BACKPACKER SNACKS
First a confession: I am perhaps the world’s laziest person.
I drive when I can walk, I sit when I can stand, I have been known to pass the time cradled in my recliner binge watching “America’s Next Top Model.” If I were an animal I would be a sloth, moving like a drugged-up Marcel Marceau.
When I hear advice like “take the stairs not the elevator” or “park as far away from your destination as possible,” I snort and continue my hideous habits.
The reason for this bit of truth is that I am and never will be an expert on trail mix, jerky, MREs or other culinary things people put in their backpacks to give them sustenance while they are hanging from a mountain cliff or kayaking wild rapids.
However, my attention was drawn to a rather new store situated on the very posh Post Road East in Westport, a stone’s throw from Tiffany. The store is called Field Trip, and it specializes in jerky and trail mix.
Jerky has become quite ubiquitous. You can get it as the spicy stick called Slim Jim sold at every convenience store and gas station, or you can buy a dehydrator and spend hours sucking the moisture out of the meat of your choice. Once it is made correctly, jerky does not need to be refrigerated, or kept under any special conditions.
It looks like strips of leather pulled from an old saddle. I am not sure jerky would work for people with no teeth, but beyond that it is all inclusive: perfect for a knee busting hike on the Appalachian Trail or a doomsday end-of-the-world scenario. Frankly, jerky looks creepy to me, reminding me of my dog going to town on a rawhide bone or my good leather shoe.
Field Trip (their motto is “Get Out There”) is a wonderfully odd place. It is small and not set up to get your outdoor juices pumping like LL Bean or R.E.I. When I walked in the front door it was not the bags of jerky that caught my eye, but the store’s co-founder Tom Donigan and his bulging calf muscles. These were the legs of a man who earned the right to sell jerky. This was a man who had not logged
hours in a recliner watching “America’s Next Top Model.”
Rarely do I walk into a store and have no idea what to say. This time, confronted with various cellophane bags of desiccated meat I think I blurted out something to the effect of “is this jerky?”
Indeed it was: jerky in flavors one would not imagine. There was beef jerky, and chicken, turkey and pork, meats amplified with cracked pepper, maple and jalapeño. Although it looks like a modest little store front Field Trip is actually a booming business. Their jerky is sold at Target, Walgreens, CVS and served on Jet Blue and United Airlines. The laid-back store on the Post Road East is their only walk in store, and for now there are no plans to open another. I think the crew on “Shark Tank” would fall off their chairs meeting a business team that doesn’t want to franchise. The whole operation is against the grain of how a business is supposed to work.
When the store’s founders realized they had a winner, they pulled up stakes in millennial Brooklyn and moved the whole operation to Westport. The store is reminiscent of the old days in Westport, where one-of-a-kind stores like The Remarkable Book Shop or Klein’s had a chance against the big chains.
The men who run the operation are proud of what isn’t in the jerky. It is nitrite free, gluten free, sugar free. Easy snacks like Slim Jims are best enjoyed if you never learn the ingredients.
I bought a few bags of jerky. In my car I put some in my mouth. It sat there as I salivated and drooled. It was delicious and spicy and probably the best jerky available. Using it like a lollipop I licked it, but because I recently went into deep debt paying for seven dental implants I was scared to chew it. Post implant has seen me give up salt water taffy, Tootsie Rolls and caramels. Teeth or chewy candy? A tough call.
I really love this little store, and I applaud their backstory and allegiance to Fairfield County.
Do I feel like a hypocrite raving about food I can’t eat? Not so much. After all, when I was last in Seattle I went to the mothership store of REI and bought a sleeping bag, a weatherproof poncho and a watch with a compass that I have no idea how to use. You never know when you need to find True North, or require a huge rubbery blanket to cover your backpack and gear. I have unrolled and re-rolled the sleeping bag at least five times but plan to never use it. With this same mind set, I now have eternal bags of jerky in my glove box and am waiting for the right opportunity to ask a passenger if they would like a chaw.
Maybe I can fool one of my friends to think of me as Crocodile Dundee. Maybe I need a huge knife to cut the jerky into little bites.