Chez Tramper

Welcome to the Chez Tramper! Here, all of your hiking-day hunger will be assuaged by a multitude of gourmet grains, gorps, granolas, and chocolates. Our resident menu crafter has spent many hours meticulously counting calories and proportioning carbs, proteins, fats, fruits, and all-too-rare veggies into weeks of satisfying meals to tame your tastebuds. In fact, she has donated 85% of her apartment floor space to our establishment as a preparation and staging area. (She also hopes she did not frighten the maintenance guy during his recent unannounced visit, although she’s pretty sure she left a path between the door and the fuse box.)

Our menu crafter takes her job seriously. She begins by modifying the familiar food pyramid to meet hikers’ special caloric needs as well as weight and bulk restrictions. As a veteran of many a raisin overdose, she balances fiber with particular care. She supplies carbs liberally. She believes that pretzels are a fine addition to gorp, assuming they are passed through a mortar and pestle, and that ramen noodle dust is just as nutritious, easier to eat with a spoon, and certainly more convenient to pack, than ramen in its pristinely wavy form. For special occasions, she might suggest splurging on a liquid sauce to add to the night’s rice or pasta. A packet of palak paneer from the Indian foods aisle might be worth its unfortunate heft for its spinach-infested greenness on day 10 of your journey. Homemade granola is her specialty.

Protein is easier to bring to the woods than many imagine. Peanut butter and mixed nuts are longtime standbys, as are beef sticks and jerky. A trip to the natural foods co-op reveals multiple flavors of dried bean mix, and even everyday grocery stores offer vacuum-sealed packets of precooked chicken hidden among the tuna cans. Some protein also comes from the cheese in your macaroni and parmesan and from your crackers and Swiss or sharp cheddar.

You may soon come across the Chez Tramper brand off the trails. During the course of experimenting for ever-better tramping food products, our intrepid team of food scientists has discovered many substances new to epicurology. Entrepreneurial specialists are currently working to find alternate markets for these innovative substances. For example, our head research chef, deviating from a recipe for hardtack (bland but rugged crackers), discovered a process by which hockey pucks may be manufactured. Our peanut butter granola bars will be marketed to dentists as saliva sponges: pop a crumb in the patient’s cheek, and the good doctor won’t have to bother with his spit vacuum.

We offer a sampling of our fine menu below. Recipes are available upon request. Shipping and handling fees apply in addition to the basic per-meal cost and all applicable taxes.

Le Menu

Breakfasts

*Homemade granola

Choose from Maple Nut, Honey and Berry, and Apple Cinnamon.

*Instant oatmeal

Fortified with brown sugar, fruit, nuts, and powdered milk.

*Pop Tarts

Note: Must pack your own toaster.

Lunches

*Peanut butter and jelly

Additions to this classic include candied ginger slices, Nutella, or chocolate chips.
Note: Available on your first few days; available subsequently on an experimental basis.

*Pretzels/crackers with beef sticks or pepperoni and Swiss or Seriously Sharp Cheddar

Allow us to suggest our homemade hardtack. These thick, crisp crackers, subtly flavored, can survive long periods of in-pack abuse. In case they are not eaten, they double as heirloom mementos of your trip which you can pass down to your children and grandchildren.

*Peanut butter, cracker crumbs, and dried fruit

A fine alternative to classic PBJ.

Entrées

Mix and match the following grains, proteins, and flavorings:

*Grains

Rice, ramen, pasta, couscous, buckwheat.

*Proteins

Meat stick slices, pepperoni, grated parmesan cheese, dried bean mix, precooked chicken packets.

*Flavorings

Bullion (always a classic)

Italian herbs (basil, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder)

Tabbouleh (parsley, garlic powder, onion powder, and a hint of mint)

Various other powdered and liquid flavoring packets from the baking and international foods aisles

Snacks

*Banana chips

*Salted mixed nuts

*Dried fruit

*Crumbs

Available in cereal, pretzel, or cracker flavors.

*Crumbled gorp

This gorp cousin was born from the leftovers of our menu crafter’s kitchen and includes pretzel and Corn Chex crumbs studded with chopped pecans and dried tidbits.

