Stowaway Gourmet Las Pollos Hermanas

Spicy!

Right. Another dish from Stowaway Gourmet. Another dayhike, with this meal eaten for the express purpose of testing things before serious backpacking begins.

Down to business. Las Pollos Hermanas: Chicken Sisters. One expects chicken. One gets...chicken. Big, identifiable, flavorful chunks of chicken. And spice. So much spice. Just only barely this side of too much spice. And I like spicy food. Actually, it wasn't that spicy, but it was spicy enough that it was difficult to differentiate other flavors.

But what of the other sisters? There are identifiable pieces of cabbage, onion, and cilantro in there, but you'd be hard-pressed to identify the flavor. Same goes for the hominy—which I had to look up to make sure it was something I could eat, ha ha. Hominy is field corn, as opposed to sweet corn. It's maize. It's not what you eat off the cob. It's considered inedible to humans until such time as it has been processed with an alkaline to convert the high starch content, and then it takes on a sort of nutty flavor. Or so I'm told; I couldn't taste that over the spiciness of this meal. In terms of size and texture, hominy is very similar to chickpeas. Cool.

While the package is the same volume as Stowaway's other meals, this one is fat. Chockablock full of good stuff. This makes it just slightly more challenging to stuff into a pack if one is used to a certain style of freeze-dried packaging. An extremely minor niggle, to be sure.

This was a satisfying meal for the middle of a day hike, maybe even on the edge of too much food. It would still be a tad light for an end-of-the-backpacking-day meal, I think, but it's closer than their other offerings. And while I feel like I may be harping a little too much on the spice, you should be prepared to have your sinuses cleared out. Don't get me wrong; I liked it. But you really ought to be have a hanky ready.

Background

Decades of day hiking and backpacking leave me hungry for more, and requiring more fuel. I prepared this meal at 500 feet elevation following the package directions exactly, apart from an extra stir at the halfway mark.