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I have a wild obsession with snacks. I don’t horde food, I realize in today’s psychological communities, food hording can signify all kinds of emotional doom. What I do is more akin to micro dosing, but with snacks. I find that if I eat all day, just a little here, a little there, some nuts, some fruit, some meat, my whole day goes better, and I never have to take a break to sit down and consume a meal. Whether it’s good for me or not; whether my snacking actually increases my efficiency and productivity, it works for me, so I am sticking to it.
The byproduct of this ongoing practice is the frequent, almost unconscious pocketing of snacks. A packet of almonds, some dried mango slices, bars, gels, and energy gummies can be found in every pocket of every piece of apparel and backpack that I own. Compulsively, when paying for gas, I toss a bag of jerky, a packet of nuts, and even a piece of cheese on the counter. I know that I will consume these soon (especially the cheese), or at least in due time. What matters is that there are snacks to buy, I need them, -can’t live without them, so in my pockets they go. When I was a young person, and snacks were only acquired from the kitchen table or the fridge, my travel calories were limited, but pursued with no less vigor.
As a small child on a field trip to the coast, I and the other students waded into the waves pulling a dragnet behind us. We were to collect and observe samples from the sea. I performed this assignment with great success. Dozens of fishy, wiggly things lay in the net when we set it down in the sand. The memory I would take away from this trip was not one I would recall as I received a marine biology degree. It was instead the moment a teacher accused me of taking more than memories from the beach. A quick pat down and a brutal invasion of my bathing suit’s cargo pocket revealed a wad of soggy bacon, once carefully wrapped in a rip of paper towel, not treasures from the sea. The teacher felt bad, I eventually got over it, the kids mocked me for having pocketed breakfast bacon for years to come. (I never pursued a degree in marine biology.)
As I moved up the academic mountain, finally attending college in pursuit of a degree in psychology, my pockets continued to rattle with handfuls of nuts, strips of jerky, and occasionally an apple. With the increase of schoolwork, the necessity for a backpack became ever more apparent. With no locker to return to between classes, as was made available in high school, I was burdened from dawn to dusk with all my books for the day. As I made my way to the cafeteria in the morning for coffee and breakfast, weighed down with a book bag, a sort of man-purse-satchel, and my big metal mug (even before big metal mugs were cool) I was already thinking about which snacks I would swipe and load clandestinely into my luggage.
I made an auxiliary sandwich every morning and wrapped it carefully in a blue bandana, that went into my backpack. I snagged an apple and an orange whenever possible, and into the pack they went. I carefully unfolded napkins on the salad bar, formed an X with them to provide maximum surface area, spooned heaps of cashews onto them from the salad toppings bowl, then folded my bindle with care before dropping it into my satchel. Frequently I was caught red handed in my subtle acts of food larceny. A professor would sagely nod and carry on. The students would snicker and mock. Pretty girls would roll their eyes and upperclassmen would scoff and create distance between their entitlement and my post-apocalyptic style of meal prep. My peers would point before nudging their buddies and forming a quorum of the rude and judgmental to watch the snacking kid perform his weird routine.
Here’s the thing, I never wasted any of the food I took. I also got to avoid returning to the cafeteria building for lunch or dinner. It was too often packed with the first generation of hipsters who adored, then berated, then re-worshipped concepts like soy milk, Bob Dylan’s electric work, and the first-generation iPod. Looking back, my classmates were difficult to like to say the least, but they weren’t wrong. I was a weird kid who did not fit in with their urban-sheik, upper class, super coolness. I kept to myself whenever possible, overloaded myself with credits, and held down two part time jobs at a musical instrument store and an independent video store during those undergraduate years. I walked around in worn Carhart double knees, sometimes with carrots in my pocket, and an adolescent fuck-the-world attitude on my face. Then came Nature Valley Granola Bars.
Back in the early 2000s, I don’t even know if the box said crunchy. I’m pretty sure the description was simply “granola bar,” the flavor was tooth-shattering honey, and more of the bar broke off and fell to the floor then was captured by the mouth during each bite. But those things were pocketable as heck!
I thank the reader for going on that brief but revelatory journey back into my most awkward years when I failed to be cool for the last time. Perhaps it was through my self-reliant food acquisition and social pariah-ness that I found the outdoor recreation community. My college had neither outing club nor trail group. They had drama, improv, some kind of group for single men who were upset about everything, and a club where people wore cool jackets and played acoustic guitars. I found the outdoor community among the townies. They didn’t judge, wear shoes, or go anywhere without a frisbee. Somebody always had a dog wearing a bandana, a girlfriend who put on potluck dinners, and just enough money for a case of Coors. These were my people. They carried backpacks filled with great literature. They wore satchels containing pens and multitools and trail mix. Many of them even carried jobsite styled coolers. These big lunch boxes contained fuel for running around the mountains by day and beer and bourbon for around the campfire every night. Bags of G.O.R.P. were passed and handfuls were shoved into hungry mouths or carefully funneled into Ziplock and even drawstring leather bags!
