Linda's Gluten-Free Trail Food

My choice of trail foods is very limited because of the fact that I cannot eat gluten.  We use the "freezer bag cooking" style of cooking, and we use an alcohol stove.  That way, it is lightweight, we can find the fuel anywhere, and there is no cleanup at all.  (See www.trailcooking.com).

Here is what I ended up eating on the trail:

Breakfast - during the cooler weather, I started out using Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free Oatmeal, which I was able to find fairly easily along the trail.  In the southern half of the trail, we shopped at Food Lions quite a bit, and I found that they had a great selection of gluten-free choices.  I would throw in 3 or 4 tablespoon of instant milk, and also brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins, if available.

At some point, I became tired of the oatmeal, and also the weather warmed up, and I was no longer wanting a warm breakfast, so I switched to Chex Honey Nut Cereal.  All of the Chex cereals are gluten-free, but this was my favorite.  I would just buy a box, divide it into 4 or 5 ziplocs, and throw in 4 heaping tablespoons of instant milk.  All I would do then, is just add 10 ounces of water into the ziploc, and stir, and eat out of the bag.  No clean up!

**A note on instant milk - we found that at a lot of stores, on the Hispanic aisle, we could find Nido, which is an instant whole milk.  When we could not find Nido, the only other option was on the baking aisle, where we would find Carnation's instant skim milk.  We would always get the Nido when available, for the extra fat and calories.

Lunch - I buy white corn tortillas and usually eat two tortillas with one of the following in it:  pouch of tuna salad, or peanut butter and jelly (Jif to Go, and jelly packets from McDonalds), or cheese sticks and beef sticks.

**If we are hiking out of a town in the morning, we will sometimes carry hotdogs.  That's a real treat for lunch or supper (with some mustard packets from McDonalds), and they don't go bad too fast.  (I guess those preservatives do work!).  We roll the hotdogs up into tortillas - corn for me, flour for Keith.

Supper - My favorite supper is the Thai Kitchen Noodle Bowls that come in the white plastic bowls.  They are the only noodles I have found that are made from rice, and therefore, are gluten-free.  I would repackage them into a ziploc, and throw in a pouch of tuna.  At supper time, I just add 12 oz. of hot water, seal it up, and let the noodles soften, and then throw in the tuna.  I love those!  They come in about 4 different flavors.  I also have had the instant mashed potatoes, to which I had a pouch of chicken or salmon.  For some reason, I got tired of those rather quickly, but am still not tired of the Thai Noodle Bowls. 

I also have found packages of rice noodles or rice sticks (really thin rice noodles), and divide those up, and add the flavored tuna pouches.

Snacks - I started off this trip consuming large amounts of my own favorite trail mix recipe (equal parts M&M's, raisins, and cocktail peanuts), but grew tired of that after  a  while.  I then switched to just pure peanut M&M's, and have not gotten tired of that yet.  Matter of fact, I look forward to them!  Other snacks I buy are any gluten-free granola bar I can find, and there have been quite a few:  Nature Valley Gluten-free Roasted Nut Bars, Glutino Cereal Bars (love the strawberry!), Nature's Way Fruit & Nut Bars, and Fruity Pebble Granola Bars, and Bakery on Main, just to name a few.

1 comment:

Elise said...

I like those noodle bowls too! YUM! And I never would have guessed that Fruity Pebbles bars are gluten free. Go figure!