The entire house smells like onions. My eyes are watering while I write this. I just spent thirty minutes chopping as many onions as I could to fill the dehydrator. We have boxes of granola bars and trail mix piled up in the corner. Our cupboards are full of candy we’re not allowed to eat for two months. It’s resupply box prep time.

I’ve had food on my mind a lot lately. I wrote three articles for Hyperlite Mountain Gear about resupplying (you can read the first two here and here, and the third should be published shortly). I shared a few recipes. For the most part, our boxes won’t look that different from normal. There will still be a bunch of junk food. We’ll eat tortillas for lunch. But I’m making most of our dinners from scratch. The dehydrator will be full of vegetables for the next two months. I’ll put together meals that I’m pretty confident we’ll be hungry for no matter what.

Not getting sick of food on a thru-hike is a challenge. Hiker boxes are littered with unidentifiable homemade meals that people just can’t stomach anymore. We’ve been eating these dinners throughout our winter trips, and we still spend most of our days looking forward to eating them.

Dinners

• Pad Thai: rice noodles with pad thai seasoning pack, soy sauce and assorted dehydrated vegetables.
• Chili: recipe here.
• Fried rice: recipe here.
• Burritos: instant rice, cheese, tortilla, with homemade dehydrated refried beans and dehydrated salsa and onions.
• Thai curry: dehydrated curry paste, commercially dehydrated coconut milk, assorted dehydrated veggies, instant rice.
• Pesto pasta: Pasta with assorted dehydrated vegetables and pesto seasoning. We’ll swap out the pesto seasoning occasionally for other pasta seasonings.
• Chili mac: Kraft Dinner Mac and Cheese with homemade dehydrated chili.

We’ll also add the occasional Knorrs Side or Ramen, with added dehydrated vegetables. We’ll tip in as much olive oil as we can stomach. We’re also planning on buying dehydrated beef and chicken packs. We’ll put a pack of each in every box, and rotate what meals we add them to for a bit of variety.

We’re still not completely sure if we’ll be able to do the Great Divide Trail this summer. Vaccines are rolling out across Ontario (and I have an appointment for my first shot this week). Alberta currently has a lot of cases, which is worrying. If we don’t manage to get on the GDT this year, we’ll find something local to fill the summer, and enjoy these meals regardless.