USA Supermarket resupply; what do you buy?

Never done a thru-hike, but I buy almost all my backpacking food from supermarkets, with the exception of a few tasty dehydrated chilis and soups my local food co-op has in bulk. Haven't bought freeze-dried for years.

No claims for great nutrition, but here's a few things I like:

Instant mashed potatoes (look for kinds without artificial flavors)
Cous-cous
Instant rice
Cup-a-soup type ramen noodles
(enliven all the above with olive oil, herbs, spices, cheese, etc)

Snickers bars (supermarkets in my area also have a good selection of Clif bars, Lara bars, etc)
Fritos (150 Cal/oz–crushed in instant chili=yum)
Pringles
Tortilla chips
Rye-Crisp crackers
Gummi Bears and Jolly Ranchers

Almonds (chocolate covered and plain)
Cashews and shelled peanuts
Sunflower kernels
Nut butters

Hard/firm cheese: Asiago, aged chedder, Beecher's or Cougar Gold (if in PNW)

Tuna in foil packets (a little heavy)
Jerky (not very calorie dense)
Teriyaki beef stick (150 Cal/oz)
Small whole lengths of cured hard salami

Tortillas (esp. if you can find them made with lard)

My local supermarkets also have decent selections of dried fruit, but for unsulphured apricots and unsweetened dried mango, I go to the coop. At least where I live, the bigger discount supermarkets have some bulk foods, which saves money and packaging.

Do you have a list of standard foods you like? Give us a list and we can give a US alternative perhaps. Supermarkets here are pretty diverse anymore. Food should not be a worry at all.

Check the recipes on http://www.trailcooking.com. Since they were developed in the US, many of them use common US supermarket ingredients. I suspect a number of the brand names will be familiar.

Most of the large supermarket chains have foreign food sections and health food sections so you can pick up a larger (and/or healthier) variety of items. The smaller the town, the less likely you are to find such amenities, and for those the only "foreign" food may be Mexican (great if you like it!). In tiny settlements with only convenience stores (gas stations), you'll have a far more limited supply and may be stuck with a lot of macaroni and cheese, Snickers bars, crackers, peanut butter, cookies and one or two varieties of Hamburger Helper or Tuna Helper. You'll have calories but not variety and not as much nutrition! You may find that you want to do a big shopping when in the big towns, divide it up and ship boxes to the smaller places ahead. Then, again, you may do just fine with what I consider indigestible "junk food"–you'll be hungry enough that everything tastes good. While shopping for your first days on the trail, check out both a big supermarket and a gas station convenience store to get an idea of what's available.

I personally prepare and dehydrate my own meals, but of course that's not feasible for you coming from the UK. You might check out some of the better freeze-dried food outfits like Mary Jane's Farm or Packit Gourmet. The last will actually prepare custom meals for you!

Do note that if you hike the PCT, you'll need to cram your food into a bear canister while in the Sierra. You'll want high-calorie, low-bulk foods for that section. For example, rice and couscous, not noodles! You'll also need to repackage most of your food to eliminate bulk.

In all honesty – any chain grocery store will have most anything you could desire :-)
It depends of course if you want natural or organic foods versus standard.

Quaker instant oatmeal is popular for breakfast:

http://www.amazon.com/Quaker-Instant-Oatmeal-Variety-Packets/dp/B000O9WEY2/ref=acc_glance_gro_ai_ps_t_1

An Kraft Easy Mac macaroni and cheese comes out FBC:

IMO a better question isn't what to buy at a supermarket. With a little experience I think anyone can resupply nicely at a supermarket. The issue comes when you're resupplying at something closer to a gas station mini-mart, and unless you go for a whole lot of resupply boxes, you'll be doing that sometimes.

If you look carefully at a gas station mini-mart, the better, bigger ones do have some actual food items, but often not of the type that works best for backpackers. Shopping with another thru-hiker can help, i.e., split a loaf of bread between you for example.

