I keep up my spirits and motivate myself to put in the miles with real food on the trail. I've got trail Alfredo sauce worked out, but I'm not doing as well with the fettuccine. Normally you use a lot of water so the boiling noodles have room to move around relative to each other. However, in a 1.4 L pot there isn't much room. I tried breaking ½ lb. of fettuccine into sixths (lengthwise) so there would be less surface area to cling to another piece, and I stirred frequently (and carefully) with my plastic backpacking spoon (short enough to fit in the pot when stowed). This resulted in largely edible pasta, but there were still too many pieces that didn't cook all the way through because they stuck together.
Do I need to downsize the pasta from fettuccine to linguini? (I've already substituted angel hair for anything requiring spaghetti, and that's worked out well. Less cooking time and fewer mechanical problems for the same taste.) Narrower noodles aren't going to hold the same amount of sauce, so the proportions will be off a bit. But 1/3 less cooking time is desirable in itself.
The standard solution to pasta sticking together is to add olive oil. I haven't tried that yet for a couple of reasons: (1) it'll leave a residue that will make the Alfredo sauce fall off the noodles; and (2) I have no idea how olive oil would change things if I popped the pot into its cozy for 2X the "simmer" time instead of actually simmering.
Have any of you played with these variables of trail pasta? If so, please share.