It's March; I've got 6 months before I leave.
Aaaaand turns out, I'm finished cooking.
As per my routine, I filled a shopping bag with dehydrated meals before tallying them in my little chart and stashing them in the freezer. When I added everything up, I was exactly six meals short of the full goal, 180 dinners. My original math called for--what do you know--174 meals, which I'd rounded to 180 to make the chart square. Given that I deliberately over-estimated even to get 174 and I'll surely hit up Waffle House and Kraft dinner more than a few times, I decided I'm done.
It became surprisingly frustrating to spend so much money and so many hours preparing so much food only to dump it into a giant hair-dryer. Obviously, that satisfaction should return, with interest, when I have hundreds of work-free meals ready to go on the trail. But I must say, I'm glad that part of the preparation is done. Way ahead of time to boot.
So what next? I knew I was way jumping the gun when I began prepping this trip a full year out, but this is ridiculous. I guess this is my reward: I've got six months to do almost nothing but buy some stuff and take "practice" trips. Now that I know I have so much time to spare, maybe I'll throw down on some Long Trail or even AT action through parts of New England. Yay preparation!
