“Best Backpacking Meals—You Won’t Believe You Didn’t Think of This!”

Everyone I know is portioning out the ingredients for Mediterranean Pizza Flatbread and wrapping shit in damp paper towels so it’s fresh when they get to camp and piling up sticks for a makeshift dutch oven so they can make cinnamon rolls in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m over here with everything I need to make the only backpacking meal that’s never let me down. Here’s the recipe:

1 box mac-and-cheese, preferably the kind with the cheese already in goop form, but powdered will do in a pinch

1 packet tuna

Follow instructions on mac-and-cheese packaging, which you don’t need to bring with you because you already know how to make mac-and-cheese out of a box, what with you being a human in the world and all. Mix in tuna. Store packaging in bear-safe container or high off the ground because tuna stinks.

Eat. Repeat as necessary.

Case for Tuna Mac: Once I went on a four-day climbing trip with my friend Pat and without anyone to tell us we really ought to mix things up, we just ate tuna mac every night. And you know what? That trip was awesome.

Here’s what happened once when I didn’t make Tuna Mac: Bix and I were heading out to climb something and I thought I’d impress him by making dinner at camp the night before so I brought all this quinoa and fresh veggies and like a weird peanut sauce and guess what? I burned the shit out of that quinoa. I also forgot sporks so we had to eat with sticks. We also got stalked by a bear on that trip, but my only regret is straying from Tuna Mac.

You can keep your backcountry baking, your powdered sauces, your freeze-dried veggies. Keep your Clever Fancy Backpacking Pun Names, your carefully measured teaspoons of this spice and that, your who-says-I-can’t-be-gourmet-just-because-I’m-pooping-in-a-cathole.

Tuna Mac, you’re the only one for me.