Vegetarian on the Appalachian Trail

Once upon a time…

I walked into a gas station and purchased a bag of hot pork rinds, a spicy Slim Jim, and a green Monster energy drink. This would tide me over on a long road trip until I would stop for a burger and fries.

Just as with our progression into backpacking, Paul and I gradually adjusted our eating habits over the years. We now consume primarily whole foods and for the past two years, a vegetarian diet. Plants provide plenty of protein options so we both decided to stop eating animals. We do consume eggs and dairy.

Our bodies have become accustomed to the way we fuel them and as I enter my 40s I am quite happy to have made this transition.

Respecting the concerns of some of our carnivorous loved ones, we plan to do our best to keep ourselves nutritionally fortified on the Appalachian Trail sans meat. This should not be a problem as we know how to build complete proteins with plant combinations.

Resupplying  our  food will be a huge  part of life on the trail. So will being flexible with options that are available.

We have traversed the AT theoretically via AWOL’s guide. Much of our time is spend reading and watching the adventures of other hikers on YouTube. This combination has given us a rough idea of what to expect when it comes to resupply.

Depending upon the distance between towns and of towns from the trail, we expect to resupply every three to five days. Even convenience stores should have staples such as oatmeal, nuts and peanut butter.

When trail magic in the form of food presents itself I will absolutely eat a hamburger bun with cheese and mustard on it.

Re-adjusting to the world of sugar and salt.

Most packaged foods have a great deal of added sugar and salt to make them tasty staples of the Standard American Diet (SAD). Food science has also been making great strides to “add nutrition” to packaged foods, something we are not really into.

Since we have been preparing the majority of our food for a decade I definitely notice a difference in how I feel when I eat processed food or at a restaurant.

Humans have evolved to be very good at finding the most calorie rich foods. Hiking every day will make us very hungry. In town we plan to focus on locating the available veggies and consuming as much of those as possible.

So far in our experience, Mexican restaurants have proved to have the best vegetarian options and we will seek them out for hot in-town fuel-ups. We will not be turning our noses up at ice cream or beer either.

I was recently inspired by fellow hiker and Trek blogger, Ruth Morley and her experience taking great care in the food she consumes. In a comment to me she shared that the dehydrated food she send to herself assisted in her recovery.

Currently, we have twelve mail drops planned to assist with resupply and will likely make more as we gain excitement preparing them.

Most of these are being directed to where resupply is either limited or said to be more costly. We plan to send them to hostels or other mail drop friendly locations we will be visiting or passing through.

The biggest of our mail drops is prepared for the Smoky Mountains. We have been to Gatlinburg and don’t desire to visit unless bad weather takes us off the trail. Six days worth of food for the both of us is weighing in at only 12 lbs! Probably not as many calories as we want but we will work with it.

Lower pack weight is a benefit of carrying mostly dehydrated foods.

Our small yet trusty dehydrator has been around for a few years. It has recently seen record numbers of beans, soups, tomato sauce, buckwheat groats, couscous, and a variety of fruits and vegetables coming through.

We have already experimented with cold-soaking homemade dehydrated meals on previous trips. This leads us to feel confident we will enjoy having them on the AT. Some meals require longer soaking depending upon their consistency.

I have heard that tastes change over the trip and we are open to that. It is very important to us to incorporate nutrition. We will be able to infuse those lustful desires for variety with sensibility. Functioning optimally is the main goal.

We purchased a variety of dehydrated items from Harmony House to incorporate into our meals.

This is proving to be a great way to supplement the dehydration work we are doing. They have a nice selection and we ordered a variety of vegetables, mushrooms and beans along with fun stuff like strawberry powder for our oatmeal and jalapenos to spice things up.

We are not recipe followers.

Those who know us best know that our cooking entails putting stuff we like together. It usually turns out edible. Here are a few of our cold soak meals.

Lentil soup, containing homemade tomato sauce, carrots, apricots and spinach.

Corn and beans with jalapenos, tomato powder, garlic and paprika.

Mushroom and broccoli couscous with nutritional yeast.

Buckwheat groats (that have been soaked overnight and ground before dehydration) with strawberries.

Let me know your thoughts on resupply for a vegetarian;

Mail drop and/or in-town, theoretical or actual. Do you have experiences you would like to share, or towns with such delectable vegetarian options we shouldn’t pass them up?