I still bring a leather bag of jerky on long canoe trips. I adore everything about G.O.R.P. But currently, we are fortunate enough to live in the heyday of the bar. In my local Co-op there is an end cap, four shelves, and an entire bulk section dedicated to the pocketful’s of snacks that I once spooned from a salad bar. I’ve toured all of them. From the $16.95 per pound energy bites, which are delicious, but really just smaller bars with an increased goo factor, to the meat bars that are somewhere between jerky and the protein blocks from Snowpiercer. I went on a kick where I bought cases and cases of meal replacement bars when they were almost expired and sold for half off. There is such a nice feeling of autonomy when snacks abound and pitstops into gut-destruction eateries on the side of the highway can forever be avoided.
The byproduct of this ongoing practice is the frequent, almost unconscious pocketing of snacks. A packet of almonds, some dried mango slices, bars, gels, and energy gummies can be found in every pocket of every piece of apparel and backpack that I own. Compulsively, when paying for gas, I toss a bag of jerky, a packet of nuts, and even a piece of cheese on the counter. I know that I will consume these soon (especially the cheese), or at least in due time. What matters is that there are snacks to buy, I need them, -can’t live without them, so in my pockets they go. When I was a young person, and snacks were only acquired from the kitchen table or the fridge, my travel calories were limited, but pursued with no less vigor.
As a small child on a field trip to the coast, I and the other students waded into the waves pulling a dragnet behind us. We were to collect and observe samples from the sea. I performed this assignment with great success. Dozens of fishy, wiggly things lay in the net when we set it down in the sand. The memory I would take away from this trip was not one I would recall as I received a marine biology degree. It was instead the moment a teacher accused me of taking more than memories from the beach. A quick pat down and a brutal invasion of my bathing suit’s cargo pocket revealed a wad of soggy bacon, once carefully wrapped in a rip of paper towel, not treasures from the sea. The teacher felt bad, I eventually got over it, the kids mocked me for having pocketed breakfast bacon for years to come. (I never pursued a degree in marine biology.)
As I moved up the academic mountain, finally attending college in pursuit of a degree in psychology, my pockets continued to rattle with handfuls of nuts, strips of jerky, and occasionally an apple. With the increase of schoolwork, the necessity for a backpack became ever more apparent. With no locker to return to between classes, as was made available in high school, I was burdened from dawn to dusk with all my books for the day. As I made my way to the cafeteria in the morning for coffee and breakfast, weighed down with a book bag, a sort of man-purse-satchel, and my big metal mug (even before big metal mugs were cool) I was already thinking about which snacks I would swipe and load clandestinely into my luggage.
I made an auxiliary sandwich every morning and wrapped it carefully in a blue bandana, that went into my backpack. I snagged an apple and an orange whenever possible, and into the pack they went. I carefully unfolded napkins on the salad bar, formed an X with them to provide maximum surface area, spooned heaps of cashews onto them from the salad toppings bowl, then folded my bindle with care before dropping it into my satchel. Frequently I was caught red handed in my subtle acts of food larceny. A professor would sagely nod and carry on. The students would snicker and mock. Pretty girls would roll their eyes and upperclassmen would scoff and create distance between their entitlement and my post-apocalyptic style of meal prep. My peers would point before nudging their buddies and forming a quorum of the rude and judgmental to watch the snacking kid perform his weird routine.
Here’s the thing, I never wasted any of the food I took. I also got to avoid returning to the cafeteria building for lunch or dinner. It was too often packed with the first generation of hipsters who adored, then berated, then re-worshipped concepts like soy milk, Bob Dylan’s electric work, and the first-generation iPod. Looking back, my classmates were difficult to like to say the least, but they weren’t wrong. I was a weird kid who did not fit in with their urban-sheik, upper class, super coolness. I kept to myself whenever possible, overloaded myself with credits, and held down two part time jobs at a musical instrument store and an independent video store during those undergraduate years. I walked around in worn Carhart double knees, sometimes with carrots in my pocket, and an adolescent fuck-the-world attitude on my face. Then came Nature Valley Granola Bars.