*Variations on the theme of gorp

*Various granola and energy bars

Desserts

*Hot chocolate

*M&Ms

*Chocolate-covered sunflower seeds

*Chocolate-covered candied ginger

Ticks and the Post Office

I called several Adirondack post offices recently in order to check up on the procedure of food dropping. These calls required almost as much planning as the rest of the trip. It’s possible that out of everything that makes me anxious about this trip (chiefly ticks, bears, and starvation), what I’ll have to worry about most is coordinating my arrival at post offices to fall within their business hours. Trickiest of all is the hour, or two, in which each closes for lunch, staggered apparently to avoid some Adirondack-wide stampede to the best lunch counter this side of Lake Champlain. I offer a sampling by way of example:

Piseco (pop. 200)
Mon-Fri: 9:45-12, 1:45-3:45 (Perhaps suggested by a random number generator?)
Sat: 11:30-1 (Note to self: avoid obtaining a pen pal from Piseco.)
Blue Mountain Lake (pop. 146)
Mon-Fri: 8-11, 12-4:30 (3/4 the size of Piseco, with double the PO hours... perhaps a town of dedicated catalog shoppers?)
Sat: 8-12
Long Lake (pop. 852)
Mon-Fri: 8:30-12:30, 1:30-4:45 (I assume they close early to avoid the excruciating Long Lake 5:00 rush hour?)
Sat: 9-12
Lake Placid (pop. 2638)
Mon-Fri: 8:30-5 (This bustling metropolis is far to cosmopolitan to shut its doors for lunch.)
Sat: 8:30-12:30
Keene (pop. 1063)
Mon-Fri: 8-12, 1-4:30
Sat: 8-11
Keene Valley (pop. ?)
Mon-Fri: 8-1, 2-4:45
Sat: 8-11:45

However inconvenient their eccentricities, the postmistresses make up for it in helpful friendliness. At Blue Mountain Lake, she answers the phone in that typically dull voice indicative of business phone veterans with a mouthful of spiel to get out while the caller patiently waits their turn. But as soon as I mentioned that I was a hiker and not, say, some local adolescent calling to ask how much a one-cent stamp cost, inflection breathed life back into her words and she became chatty like only a bored, small-town PO worker can be. She explained in detail how to address my care package: “General Delivery--Hungry NPT Hiker,” with an approximate date of arrival and a phone number to call three days later, because she won’t have hikers lost in her woods. We discussed weather reports, blackfly densities, and trail conditions. She asked politely about my plans and became inordinately cheerful when I told her I’d be alone. She explained that she was a determinedly pro-girl-power Girl Scout leader. How strikingly different from the last time I told a post office worker my hiking plans. The lady behind the window in Wellington responded with, “You know that hikers die in the mountains when they’re alone, don’t you?”

As an afterthought, I asked about this year’s tick forecast. “Oh, we don’t have much trouble with ticks,” she replied. The only people she’s known to have picked up ticks caught them down near Albany. Could this be so? I laughed out loud when I hung up the phone. You mean I won’t have to watch the silhouettes of ticks patiently and methodically scaling the tent walls as I lay down to sleep? I won’t have to pry tick mouthparts out of my flesh every hundred feet? (Part of the tick oogey factor must have to do with the use of the term “mouthparts” and descriptions of how they break off and remain embedded in your skin if you’re not careful. I intend to be very careful, thanks.)

The trip suddenly felt almost too easy. In the last few weeks, I’ve been coming to terms a succession of anxieties. First was bears. Once I convinced myself that bears don’t regularly munch on tent poles at 3 a.m. unless the tent’s inhabitants have been frying up salmon steaks by their bedside, I was free to worry about food. Once I planned out filling meals and ample snacks delivered via several mail drops, I wondered whether my feet would be able to keep up with my tramping schedule. After a few ambitious local hikes, I decided I could make myself walk forever if need be, unless the trail was infested with ticks. And now I’ve run out of gripping concerns.

Now all I have to worry about is breaking an ankle in the next two weeks. Or unknowingly dropping the car keys into a beaver pond at mile marker 54. Or spending my end-of-trip bus money on salad and chocolate in Long Lake, because the bust stop at the Noon Mark Diner doesn’t accept credit cards. Or arriving at the wrong post office at 4:50.