Trail recipe - peanut-free GORP

After doing several shorter overnights and even day hikes, we began noticing that peanut products were giving NoKey an awful case of heartburn.  Hiking tough terrain all day after making the mistake of ingesting anything with peanuts or peanut butter in it was making him miserable.  This was pretty much the leap we needed into making our own trail mixes.  Anymore you can find a whole variety of trail mixes in pretty much any store you shop in, from tropical to chocolate lover to the plain jane traditional, even generic stores like Aldi and Price Chopper are carrying a variety of mixes that make it easy to grab a $4.99 bag and go.  Those bags tend to add up when you’re doing  a lot of hiking and chances are buying the ingredients in bulk will help you save a little cash and a lot of time instead of making those last minute runs out to the store.  

I came up with this recipe out of necessity.  We couldn’t do a mix with peanuts and everything at Aldi this week had peanuts, so I grabbed a few bags of stuff and made my own mix.  I poured it into a 2.5-liter container used for cereal and now we have at least two trips (if not three!) worth of trail mix.  Now the only downside is that I have way too much trail mix in the house for my snacking pleasure! Here’s what you’ll need:

-1 Party-sized bag of M&M’s

-1 lb bag of almonds (I went for salted, oven-roasted)

-1 lb bag of cashews (I went for salted, oven-roasted)

-6 oz. bag of dried fruit (mine was a Fruit Medley mix from Aldi, which included pineapple, banana chips, papaya, dark raisins, golden raisins, and coconut chunks)

-Miscellaneous handful of whatever else you want.  In my case, I had yogurt drops left over from another trail mix, so I threw those in too!

Mix all these items together into a large container, shake it to distribute evenly, and try not to eat the whole thing!