Trail Food: Dense Calories, easy to eat ?

Since it's Food Season I thought I'd ask; what do you do for trail food ?
I have a hard time choking down my trail mix and homemade oatmeal bars - they are too dry to throw back 500 - 1000 calories quickly. I'd prefer natural (like peanut butter, cheese or salami) with little or no extra sodium, but the tubes of goo might make sense also. And this would be for multi-day outings, so it has to be packaged/sealed/non-spoiling.

Highest Calorie, lowest weight, easiest to suck down, least likely to spoil.

Thanks

PS: Reeses BP Cups can't freeze hard enough not to eat, so Snickers have been replaced.

If you are a backpacker, then the figure out the calories per ounce ratio.

One of the highest and dense is peanut butter. Even higher in calories per ounce is most fats, including olive oil, but who wants to take that straight up.

Chip said:

Highest Calorie, lowest weight, easiest to suck down, least likely to spoil.
.

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Olive oil. It wins hands down. More calories per ounce than peanut butter, keeps well, does not freeze, etc. Just sip a little all day long, because it may be tough on your stomach if you drink a cup in one shot.

And if you're one of those fancy high-society kind of people, you can soak a few leaves of basil in it, to give it that 'I have money' taste.

Calories/ounce:
240 pure fat (eg olive oil)
203 butter/margarine
167 peanut butter

Eating pure fat maximizes your calories/weight, but there is a minor detail that one cannot exist on fat alone...

Doug

DougPaul said:

Eating pure fat maximizes your calories/weight, but there is a minor detail that one cannot exist on fat alone...

Doug

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Thanks, good calorie #'s. Granted I'd not be eating only this 1 "item" over the course of the trip, but olive oil strikes me as tough to transport and potentially lacking other nutrients. Unless pure fat calories is all the bod is looking for half way through a long day.

DougPaul said:

Eating pure fat maximizes your calories/weight, but there is a minor detail that one cannot exist on fat alone...

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And one cannot exist on beer alone, but I've gone a few days.....

Chip said:

Highest Calorie, lowest weight, easiest to suck down, least likely to spoil.

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Logan Bread. Originally designed for the first ascent of Mt Logan in Alaska.
Make it yourself, google for recipes. Find one or combine several recipies that make it with lots of dense grains, eggs, molasses, honey, brown sugar, milk, nuts, oil. Don't skimp on the oil. I reduce the baking powder to almost nothing so it doesn't rise hardly at all. Don't follow the common baking instructions - after an initial 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees I turn the heat down to 250 for at least two more hours. It comes out hard, dense, and dry. But it is tasty, easy to eat and full of energy. Since it is almost completely dry it will keep for weeks at room temperature, indefinitely in a freezer until your next trip. Hearty eats by itself or soaked in a hot drink.

Chip said:

Thanks, good calorie #'s. Granted I'd not be eating only this 1 "item" over the course of the trip, but olive oil strikes me as tough to transport and potentially lacking other nutrients. Unless pure fat calories is all the bod is looking for half way through a long day.

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Fats also digest slowly. Carbs are a better source of quick energy.

If you really want efficient fuel for a reasonable distance, try (American) Indian pemmican. Dried powdered lean meat and rendered fat. (60% to 40% respectively by weight, according to one source.) Lasts many months, up to years. It is so concentrated than you may only need to eat every other day. IIRC, one can live on it for a month or so...
~185cal, 10gr protein, 15gr fat per oz.

Note: there is a modern concoction also called pemmican that is largely fruit, grains, and nuts. Far from the same beast.

Doug

Pete_Hickey said:

And one cannot exist on beer alone, but I've gone a few days.....

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I suspect that most members of this BBS would be happier living on pure beer for a few days than living on pure cooking oil for the same period...

Back in colonial days hard (fermented) cider and beer were used for drinking because the alcohol kept the liquid safe to drink.

Doug

I think you did pretty well this past weekend Chip! You kept feeding me those MRE's and they warmed me up pretty quick. And I was pretty cold after a few minutes in the shelter.

Doug, good suggestion on the Pemmican. I will give it a try. Funny that is probably the trail food I have known of the longest but had not considered it. Just doesn't sound enough like hi-tech

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~haskell/HSP/PEMMICAN.html

Paradox said:

Doug, good suggestion on the Pemmican. I will give it a try. Funny that is probably the trail food I have known of the longest but had not considered it. Just doesn't sound enough like hi-tech

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~haskell/HSP/PEMMICAN.html

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Looks like a reasonable recipe. The basic recipe is just meat and fat. One of my references says that the Indians would sometimes add berries if they were available. There is a bunch of info available on the web--try http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/pemmican.html for a starter.

From what I have read, it takes a bit of getting used to, so I suggest that you try it at home before trying it on the trail. One method of eating it was to toss a chunk into hot water to make a soup. You can also store it for a year or so by wrapping it in oilskin (plastic if you must... ) and burying it. Just dig it up, scrape off the fuzzy surface and it is good as new. Getting all of the moisture out of it is key to the storage.

Another advantage is that the absence of roughage means that you don't have to visit the woods very often...

IIRC, Vilhjalmur Stefansson talks about its use in one/some of his books.

