Meals on the Katy
For those of you who don’t know, Andrew is a vegetarian, so a little more thought had to go into our trip meal planning than your average backpacking cyclist. Because this was our first multi-day, out on our own, bike adventure (read about it here), we decided we would only cook one meal a day, and go out to eat for the others. While planning, and not knowing how the day would go, it made sense to us for that cooked meal to be dinner. Our thought being that we would want to cook at the campsite where it would be easier to pull things out, and clean up after. What we learned is that it really isn’t that big of a deal to cook wherever – as long as we have water.
Camp Cooking
We (and by “we” I mean Andrew) only cooked 3 of the nights. Last fall when we had first tested out all of our camping gear we had gone a little more gourmet with our meal selections – which were great, but not necessarily something we thought we would want to do after a long days ride. So for this trip we wanted to keep our meals pretty simple without compromising on flavor.
Oatmeal
Okay we cheated on this one a little because Andrew’s mom gave us a whole bunch of home-made trail ready oatmeal packets. There were several different flavors (like apricot, very berry, etc) and they were very tasty. Each packet included ingredients like rolled oats, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, dried fruit, powdered milk, and spices. They seem like they’re pretty easy to make with some simple googling, so that will be our plan for our next trip now that we’re all out of the pre-made packets. (click here for a recipe I found that we like). As far as cooking in the mornings it’s pretty straight forward – just add boiling water.
As a side note, oatmeal can be a developed taste, I used to hate how mushy it was, but I knew it would be the easiest thing to do for breakfast, so we started making it at home (adding all sorts of fancy ingredients to the plain oats) and slightly under cooking it so it wouldn’t be so mushy – and now I really like it!
Also, as you can see in the photo, we did not go without coffee. We brought french vanilla Maxwell House instant coffee. I’m sure we’ll continue to experiment with brands, but that one was good enough for us.
Rice and Beans
We actually had this one on the first night and the third night, but because we used a different type of beans and included some of our “Italian seasoning” from the pasta on the third night they tasted different enough for our short trip. In the future we may try to bring more variety of seasonings for more creativity with flavors.
Pasta
We added dehydrated veggie sausages as a protein, and while it sounds pretty straight forward, there is a little bit more skill involved because Andrew cooked this all as a one pot meal. Dehydrating the f’sausages was super easy (we used field roast brand). All we did was cut them into quarter inch thick pieces and throw them on the dehydrator. They also made for an extra snack which was nice.
Recipes
Ingredients:
- 1 Can Diced Tomatoes (With Liquid)
- 1 Can Beans (With Liquid) – we used red kidney beans the first meal and black beans for the other meal
- 1 Onion (Small) – Chopped Roughly
- 1 Bell Pepper – Chopped Roughly
- 2 Cups Instant Rice
- 3/4 Cups Water
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- 1/4 tsp Cayanne Pepper
- 1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
- Oil
Ingredients:
- 1 Can Diced Tomatoes (With Liquid)
- 1 Can Tomato Sauce (8 Oz)
- 1/2 Cup Water
- 1 Onion (Small) – Chopped Roughly
- 2 Cups Shaped Pasta
- Dehydrated Vegan Sausages (we used Field Roast Brand cut into 1/4″ thick pieces)
- 1/4 tsp Dried Basil
- 1/4 tsp Dried Oregano
- 1/8 tsp Cayanne Pepper
- 1/8 tsp Garlic Powder
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- Oil
Since the pasta won’t be totally covered by liquid you will need to stir this pretty frequently.
Bring the mixture a boil.
And that’s it! You’re done and ready to eat.
Snacks
For snacking on the trail we gave ourselves a wide variety (we didn’t want to get sick of anything!) We weren’t really sure how much to pack, but we figured if worse comes to worse we can always buy more on the ride.
These were a no brainer for us, and we made sure we had at least one a day (we did end up buying more on the trail – but didn’t end up eating them all). As far as brand we weren’t loyal to any particular one, although we probably had the most of Cliff Bars. Andrew has some favorites but I’m still experimenting with brands to see what I like. We also packed a couple regular granola bars for snacking as well.