Back in the early 2000s, I don’t even know if the box said crunchy. I’m pretty sure the description was simply “granola bar,” the flavor was tooth-shattering honey, and more of the bar broke off and fell to the floor then was captured by the mouth during each bite. But those things were pocketable as heck!
I thank the reader for going on that brief but revelatory journey back into my most awkward years when I failed to be cool for the last time. Perhaps it was through my self-reliant food acquisition and social pariah-ness that I found the outdoor recreation community. My college had neither outing club nor trail group. They had drama, improv, some kind of group for single men who were upset about everything, and a club where people wore cool jackets and played acoustic guitars. I found the outdoor community among the townies. They didn’t judge, wear shoes, or go anywhere without a frisbee. Somebody always had a dog wearing a bandana, a girlfriend who put on potluck dinners, and just enough money for a case of Coors. These were my people. They carried backpacks filled with great literature. They wore satchels containing pens and multitools and trail mix. Many of them even carried jobsite styled coolers. These big lunch boxes contained fuel for running around the mountains by day and beer and bourbon for around the campfire every night. Bags of G.O.R.P. were passed and handfuls were shoved into hungry mouths or carefully funneled into Ziplock and even drawstring leather bags!
I still bring a leather bag of jerky on long canoe trips. I adore everything about G.O.R.P. But currently, we are fortunate enough to live in the heyday of the bar. In my local Co-op there is an end cap, four shelves, and an entire bulk section dedicated to the pocketful’s of snacks that I once spooned from a salad bar. I’ve toured all of them. From the $16.95 per pound energy bites, which are delicious, but really just smaller bars with an increased goo factor, to the meat bars that are somewhere between jerky and the protein blocks from Snowpiercer. I went on a kick where I bought cases and cases of meal replacement bars when they were almost expired and sold for half off. There is such a nice feeling of autonomy when snacks abound and pitstops into gut-destruction eateries on the side of the highway can forever be avoided.
Earlier this year I planned a weeklong backpacking trip to the Na Pali Coast of Kuai in Hawaii. As is always the case with backpacking, but more so when Crawler’s Ledge has to be negotiated seven miles into your day, ounces were getting counted. I had already prepared for the weight of the essentials, hammock, sleeping bag, tarp, bag of wine, and fourteen backpacker meals. What I needed to work out were the additional necessities: Snacks (and maybe a knife).
I discovered freeze dried fruit. This snack weighs less than the bag it comes in, but offers good mouth feels and a delightful boost of energy per handful. I brought eight little bags of everything from strawberries to mangos to apples and pears. Then, as my research continued, I came across Crawl Bars. Not only did the combination of blueberries and almonds pair perfectly with my bag of deep red wine, but the inclusion of cricket protein made them an ideal conversation piece.
In my training for the big Hawaii adventure I consumed fruit for breakfast, pocketed one Blueberry Almond Crawl Bar, heaved my pack, then set out for a five to eight mile climb up the side of Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire’s North Country. Ever interested in avoiding tourists, I ambled along on the Skookumchuck Trail, far from the crowds. Knowing the trail well, I would pace my snack consumption to one good size bite of my favorite Crawl Bar at the two-mile bend near the creek, then another bite at my turn around spot, then the last bite when I could see the trailhead parking lot, about a mile from my truck. It certainly wasn’t me buying into bold claims made by the manufacturer of Crawl Bars, as I had heard not a single claim from them save for their use of Cricket Protein. It wasn’t that I was distracted from my hunger by the majesty of the outdoors. The wild places of this world are pure magic, but when my tummy gets rumbly it becomes my soul purpose to feed. The success of my training and the resulting success of my trip was due to good nutrient consumption. And that was due to delicious, nutritious bars of crickets, blueberries, and almonds. Period.
I think blueberries are my favorite fruit. It may be the sugars, an obvious contributing factor to first nations people throughout history finding this hardy little bush well worth visiting as the berries ripened. Bears too, lay around the blueberry bushes beside rivers in the North Country and can be seen lazily biting them from the branches from their supine postures. Additionally, Almonds may be the perfect nut. Sure, they suck up vast amounts of water when grown commercially, but for that I forgive them. They are compact, dense, and delicious. They need no salt, nor roasting. Even shelling them is substantially easier than their brethren the walnut.
I discovered freeze dried fruit. This snack weighs less than the bag it comes in, but offers good mouth feels and a delightful boost of energy per handful. I brought eight little bags of everything from strawberries to mangos to apples and pears. Then, as my research continued, I came across Crawl Bars. Not only did the combination of blueberries and almonds pair perfectly with my bag of deep red wine, but the inclusion of cricket protein made them an ideal conversation piece.
