BC touring grub

[damian 0]

I am a bit of a grub, but in this instance I am talking food.

 

What simple to prepare food is the best source of energy as a ratio to weight and volume? It also has to be a meal good for your spirits as eating those expensive high energy performance bars and chocolate day after day gets pretty gross. I am only thinking of trips between 1 and 3 days, so a nice balanced diet is not so important.

 

I have guessed this simple meal might do the job.

 

Cook rice with barley grains, drain the water and squeeze out any that remains, mix in corn, sesame seeds, salt and a little olive oil and perhaps died onion flakes. Put a meals worth in a little plastic container. Put the container in your back pack. You could cook several lots at once and freeze the spare meals until you need them.

 

The benefit is that it can be eaten cold but would also be quite nice heated up in the evening. You have to carry a little alu spoon to eat it like a gentleman.

 

I spoke with a guy years ago before I cared about any of this. He dragged a sled to the south pole and ate nothing but semi-liquid olive oil for several weeks.

[Fattwins 0]

dude yuk ill take pasta and soup, ramen is another good one. pills for vitamins. rice i dont mind just take out the grains.

[soubriquet 0]

Corned beef hash.

[dizzy 0]

a small ziplock/container of spices goes a long way that's for sure

 

you want a lot of carbohydrates in your system the day before extreme workouts on your body.

pasta the day and days before are a good source of carbos.

 

jelly drinks of protein have become popular in the last couple years in japan. they're light, stay fresh up to mild temperatures, and don't take up too much space as garbage along the way. wonder if you can get them over by you.

Weider is good, once u get used to the taste. 3 or 4 of these babies a day on a good hike.

[mattlucas 0]

I always go with the same thing

 

Rice - In Japan you can buy those just add water bags from outdoor stores. In Canada I'm going with the minute rice. Not as good though.

Corn - Either a little bag or small can

Peas - Either a little bag or small can

Tuna - If it's just an overnighter then a regular sized can. If it's a long trip then the smaller can for weight.

 

Mix it all together including the tuna oil

Add a load of parm cheese

Add a load of seasoning and eat

 

Instant mashed potatoes are also pretty good

 

For lunches I've started liking the sausages idea. I usually fry up enough sausages in a load of butter and other fatty oils. 1 for each day. Bring some cheese and a bagel. Great lunch and bagels stay good for a week at least.

 

I've read a lot of trip reports of old timers eating lentils and curry powder. They are a great source of protein but for the life of me I can't understand how they cook them. As lentils need a load of time in a pot and that's a lot of fuel

 

Breaky is either instant oatmeal or bagels with butter from a tube. I find the oatmeal hard to stomach. I really like the bagels and with way more butter than you would normally eat they are good for high energy things

[damian 0]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Does rice or pasta have the highest carb value as a ratio of volume and weight?

 

Soub - what is your definition of hash? When I was a kid it was sort of left over meat and veges all chopped up and fried together?

 

Dizzy - those jelly drinks are pretty decent, if not a little artificial, but they freeze. In general, freeze-ability is a constraint: too much liquid and your food will freeze, which means you have to heat it to eat it. Eating frozen food is crumby for the moral when you are already cold and weak. Same for drinking half frozen water at -15C, its like a coffee in the desert to quench your thirst.

 

Toque - that sounds like a very good diet, but doesn't it take up a lot of room and those sausages must get smashed pretty badly on the journey? Bacon could work well: if it freezes then no probs as it has a quick defrost as it cooks, plus full of fat and energy and flavour. Bacon had not occurred to me before, I might start to take it. Salami could be good as well, although quite heavy. Bagels are good as they are robust, another good idea. I don't think I could handle burping curry and lentils all day. My digestive system has been proven to react funny to altitude. They must soak the lentils overnight and warm the mix in the morning?

 

Another constraint is washing up. The more you cook, the more you clean. I kind of like to cook in a cup.

 

Last time I went hiking I was gone for 4 days and my food supply weighed a ton and consumed a big part of my pack space. It was not an ideal arrangement. Since then I have been trying to devise the best way to get enjoyable energy with minimal weight and space (and cooking resources).

 

I like oatmeal for breakfast. For each breaky take a ziplock bag with enough oat and then some raisins and milk powder. Cooking just requires you to add water and heat. A warm breakfast in winter is a good start to the day.

 

In the Army we ate processed cheese from a can. It was called bung-hole. Toilet frequency is another thing to consider. Carrying a bag of squashed poo in your bag pack is less fun than having a "bunged hole" for a few days.

[mattlucas 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by le spud:
Toilet frequency is another thing to consider. Carrying a bag of squashed poo in your bag pack is less fun than having a "bunged hole" for a few days.

Your problem there is that you are doing in things to really busy places. You have to find the remote places where dropping a curl behind a tree or rock isn't a problem

Any type of sausage is good
The fattier the better
And pre-cooked so they don't go bad. Just bury them in the snow if there is any over night
Cheese is good. The only thing that can go bad is it will get mouldy so you just cut off the bad parts

[nagoid 4]

I bet Cheeseman will recommend the best cheeses for this.

[NoFakie 45]

You used to live in Milan, didn't you? Well just buy a great big salami. That's about as tasty and energy dense as you'll get. No cooking, just hack a bit off with a penknife. Great in soups and gruel too. Won't spoil either.

 

Naomi Uemura used to have a big slab of seal meat cold with soy sauce every meal. He learnt about it from Eskimos.

[mattlucas 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Mr Wiggles:
Naomi Uemura used to have a big slab of seal meat cold with soy sauce every meal. He learnt about it from Eskimos.

The soy sauce or the seal meat?

[SerreChe 2]

I usually like to take Salami/Cheese + bread.