Another obvious choice for this sort of adventure. We made our own mixture (trying to be a little cheaper/healthier). We used dried apricots, almonds, raisins, and pecans. Quantity wise we made about 850g (we recently got a new kitchen scale – so of course we decided to measure it out). Over the 4 day period that equated to about 2 handfuls per day each. I was worried it wouldn’t be enough, but we probably only went through one bag worth – I guess we only had small handfuls on the trail.
We gave ourselves one “energy snack” a day. Typically we ended up eating them in the afternoon – around when that lunch time nap tries to kick in. For myself I packed the Honey Stinger Chews (which if you don’t know are basically fruit snacks). I really enjoy them, but I guess Andrew doesn’t like chewing on the bike, so he got himself those gu gels.
These were the winners in the snack category. Basically, they are a vegetarian beef jerky. They are amazing. We brought 1250 grams of them (which is 2 stuffed regular zip-top bags worth when dry) and we ate them all – we were able to monitor ourselves a little to make sure we still had some left on our last day.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 500g portabella mushrooms (~4-5 good size mushrooms) – sliced into 1/4 inch – ish thick pieces, i like to keep them long, but you can cut them into your desired shape
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp garlic powder
We dehydrated the field roast vegan sausages mostly for a protein source for one of our meals. But they did make for a nice snack as well! (We literally just cut the f’sausage into like ¼” thick pieces and left them on the dehydrator overnight and that was it).
Dining Out
I just wanted give a couple shout outs to some of our favorite dining stops along the way.
As I mentioned when talking about our Katy Ride, Kate’s coffee gives out a free mini muffin to anyone who can ride up the hill without having to push the bike. While we didn’t “earn” a free muffin, we did decide we earned some pastries. I had a Ghirardelli oatmeal bar that was simply divine. And Andrew had a muffin. Since we were actually here for lunch we did both order ourselves their vegetarian sandwich which is both filling and delicious.
This was by far my favorite stop on our trip. It was basically just a food truck near an RV park / campground. It was right by the river, and had several tables as well as a stage set up. I don’t know how often people are performing, but we were there on a Saturday for lunch, and even though it was pretty early in the season, there was still an open mic type event going on with several performers. The ambiance was great after our morning ride. More important than the ambiance, the food was AMAZING. Now, it may have just been because we had worked up an appetite, but it definitely hit the spot. (They had several vegetarian options to choose from) And, we decided to treat ourselves to mango sticky rice – yum.
Grocery Stores
Finally I thought I would include the grocery stores we stopped at in case anyone is trying to plan a trip of their own.
Day 0 – Aldi’s, St Charles
Most of you have been to Aldi’s so you know what to expect from them. We mostly stopped in because they were across the parking lot from our hotel – so we figured we would go ahead and buy some tomato sauce for later. (we had brought a lot of our Day 1 food with us already) We were hoping to get an onion and pepper as well – but no such luck for the loose produce.
Day 1 – K&R Market, Marthasville
This one is about a 1/2 mile off of the trail, but pretty empty road riding except the very last stretch on the highway – I think we only made a car or two angry with our presence. I waited outside with the bike while Andrew went in, and the locals here were very friendly and chatty, curious to hear about what we were doing. Inside was a pretty average size grocery store with fresh produce, canned goods, and the like. Other than the cashier suffering some technical difficulties on the order in front of me they were friendly and helpful.
Day 2 –
We didn’t have to stop anywhere this day (thank God too – since this was our way too long day). There is the Mokane Market , but while researching we only found negative reviews, saying they were mean, so we decided to plan to skip them if possible.
Day 3 – Snoddy’s Store, Boonville
We had to go a little out of our way past the campsite for this one. It was an interesting store – both groceries and hardware/hunting, but it had what we needed, and we were able to get a very nice looking pepper. Since this is more of a “general store” than a grocery store their produce selection was smaller and the variety of canned goods was less but we only needed some pretty normal stuff. The store itself was barely off the Katy Trail itself – so a perfect pit stop for anyone trying to minimize road riding.
Day 4 – C&R Supermarket, Boonville
We had to take a detour through Boonville due to some culvert repairs on the trail, so for us this one was along our route. But this store is a little ways into town if you are hoping not to leave the trail. We came here looking to buy some easy grab and go lunches – but alas, no vegetarian pre-made sandwiches, so instead we ended up with a large loaf of bread, some cheese and apples. (There weren’t any good lunch stops along the way that we could find so we needed to BYOL for Day 4).
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