Trail Meal | Zucchini Mac | Hike for Purpose

As everybody with a vegetable garden in July, I have a lot of zucchini right now. Dehydrate it, and pack it away for your next hike with the following recipe!

There are several different ways to preserve Zucchini, you can pickle it, freeze it, of dehydrate it. With the latter of course being useful for hiking. Where weight and storage is the most important part.

Dehydrating the Zucchini

Dehydrating zucchini can be easy if you have a dehydrator like I do, when you only have an oven I would suggest rather buying a store bought replacement instead of trying to do it in there. Since you have to run it for 4 to 6 hours, depending how thin you managed to cut it. I always give the tip to look around on Facebook marketplace in your area, craigslist, or your countries equivalent, for cheap dehydrators. I picked mine up for 10 euro’s on marktplaats. A Dutch version of craigslist.

To dehydrate, slice the Zucchini in manageable chunks, half moon or a quarter depending on the size, and slice with a mandoline or knife as thin as you can. Spread out on your dehydrator trays, set the timer to 4 hours, and check back. I ended up giving my batch 5:30 hours total on setting 2 of my dehydrator. Yours can vary.

Preparing the Zucchini Mac

For preparation at home, just combine the following ingredients into a Ziploc bag or easy container to take out with you on trail. Be sure to label accordingly with date made and kind off trail meal. If you make a batch of Trail Meals it’s easier to identify.

Three tablespoons dehydrated Zucchini
70 grams of vermicelli noodles or pasta of choice
Chicken bouillon powder or stock cube 1 (heaping) teaspoon
2 tablespoons of full fat milk powder
1 tablespoon of dehydrated parmesan cheese, or nutritional yeast flakes
Shelf stable cream cheese triangle (laughing cow or b brand I used)
Pinch of chili flakes
Pinch of salt and pepper
Pinch of turmeric
Pinch of mustard powder

Total calories: ~483
Weight: 131 grams (with 1 liter Ziploc included)

*You can adopt it to be completely vegan, by subbing the milk powder for a vegan alternative, using the yeast, and swapping out for vegetable stock. I am not, so I used what I had on hand.

If you want to increase the calories, use some olive oil or ghee to add to the fat content. Or increase the noodles. And/ or add some pouched chicken or tuna. That should bring you up to roundabout 600 calories.

Cooking on Trail

As nearly all my trail meals, there is not much actual cooking involved, light up your stove with 400 ml of water inside, bring to a light boil, throw the contents of the bag in your pot.