It’s 2008, and Facebook is not on most people’s minds. What exists are the old-school forums and the Backpacker forums, which were where all the kids were back then. Long before I wrote about trail cooking, trail food, and hiking on a website, I was on the forums and in the cooking section nearly daily.
Then, one day, a lady popped up. She was new to the forums and had a company they had just started.
It was called Packit Gourmet. (Use the code for 10% off)
Nothing like it had ever existed before this. In many ways, I connected to the mother/daughter behind PIG. And yes, this does sound like chest-beating, but I had changed trail food with Freezer Bag Cooking by then – and Packit Gourmet was what I had been craving when I didn’t want to think too deeply about planning trail meals. They were doing the step above what I was doing, dealing with the food aspect. That was my bonding feeling.
The meals tasted like real food, not the salt licks of olden days. The freeze-dried meals of long ago (2008) were barely changed from 1979. They were aimed at men who liked salty food with little spice/flavor (no, salt is NOT a flavor) that tended to be beige in color. PIG meals were vibrant in color, flavorful, and didn’t taste like a freeze-dried can of Chef Boyardee.
Fun Fact?
I was their first customer.
Oh, the fun I had that year. I always had their meals, snacks, and such in my food bag. I was always pulling out bags from them.
They also sold individual ingredients, which was huge at the time. Finding freeze-dried and dehydrated ingredients on Amazon was still years away. It was the first time I had access to dried olive slices. The grocery section changed how I created recipes and gave me so many more ideas.
It was a bummer when our site was hacked around 2018. I rebuilt the website from the ground up on a new platform. Moving the recipes over took up so much time that I was mentally exhausted by the time I got to the blog (it took months to restore where Google didn’t flag me as a corrupted URL). I had lost all the reviews of commercial meals over the years (some dating back to 2005). I realized the old reviews didn’t matter since much of what I had written was irrelevant (brands going under, items not sold anymore, being ten years old, and so on).
But Packit Gourmet was still going. So, I reviewed many of their meals and desserts again in the past six years. Then, I found photos from those meals in 2008-09. That was a fun trip down memory lane. There are a lot of reviews if you have the time.
They had gotten slicker in their packaging (all branded), and the meals were streamlined. But they were still the same company all those years before. They have never changed that. And 16 years? That is a long life in the outdoor industry!
I reviewed the Cheddar-Jack Cheese Spread 3 times, as I enjoyed it that much over the years. The review includes photos from the two 2008 reviews as well.
Packit Gourmet is a small, well-run business that is a great choice for trail meals when you don’t want to think it out or have time to plan. And to that…I wish them 16 more fun-filled years! Congratulations!
~Sarah