Big Paul mentions Kaweka. Which I personally find a bit heavy and long in prep, though tasty. I recently got back from a three passes trek to Everest base camp. While staying in a lodge in Gorak Shep. I noticed three boxes of Kaweka in a display cabinet along with meals from various other plasses around the world. It was nice to see.

"Gluten-free makes things an exercise in ingenuity. I sort of evolve. Breakfasts and dinners are pretty light and standard but the lunches need to be appetising." Gluten allergy is bad enough when looking around todays supermarket shelves. I frequently tramp with someone with a full on Soy allergy. She could die from the slightest taste of soy. As the club frequently does combined meals it gets interesting. Vegetable protein is always soy vegetable oil might be soy flour conditioner is always soy.

Yes, and soy is in a lot of gluten-free bread unfortunately e.g. my favourite - Pavillion. No good for people with thyroid issues such as moi either. Your pal would have to go back to basics I imagine.

Just returned Sunday 8th Dec. from a 3-day tramp in the Kaweka Range's. I've got my food requirements down to a fine art, although I have to admit I constantly 'graze' throughout the day when tramping. Breakfast: 2x Uncle Toby's Oats Sachets (70 grams (g)) with 3x dried walnuts, 2x teaspoons (tsp) milk powder & 1x tsp sugar; 2x Earl Grey t-bags with 1x tsp sugar & 2x tsp milk powder. Lunch: Have started on overnight trips buying foot-long Subways (one for each day). Yummy: yes, expensive: can be, worth it: yes. I avoid things like tomatoes, dressings, sauces or mayonnaises as it makes the 'sandwich' soggy. On longer trips I'll take Rivta bread, cheese & tins of tuna / smoked salmon. Dinner: 1x Back Country Cuisine meal (2 serving) (175 g). No dessert. Supper: 2x tsp milo with 1x tsp sugar & 2x tsp milk powder. Snacks: 3x Pams Choc Banana muesli bars per day; up to 5x barley sugars or Air NZ sweets per day; Raro 80 g sachet (40 g per day); combination of dried apples, dried apricots, dried mangos, dried pineapples, dried banana chips or dried bananas; combination of dried mixed nuts / seeds: sunflower, pine, almond, cashew or peanut, Brazil or macadamia. Small amount of salt if really hot.

I dont seem to get very hungry while tramping, I would normally eat more sitting at home. I almost have to force myself to eat, even good stuff like salty crackers/cheese/ salami. Talking about salami, Ive been using the small snack sized Verkerks salami sticks, they are vacuum packed and shelf stabile so last for ever. I chop them up and add them to a continental pasta or cous cous meal. Ive tried the "ration pack" idea before and it works well, especially if you are out for more than 2-3 days. It helps with conserving your food, if its in the bottom of your pack your less likely to eat it. Im partial to a port while tramping, I have a very light plastic water flask that I use for transporting it. Its holds about 200ml if you want to take that much. I like to "pep" up my freeze dry with a hand full of nuts, dried fruit, extra rice, spices, pre grated cheese etc.

Dehydrated a heap of whole bananas over night . Heard people rave about them so gave it a crack and they are amazing. A million times better than terrible banana chips. Got two bananas a day only 40 grams .

There are many good ideas here Just remember with all of them if you carry on eating them when you get home you will soon start getting stuck in doorways