Here's my menu for the WT on Sunday. It's a solo menu – as we're each going independent on food. It's a ton of work to prep all this, and I'm used to doing it for 2 (Theresa and I). Don't save much work only thinking about one!!

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With our Wonderland Trail start just five days away, it's time to start thinking about food. Breakfasts and dinner are always easy – but I always struggle for that perfect lunch. Salami, aged cheese and crackers is my staple – but I want something different some days.

So here we go with some more kitchen experiments

First lets meet the band

The rock star of this recipe is the good old dried banana.

This rather revolting slug-looking creature can be found in the bulk food section of Whole Foods. Despite its rotten appearance, they are exceptionally tasty little chaps.

Backing vocals are provided by the delicious Nutella hazelnut spread, easily found in most US grocery stores. QFC carries this in the Seattle area.

On base we have the mighty fine Almond Butter, also found at Whole Foods – in very convenient little 6g squeeze packs.

And finally, on percussion we have Harmony House Foods freeze dried Mango Slices.

So lets put it all together we take our dried banana and chop it into little chunks like so:

We then spread out the Nutella and Almond Butter onto a Tortilla.

Sprinkle the Bananas and mango on top.

Roll and devour.

Not bad. These suckers are going to make their debut somewhere on Day 3 – halfway between Sunrise and Indian Bar.

The quest for the perfect trail food begins and this is my first experiment with homemade freezer-bag style food. Inspired by Sarahs blog, I ordered the stuff I needed from Harmony House Foods.

All good Thai curries, start with an excellent paste. I'm too lazy to fry my own paste on the trail – so my plan was to pre-cook and then dehydrate the paste. I fried some paste in coconut cream in a similar way to my Massaman Curry post here (except using Green Curry Paste). Follow the Massaman Curry recipe up until the point I mention beating people back with a spoon.

Once I made the paste, I spread it out onto parchment paper and popped it in the convection oven for a few hours on very low (I don't have a dehydrator)

A few hours later, and it dried out nicely. Next I broken it up and ground it into a powder in a coffee grinder.

A few days later and I'm ready to make the concoction I'm a complete newbie at this, and so have no idea on the right ratios of stuff but I'm pretty fearless, so I just winged it 🙂

Here's the recipe I used:

– 1 cu Uncle Bens Instant Rice

– 3 Tbsp of Green Curry Paste Powder

– 1 2oz bag of Chaokoh Coconut Milk Powder

– 4 Tbsp Dried Diced Potatoes

– 3 Tbsp Dried chicken bits  (Soy product)

– 1 1/2 Dried Tbsp Onions

– 1 Tbsp Dried Peppers

– 1 tsp Lime Powder (Sour)

– 1 Tbsp Palm Sugar

– 1/2 tsp Sea Salt (My fish sauce substitute)

I simply threw all the dry stuff into a bowl, mixed it up and added to a zip lock. Final dry weight was 10.7 oz. Heavier than freeze dried fare – but a hearty meal for two.

To cook , I simply added 2 /12 cu of water. I think 2 1/4 might have been better – it was a little wet.

The taste? Outstanding, really outstanding – even if I do say so myself. Theresa tried it and wanted to eat it for dinner. The chicken bits were actually pretty decent and (IMHO) a good alternative for not carrying the weight of canned chicken. It was very spicy – as I used a lot of paste, so you might want to cut back on that if you try this at home kids.

Next time, I think I'd add fish sauce and sugar to the paste before drying it – to see how they survive, vs using salt.

And here are some photos documenting it, and the ingredients:

I ordered a sample pack of Olympic Granola Bars and they arrived last week.

What's so special about these bars?

They weigh in at around 3oz each but pack a whopping 390 calories (Compare to a typical Powerbar at 2.4oz / 240cal) and oozing in a whopping 18grams of fat, and 9g of protein. (Compare with 3.5g fat, 6g protein for a Powerbar).

But aside from the energy qualities – they are made of natural, healthy ingredients.

The sample pack comes with the following eight flavours:

• Almost Chocolate
• Roasted Almond
• Chocolate Peanut
• Mocha Mint
• Espresso Almond Chocolate
• Turtle Mocha
• Green Tea Zest
• Lemon Chamomile

And I've been slowly munching my way thought them to see what I think. I've tried the Roasted Almond, the Chocolate Peanut and the Espresso Almond Chocolate so far. They are all very very tasty, albeit a little too sweet for my tastes.

They would be great on the trail – but the heavy density of nuts conflicts with my usual gorp/trail mix for on the go snacks. On a longer trip I think I'd get maxed out on nuts easily – but I certainly would take a few days of these bars – perhaps to compliment a cheese/salami day.

Theresa, Chester and I hit the University District Farmers Market in Seattle today.

The produce there is always spectacular and we enjoy our Saturday morning shopping trips there.

Today we bought some Olsen Farms Beef Jerky, and boy was it spectacular. Salty, garlicy and naturally raised beef. Makes me wonder if Oh Boy Oberto Jerky can ever hit my lips again 😉

This is now on my menu for our upcoming Wonderland hike next month. It tastes so good off the trail, I can only imagine how orgasmic it will be after a hard day in the mountains.