Not too heavy and Salami has incredibly high oil content and no need to heat-up.

Downside is both are salty and you need to carry a decent amount of water or have access to water sources along your journey.

[damian 0]

Salty food is good for salt replacement, but does make the mouth thirsty. My standard lunch on a day trip was a baguette with cream cheese and sliced salami wrapped in alu foil. It used to get steam roller flat in my pack but didn’t matter. But for a 2 day trip the bread just doesn’t last. I once took out a baguette at 4300m at 9am in the morning. It had been in my pack during the last 7 hours of hiking and it was frozen solid. last time I take tomato and mayo up a mountain (I grabbed it as I was running to the cable car the previous day thinking it might come in handy. I'm an idiot).

 

MrW – I have twice baulked at taking my salami up with me, both times deciding it was too heavy without really considering the fat energy value as a ratio to density. As you say, it is also tasty and easy to prepare hot or cold. An appropriate sized salami can be bought at any petrol station on the way to the snow in northern Italy and the Saviore region of France.

 

So far as easy energy that never freezes, I have found brazil nuts to do a good job. You can use them as a candle in a snow cave as well.

[soubriquet 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by le spud:
Soub - what is your definition of hash? When I was a kid it was sort of left over meat and veges all chopped up and fried together?

Well, its sort of 1/2 tin of corned beef, 1/2 tin tomatoes, 1/2 chopped onion etc., and chilli + anything else to taste. Eat it with rice. It doesn't need cooking, just heating.

I used to live on this for a month at a time in Morocco, which is where the hash part comes in. Have a monster splif when you put the rice on, and by the time everything's ready, it tastes pretty good

[Davo 1]

soub, even stuff like buttered Weetbix can taste good in those particular circumstances.

 

You can buy chickpeas ready to eat in sealed bags at my supermarket-you could do a lot with those, some garlic, a tube of tomato puree concentrate, instant mashed spuds, black pepper and parmisan. The salami added would put that into the gourmet catagory for me.

 

Porridge in the morning sounds good too. Strong coffee with that should help with the bung problem.

[mattlucas 0]

Porridge is such a good idea for breakfast. It's nice to have a warm meal to start the day when it's cold out.

But every time I try to eat it I have to hold back the vomit when I'm eating.

And I'm eating the good stuff from the Quaker Oats Company

[Davo 1]

shame dude, I love the stuff and it's so healthy too.

[cheeseman 1]

How about cheeses folks?

[SerreChe 2]

What nutritious cheese would you recommend Cheeseman?

[Curt 1]

 Quote:

a small ziplock/container of spices goes a long way that's for sure

dizzy, can you enlighten me a bit more on that. What exactly do you do with your spices?

[Fattwins 0]

salt pepper garlic powder anything is better than bland food.

 

a good one also is the 5 minute noodle packs that you get back home. not soup but the ones you add butter and water to a stir. light and almost the same as the 3 to 5 dollar stuff in the outdoor stores.

[brit-gob 9]

Whats the longest you have been out in the snow with only these supplies on hand?

[soubriquet 0]

Five days.

[1 4]

5 days? Where were you for 5 days?

[js 0]

I tend to carry foods that don’t require a lot of water, for both cooking and washing, which means no added oils/fats = saves fuel = less weight.

 

Tend to carry one Billy and one mug – all cooking is done in the one Billy. I NEVER carry tins!

 

Also, bear in mind the order of cooking also saves water/fuel – after boiling water, make a cuppa, then use excess for entrée (soup), use ‘dirty’ pan to make main course. Heat a bit more water for washing, voila, clean pan for after dinner cuppa and ready for breakfast.

 

Here’s a standard daily menu:

 

Breakfast: porridge (similar to Toque, I hate the stuff, but been using it for 20-odd years and it can’t be beaten for slow release energy), toast/jam, tea/coffee.

 

Lunch: Homemade sandwiches for the first two days, make fresh ones on the track for two more days (carry tomatoes/onion/whatever), then swap to good old German black bread, cheddar/brie/Swiss or Camembert cheese and hot salami for other days.

 

Also, as a back-up, ALWAYS carry a bag full of mixed lollies (candy), nuts, etc. On more than one occasion, due to inclement weather and/or unforeseen circumstances, I’ve eaten this for dinner.

 

Dinner: Entree of packet soup, main = noodles or pasta with various dry herbs, dried vegetables/meat (get yourself a dehydrator = healthy dried foods e.g. real tomatoes seasoned with real basil, mushrooms in cream sauce, etc). Tube of processed garlic/tomato concentrate and a small zip-lock bag of Parmesan. Some of the salami can also be thrown in.

 

Rice is too time consuming and water hungry. I don’t like the quick/minute stuff.

 

Tuna - can’t handle the stuff on a trip – the smell seems to permeate everything.

 

Lentils are VERY good = energy, and absorb other flavours – you need to soak them overnight = a 600ml sports bottle 3/4 filled with lentils, 1/4 with water = easy to pack and use. For multi day trips, just carry in a zip-lock bag and add to bottle as required.

 

Couscous is a VERY good rice substitute – can be eaten for a main or used as a dessert.

 

Dodge the so-called nutrition ‘sticks’ and pills – a balanced diet is better.

 

Don’t forget the port, Muscat, Tokay, rum or whisky for after dinner celebrations!

 

I’ve used the above menu in mixed climates (snow, bush, desert & tropics), from overnight trips to eleven day BC treks, and it works well. Just remember, a good diet and exercise = an extra roll of toot-paper!

[Fattwins 0]

try not to cook stuff that will burn cause you might not be able to clean you dishes really. in the winter its snow in the pot and turn the snow.