db wrote on May 24^th, 2013 at 6:25am:


Hilarious!  I once left a water bottle with a little Cirrus lake water in it in my pack for a year.  The creature (leech like) growing in it was difficult to kill.  I now use a filter for my drinking water in the Q.

Harder cheeses are quite "shelf-stable," especially if they are wrapped and not allowed to have contact with the air.  You can extend the life of cheeses if you buy the ones wrapped in wax (or coat them with wax yourself).

From my early childhood, I can remember frequent visit to grandpa's country store in rural East Texas (read this as hot, humid and no air conditioning).  In a prominent place is the store atop a nail keg stood a cheese wheel (probably cheddar), with the classic red-wax coating ... except as might have been removed to cut off a wedge of cheese.  There it stood, day after day as customers came and went ... only covered by the wooden cheese wheel casing (at night) or draped with cheese cloth (during the day).  Such was the rural south in the day when gasoline was hand-pumped into a glass cylinder on top of the pump and then drained into your tank.

dd

I've used mozzarella cheese sticks the past several trips for my baked pizzas and spag dish....the labels say to keep refrigerated, but they seem to last a couple weeks on a trip without any ill affects....

My last trip was in August. I never got around to cleaning out my foodpack because it was basically empty so it sat in the hall until my wife got annoyed with it being there just before Christmas.

When I cleaned it out to put it away there were some cheddar and string cheese sticks left at the bottom. They were oily but looked good so I stuck 'em in the fridge. A few days later I was going to try one but they were gone. I can only assume my kid ate 'em.
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