In my training for the big Hawaii adventure I consumed fruit for breakfast, pocketed one Blueberry Almond Crawl Bar, heaved my pack, then set out for a five to eight mile climb up the side of Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire’s North Country. Ever interested in avoiding tourists, I ambled along on the Skookumchuck Trail, far from the crowds. Knowing the trail well, I would pace my snack consumption to one good size bite of my favorite Crawl Bar at the two-mile bend near the creek, then another bite at my turn around spot, then the last bite when I could see the trailhead parking lot, about a mile from my truck. It certainly wasn’t me buying into bold claims made by the manufacturer of Crawl Bars, as I had heard not a single claim from them save for their use of Cricket Protein. It wasn’t that I was distracted from my hunger by the majesty of the outdoors. The wild places of this world are pure magic, but when my tummy gets rumbly it becomes my soul purpose to feed. The success of my training and the resulting success of my trip was due to good nutrient consumption. And that was due to delicious, nutritious bars of crickets, blueberries, and almonds. Period.
I think blueberries are my favorite fruit. It may be the sugars, an obvious contributing factor to first nations people throughout history finding this hardy little bush well worth visiting as the berries ripened. Bears too, lay around the blueberry bushes beside rivers in the North Country and can be seen lazily biting them from the branches from their supine postures. Additionally, Almonds may be the perfect nut. Sure, they suck up vast amounts of water when grown commercially, but for that I forgive them. They are compact, dense, and delicious. They need no salt, nor roasting. Even shelling them is substantially easier than their brethren the walnut.
In my years of learning and teaching backcountry skills I have learned the human aversion to eating strange things. I have also, however, witnessed the repressed eagerness to try unconventional foods and to talk about them while doing so. There is a moment in every Backcountry Skills class when the instructor has to explain that starving to death in the wilderness is an incredibly unlikely way to expire in North America, indeed most parts of the world where recreational adventure is sought.
The rule of threes: One can live about 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, and 3 months without hope, has a sobering effect on lean and muscled outdoor adventurers.
Somebody invariably mentions shipwrecks, another brings up plane crashes, and yet another, without fail, will mention the My Side Of The Mountain series or Hatchet. It is at this point in every class that crickets get their moment of culinary greatness. The fat is what gets discussed. Then we talk about how easily and quickly they procreate so nobody feels like they are depleting a species. Finally, the chat goes grim, and we talk about grasping the head, the twist and pull method of preparing the bodies. Then the great to-fry-or-to-boil discussion turns into a cook-off and boom, everybody eats crickets, and everybody agrees that they are actually pretty good, and so delightfully packed with that critical macronutrient, fat!
I continue to be a part of the outdoor recreation community during every moment of my waking and even my dreaming life. I move through the world, unburdened by my backpack or satchel. I carry Crawl Bars with me all the time, everywhere I go. I eat them in the backcountry and at the gym. I enjoy them in the classroom and on the golf course. Two occurrences result from every Crawl Bar I pull out of my pocket: 1- I receive massive amounts of energy and feel great. 2- I get to talk about eating bugs with the person who inquires, “what’s that?” as they look down at their broken, dusty granola bar, then back at my gooey delicious Crawl Bar. And that is how I know hope and snacking both remain alive and kicking in this wildly changing world.
The rule of threes: One can live about 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, and 3 months without hope, has a sobering effect on lean and muscled outdoor adventurers.
Somebody invariably mentions shipwrecks, another brings up plane crashes, and yet another, without fail, will mention the My Side Of The Mountain series or Hatchet. It is at this point in every class that crickets get their moment of culinary greatness. The fat is what gets discussed. Then we talk about how easily and quickly they procreate so nobody feels like they are depleting a species. Finally, the chat goes grim, and we talk about grasping the head, the twist and pull method of preparing the bodies. Then the great to-fry-or-to-boil discussion turns into a cook-off and boom, everybody eats crickets, and everybody agrees that they are actually pretty good, and so delightfully packed with that critical macronutrient, fat!
I continue to be a part of the outdoor recreation community during every moment of my waking and even my dreaming life. I move through the world, unburdened by my backpack or satchel. I carry Crawl Bars with me all the time, everywhere I go. I eat them in the backcountry and at the gym. I enjoy them in the classroom and on the golf course. Two occurrences result from every Crawl Bar I pull out of my pocket: 1- I receive massive amounts of energy and feel great. 2- I get to talk about eating bugs with the person who inquires, “what’s that?” as they look down at their broken, dusty granola bar, then back at my gooey delicious Crawl Bar. And that is how I know hope and snacking both remain alive and kicking in this wildly changing world.
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