14 July 2004
Foods of The Future
Our backpacking trip to Klamath starts tomorrow. Though we're collaborating on all other meals, we're each responsible for our own lunches. The sophistication of our lunches depends on the length of the trip. For a long trip, lunch is very spare. For a relatively short trip like this one, we can afford to carry more elaborate lunches. Once we're out in the backcountry, we enjoy comparing lunches. Extra points go to anyone who brings a backpacking-compatible gourmet item, like a hunk of aged goat cheese or a handful of exotic dates.
I went shopping for lunch foods at Safeway tonight, and consequently my lunches are fairly plebeian. But shopping for camping food was particularly fun today due to the fact that the squeeze format, once only for Otter Pops, has finally taken hold. So many things come in soft tubes now! I got peanut butter in tubes and pudding in tubes, known in the packaging industry by the appetizing term "aseptic stick packs". They're designed for schoolchildren's sack lunches, but are also handy for outdoorspeople and military troops. Now I can squeeze my favorite food-goo directly into my mouth with only a sliver of plastic as waste!
My other new favorite space-food is the meat pouch. At last, an unrefrigerated meat that isn't jerky! Space foodsure is making might inroads into the supermarkets. I notice, however, that we're still stuck with aerosol cheese if we want a cheese-like experience that requires no refrigeration. I sure wish that space-packaging could be applied to stuff like cheddar or jack cheese. I haven't decided yet whether I can stoop to eating cheez-in-a-kan.