Partly it's thinking out of the box and looking at *everything* they sell there, to include the hot and ready to eat meals. It's true that mini-marts are heavy on suger, fat, salt, and starch, but at the end of the day unless you have some very specific food issues then it's mainly about getting enough calories in a form that you'll actually be willing to eat.

The main thing I suggest is to not worry about it much. If you've done neither trail, I'd suggest that you hike the PCT first, NOBO, and start with the kickoff. Hike with others and see what they're buying and ask how they plan to prepare their food, watch them cook (or sometimes not cook) and figure out your own optimal approach to food resupply.

The good thing about thru-hiking long trails is that your body gets so well tuned it seems it doesn't matter much what you eat as long as you get the calories.

Speaking from the perspective a non-US hiker, I'd say after a couple of ressuply runs you'll get used to what's available, what you prefer and what aisle everything is in. I agree with Brian the gas station mini-marts are more of a challenge but after the initial shock if you look well you'll find lots of backpacking friendly stuff. It became a fun challenge to get out of that tiny shop with a satisfying set of food for 5 days.

A few ideas: regular pasta can be boiled in a bag. This revelation :) took me out of Liptons by the time I could barely stand them. Add some concentrated soup or some other powder for flavor. Flavored Idahoan instant potatoes were great and quite ubiquitous. Surprisingly (to me), powder milk can be found almost anywhere. Nuts, chocolate and energy bars are all over the place. There's always some cheese.

One strategy I employed while hiking the PCT was to drift a box with specialty items that I knew I would never be able to find in a grocery store, things I had to mail order special, freeze-dried fruit, Nido full-fat powdered milk, other things I can't remember.

Another strategy was to never mail anything that could be purchased at a gas station market!!!

So what did I get at the grocery store?

– Noodles, specifically orzo (denser) and elbow macaroni (cheapest). Regular pasta cooks just fine if you remove from heat and let it stand in the pot wrapped in a hat for 15 minutes to two hours. No need to seek out special faster-cooking pastas.

– Sauce packets. There's practically half an aisle devoted to special sauce packets. I favored the Alfredo Cheese, Four Cheese and there was one that was Parmesan cheese and tomato that was pretty good. Add that to my noodles. Costs more than mac-and-cheese but has a gourmet flair. There are other flavors like chili, Mexican, gravy etc.

– Tuna, chicken and Spam in foil packets.

– Dry salamis, hard cheeses.

– Breakfast cereal, nuts from the baking aisle rather than the nuts aisle, cookies and crackers.

– Dried black bean soup can be reconstituted into dried "refried" beans by simply adding less water.

– Jerky, nuts, dried fruit, candy, sports energy bars and stuff like that, the usual suspects.

– Poptarts, other breakfast pastries, oatmeal bars etc. Honestly, I think that fig newtons are healthier.

A bit off topic, but to minimize your angst about weight and bulk:

Your first day's worth of food out of each resupply hardly matters – you'll only be carrying it for one day. So go for the less dense stuff, accept packaging weight if you can burn it, and for health reasons, hit the fresh fruit veggies hard while in town and then provision some more for the first day out.

If you get to a supermarket (rather than a mini-mart), many now have bakeries and delis. You can get prepared food (generic Chinese, deli sandwiches, etc) which can last you a day or two if you keep them cool and avoid diary and mayonaise in them. I benefit a lot from the mental game of eating my deli sandwich slowly as I hike, and, 40 minutes later, observing that I've gone 2 miles during lunch while others would have sat on a rock the whole time.

Prepared food can seem like "cheating", but you save food weight, fuel weight, prep time, clean-up time. And you work variety into your diet which helps your health and pysche. Try to get them to wrap sandwichs in wax paper instead of plastic wrap, etc, so you can burn your trash (or multi-purpose it as fire starter).

Cooked meat (roast beef, roast turkey cold cuts) is pretty calorie dense and doesn't spoil quickly. Bought refridgerated or re-cooled overnight at altitude, they'll stay cool if packed inside your sleeping bag / quilt for insulation. Skip that in grizzly country, but for blackies and racoons, just wack them with a stick.