Bird Seed Trail Mix
Cheerios, peanut butter chips, currants, sunflower seeds, and almonds. Bagged by the hiker.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 155
- protein
- 14 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 5 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Day hike
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Thru-hike
- Vegetarian
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Cheerios | 4 cups | any plain oat ring cereal works |
|---|---|---|
| Peanut butter baking chips | 1 1/2 cups | |
| Dried currants | 2 cups | raisins if currants are hard to find |
| Shelled sunflower seeds | 1 cup | |
| Almonds | 1 cup | whole or roughly chopped |
Method
- Dump everything into a large bowl at home and stir until the chips and seeds stop settling to the bottom.
- Divide into four bags, one per hiker per day.
- Eat by the handful while walking. No stove, no water, no spoon.
The cereal is the reason this works as a walking snack. Oat rings are bulky and dry, so they break up the density of nuts and seeds and keep a handful from feeling like eating a candy bar. That matters over a long day, when a mix that is too rich stops going down.
The peanut butter chips are the fat and the sugar in one piece. Currants carry the fast carbohydrate, almonds and sunflower seeds the protein and staying power. Nothing here needs a cooler or a stove, and the whole mix survives being crushed at the bottom of a pack, which is more than most snacks manage.
Note the nuts: almonds and peanut butter chips both disqualify this for anyone avoiding nuts, and the chips contain milk, so this is not dairy-free.
Packing
Quart freezer bags, one per person. Peanut butter chips soften above about 80 degrees, so keep the bag out of a sun-baked lid pocket or it clumps into a brick.
Variations
- Swap the peanut butter chips for chocolate chips in cold weather, when they hold their shape.
- Add a cup of pretzel sticks and a heavy pinch of salt if you are sweating hard and the mix tastes flat.
- Sunflower seeds alone in place of the almonds cuts the cost and drops the tree nuts.
https://camprecipes.com/classic-recipes/bird-seed-trail-mix