Smashed, Squashed, Smooshed, and Squished

Or, How to Protect Soft Foods from Harm

I don't know about you, but it hurts my feelings when my pop tart or Danish pastry gets flattened in my pack. I've tried a couple things, such as putting squishables in a plastic container and using my sleeping bag as a type of bubble wrap, but so far nothing works for me. The container method is heavy and takes up too much room. The sleeping bag as pad doesn't work too well. What do you do to keep your Moon Pies in one piece?

I know they taste the same whether they're whole or crumbs, but after a hard day of hiking it helps my spirits if I can have a granola bar rather than granola morsels.

I either take the hard-sided container, or I do without the smashable, squashable, smooshable, and squishable!

[That was a hard one to type. Short recess while I utter a number of unladylike words about autocorrect!]

This practice works out, because those 4 S foods are great for short trips but don't do well on longer trips, having a tendency to mold or get stale with age or (from the bouncing) disintegrate into a soggy sorry mess. Some years back, I tried using the hard-sided container for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a 3-day trip. The first day's sandwich was great; the second day's was fairly good. The third day's PB&J was quite inedible!

YMMV and HYOH, of course!

Here's an idea for cold weather dayhiking, where you don't have to carry the 4-S item.

Of course if you hike where car breakins are frequent, or it's a dreary cloudy day, it won't work.

The items going on this trip happen to be pre-packaged and fairly shelf-stable, at least for the duration of the trip -- but I completely understand about the sandwich problem. I found a plastic container at the dollar store that I thought would work, but it's not large enough and yet too large at the same time. For the time being I'm just going to pack them on top and eat the most fragile items first. I may also stuff a bit of cardboard down in my food bag to act as a sort of shield against getting too crushed. There are enough trash cans along the way that I shouldn't have to carry it more than a day or so.