Kicked Up Trail Mix and settling for less

[rattattoo]

Part of my load out for almost any kind of get away, no matter what type or duration, is a bag or two of some kind of GORP/trail mix/ snax mix. I will frequently take along more than one different kind to sort of mixup my munching.
In the fall and winter I tend to have always made up a batch of mama's traditional "Chex" mix, and that will be what I take along. Rest of the season I tend to take a mix of dried fruits, nuts, etc.
Mostly, I will pick up a couple of bags of honey-roasted nuts, some chopped dried fruit, raisins, dried cranberries and whatever, and combine them myself. When you buy the premade "trail mixes" they give you plenty of raisins and not much other "fruit" and they always tend to have some of those really, really cheap, faux M&Ms added in... nasty stuff in my opinion. The premade ones also have had an indeterminant prior shelf-life, and all too often I have been very disappointed to get out in the woods and find out just how stale they become... Even when they had just come off the hook of the 7-11.
AND! when you make your own trail mix, you can use real M&Ms!
This summer I found something even better... COCONUT Milk Chocolate M&Ms!! They are absolutely incredible when added to a trail mix that's heavy on the chopped fruits and raisins. If you would rather go heavily on the nuts, I found that adding in some of the Reeses Peanut Butter Pieces has the same effect. They are even better than putting in peanut M&Ms, my standby for years.
Take my word for it... You will never be sorry that you went to the trouble to make your own. You'll never go back to the store-bought trail mix...

[elandil]

Try doing the Peanut Butter M&M's with dried cranberries and assorted nuts. Thats one of my favs.

That or I'll do a sauce for the chex mix, add in the chex and nuts, then Jalapeno cheddar cheetos and Hot N spicy Cheezits...

[rattattoo]

The Chex sauce DOES need to be kicked up for the outdoors palate. Mine gets chipotle sauce added.
And I have had luck with adding Cheddar and Pretzel Mix Goldfish together with a bag of white cheddar popcorn....