A google search on "stefansson pemmican" brings up some some useful info including http://books.google.com/books?id=ON...ts=rKKwtPUsmB&sig=JuzSbUt6ffpN9V5iAniQ32fgMKQ

Doug

Recipe wanted

Back in 69 after coming home from the Nam, I went backpacking while on my 30 day leave. Seems like I didn't get enough in the Army but anyway, I ran nto a hiker on the AT who was eating a snack comprised of squares of peanutbutter mixed with bacon grease. I still recall how good they tasted and would like to take some on my MEGA thru next summer. Anyone recall these, or even better have a recipe?

Olive Oil

A winter favorite I enjoy is a true Foccacia bread, preferably from a real Italian deli. The stuff that is moist with olive oil to the point of threatening to leak from the bag. Goes well with a beer if you are one who can't resisit. A good deli will have the bread with a variety of toppings.

Hillwalker said:

Back in 69 after coming home from the Nam, I went backpacking while on my 30 day leave. Seems like I didn't get enough in the Army but anyway, I ran nto a hiker on the AT who was eating a snack comprised of squares of peanutbutter mixed with bacon grease. I still recall how good they tasted and would like to take some on my MEGA thru next summer. Anyone recall these, or even better have a recipe?

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I recall seeing a recipe like this in a backpacking cooking book (I'll have to dig it out later). It was a recipe that they said was good to eat before going to bed on really cold nights to keep your body burning fuel and warm during the night. I remember the recipe containing bacon grease and it said not for recreational eating (definitely stuck in my mind!).

The trouble with olive oil alone as a fuel source is that "fat burns in a carbohydrate flame" so I use candy floss to soak up the olive oil and carry the sopping mess in a freezer size zip-lock. Purists might want to substitute rock tripe for candy cotton.

Neil said:

The trouble with olive oil alone as a fuel source is that "fat burns in a carbohydrate flame" so I use candy floss to soak up the olive oil and carry the sopping mess in a freezer size zip-lock. Purists might want to substitute rock tripe for candy cotton.

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Yes, that seems to be the conventional theory. However the Inuit do very well on a meat and fat diet (very low carb intake).

And Stefansson did quite well for a year on a diet of 15-25% protein calories, 75-85% fat calories, and only 1-2% carb calories. http://books.google.com/books?id=ON...ts=rKKwtPUsmB&sig=JuzSbUt6ffpN9V5iAniQ32fgMKQ

Note: Fats are 9cal/gram and carbs and proteins are 4cal/gram if anyone wants to convert the above numbers into weights.

Doug

Hillwalker, I found the recipe. It sounds a little different from what you were talking about, but will post anyway:

Fuel Fudge
total weight: 1 lb, 5 ounces
Weight per serving: 0.7 ounce
Total servings: 32 (1 bar per serving)

Nutritional information per serving:

calories 250
protein 9 g
carbs 19 g
sodium 110 mg
fiber 3 g
fat 19 g
cholesterol 6 mg

Ingredients & Directions:

1 16 ounce jar of creamy peanut butter
4 ounces of hot bcon grease, strained (or 1 cup lard)
1/2 cup honey
3 cups powdered milk
2 cups crushed peanuts
1 cup raisins
1 cup flaked sweetened coconut

Microwave the jar of peanut butter on high for 1 minute or until it flows easily. Plop peanut butter into a mixing bowl. Stir in bacon grease. Next, mix in honey, powdered milk, peanuts, raisins, and coconut. Spread 1 inch thick in two greased 8x8 inch pans and let cool. Cut the contents of each pan into 16 squares and store in resealable plastic bags.

It may turn a bit gloppy after a couple of weeks on the trail, but it will still be very good. It should keep unspoiled for about four weeks with no problem, but you will eat it all before then anyway.

Note from contirbutor:

This recipe is very, very rich and not for normal recreational eating. We take a small amount when we really need energy. During a very long strenuous ascent late in the day, when you need to make a few more miles, or on a cold night before getting into your bag, that's when it is effective. I got the idea for this recipe one night in Maine when a fellow hiker related how he ate pure butter or grease before he went to sleep in cold weather in order to keep warm during the night. This is my variation on his idea. Long distance backpacking is the only activity to warrant this high calorie stuff!

John Woodall
Simpsonville, South Carolina

(From Lip smackin' Backpackin')

DougPaul said:

Yes, that seems to be the conventional theory. However the Inuit do very well on a meat and fat diet (very low carb intake).

And Stefansson did quite well for a year on a diet of 15-25% protein calories, 75-85% fat calories, and only 1-2% carb calories. http://books.google.com/books?id=ON...ts=rKKwtPUsmB&sig=JuzSbUt6ffpN9V5iAniQ32fgMKQ

Note: Fats are 9cal/gram and carbs and proteins are 4cal/gram if anyone wants to convert the above numbers into weights.

Doug

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Human biochemistry can use amino acid carbon skeletons to manufacture sugar but for some reason cannot do the same trick with fat.

Neil said:

Human biochemistry can use amino acid carbon skeletons to manufacture sugar but for some reason cannot do the same trick with fat.

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I'm not a biochemist, so I cannot respond at that level.

The fact remains that humans have been observed to survive for extended periods on fat and protein.

Doug

Lots of good ideas. Perhaps I'll try Logan Bread spread with Fuel Fudge and soaked in olive oil !