National Trail Mix Day

August 31st is National Trail Mix Day in the United States.

Trail mix was originally designed as a snack food to be eaten on the "trail," hence the name, this is a mixture of nuts and dried fruit, and possibly chocolate. It's not known when it was originally created; it's claimed by two companies that it was first made in 1968, but it is also mentioned in a Jack Kerouac novel of a decade earlier.

It is possible to buy the mix pre-made, or you can make your own to use only the fruit and nuts that you want in it. "Nuts" includes culinary nuts such as the peanut (which is actually a bean) as well as other seeds. There are a wide range of different items that can be added to a trail mix, including cereals, crystallised ginger and marshmallows. With homemade trail mix, the limit is only by what you prefer. If chocolate is included, it can be chocolate chips or branded small chocolate pieces such as M&M's and Smarties.

It's possible to make trail mix into bars as well, but at this point it really stops being trail mix.