The fruits (but mainly vegetables) of my work

How I turned 2 years of accumulated free produce into trail food (not a how-to guide)

I spent about four years as a product manager at an organic grocery store. I worked there for a total of five years, starting in 2020. I kind of fell into this line of work, largely due to the pandemic, but I gave it my all. Being a product manager is an exhausting job: countless shifts unloading the entire truck by myself, which is literally thousands of pounds of product, plus the emotional labor of customer service and managing a team of people. It was extremely demanding and not always rewarding. Despite this, I was generally able to find and create a lot of meaning for myself in this job and that’s why I stayed for a while. One of the main advantages of working here was free production for staff («FTS»). We had very high quality standards and often there were a lot of perfectly good but unsellable products in the FTS checkout. We also prep and “trim” all leafy greens every day.

trim remains

For the 5 years I worked there, I pretty much lived off of FTS products, but in 2024 I started collecting things specifically to dehydrate and use on my hike. Almost every day I brought home a bag full of leftovers or whole fruits and vegetables that had a bruise or whatever.

Me in the walk-in dreaming of the AT

Early 2024 was a particularly difficult period at work: I was managing two extremely busy stores, one of which needed a complete overhaul, and I was spending weeks going back and forth between locations. Despite the challenges, I kicked ass AND put 100% of the extra pay I received during that period into my walk. It was also when my collection started:

Basically, I collected anything that was good in ramen and anything that rehydrated quickly, like zucchini and tomatoes. I didn’t have any plan or recipe in mind, I was just collecting things. Most days I relentlessly prepped and dehydrated leftover vegetables, often when I was too tired to do so. I even cut the ever-loving crap on my thumb once while preparing some chard for the dehydrator. Cut hard through the nail. I learned my lesson about sleepy cutting right there, ouch!

So this collection slowly built up inside my pantry and I finally pulled it all out a few weeks ago to evaluate what I could do with it.

It was time to get creative and I started creating recipes with what I had on hand. Lentils, pumpkin powder, lots of greens, collagen powder, I dehydrated some canned chicken, nutritional yeast, rice, pasta sauce, applesauce, blocks of ramen that were probably “expired,” etc.

I ended up with 49 dinners in total solely from the items I had mostly forgotten inside my pantry. Ramen with vegetables, walnut stew, various types of soups and lentil stews. I made a handful of oatmeal bags with chia seeds and rolled oats that I found there. I built 12 replenishment boxes supplemented with items I bought at Lidl. I spent about $200 on those items and ended up with a total of 63 days worth of trail meals (the 100 mile wild box has 8 days, not 5).

Now you can see why this is not a how-to guide, but this is how I did it. Also, no fruit ended up in the final product, just the fruits of my labor.

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