Sheep Camp Lunch Bag
Jerky, hard cheese, and a candy bar. No stove, no stopping, eaten standing up.
- calories
- 700
- weight
- 6.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 108
- protein
- 24 g
- serves
- 1, 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.
- Lunch
- Snack
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Day hike
- Thru-hike
- Bikepacking
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Beef jerky | 1.5 oz | thin cut chews easier when you are out of breath |
|---|---|---|
| Hard cheese stick | 1 oz | aged cheddar or a dry provolone, not string cheese |
| Candy bar | 1 bar | Snickers travels; anything with caramel gets soft above 80 F |
| Fruit leather | 1 strip | |
| Hard candies | 4 pieces | butterscotch or sour, whatever you will actually suck on |
Method
- Pack the bag at home. That is the whole recipe.
- At the stop, eat the cheese first while it is still firm.
- Jerky next, chewed slowly. It is dry work, so drink with it.
- Candy bar and fruit leather last. Keep the hard candies in a hip pocket for the climb after.
This is a lunch built around not cooking. On a long hunt or a big mileage day you stop for ten minutes, not forty, and anything that needs a pot does not get eaten. Everything here goes from bag to mouth.
The cheese and jerky carry the meal. Hard aged cheese sits out for days without trouble, unlike string cheese, which turns greasy and sour by afternoon two. The sugar is there to be quick, not to be nutrition. Six and a half ounces gets you about 700 calories, which is honest for a lunch but short for a day. Plan the other two meals around that gap rather than trying to close it here.
Packing
One quart freezer bag per day, labeled. Cheese and the bar ride against your back where it is coolest, not in a lid pocket in the sun. Wrappers go back in the same bag so trash stays counted.
Variations
- Swap the candy bar for a peanut butter tortilla, shrink-wrapped, if you want fat instead of sugar.
- Dried peaches or mango in place of the fruit leather: more bulk, more calories, same weight.
- Add a second ounce of jerky on days with real elevation. The protein matters more than the candy does.
https://www.hunttalk.com/threads/backpack-food-question.209720