As I was told, gorp is the acronym for "Good Old Raisins and Peanuts" (which is pretty much the minimum you need for gorp).

However my friends and I always prefered the gorp with chocolate chips mixed in as well. Other additives, if around the size of a peanut, are pretty much fair game for adding: pumpkin seeds, sunflower, dried cranberries, dehydrated peas — whatever.

Remember, gorp is for you and the risk of explosion by mixing ingredients is very small, so put whatever you want in it. Experiment, try different mixes. A great thing about gorp is that if you don't like to eat it all together, you can pick around the things you don't like. But fair warning, if you're hiking with me and you pick out all of the chocolate chips, you may experience a freak shower courtesy of my Nalgene water bottle.

Gorp is great for something to nibble on when you're outdoors doing something physical (skiing, hiking, biking, boating, et cetera) or when you have a few hours until the next meal.

And now, since I spoke about picking good parts out of gorp... a short anecdote:
My sister used to take the Ben and Jerry's ice cream (vanilla with little toffee bits) out of the freezer, pick out all the bits with a spoon, eat them, and then put the now just vanilla ice cream back in the freezer. Drove my brother-in-law nuts.

* Note: at 2003.8.4@19:58, Jongleur let me know "Two things to never ever put in gorp: wasabi dried peas and any sort of mint candy. Both make the whole packages completely inedible."

gorilla arm = G = GOSMACS

gorp /gorp/ n.

[CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

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