Survival, Backpacking Foods.

Every April we go and catch grunion. I clean the fish and then cover them in salted water for 3-4 days. Then we hang it outside to dry. It keeps for a long time taste great. Lots of the guys like to eat the fish and help it down with beer *L^ . I took some of it while going backpacking and its great when you stop for a bite.

Sasha
 
Interesting pressure cooker. I am going to look at the historical foods link when I have more time. What I am looking for specifically is to find a replacement for a Mountain House. I realized that the foods I often eat are already high nutrition. Why buy freeze dried foods when I can build my own for less? Think easy fettucine on the trail. As an example. Today I found a natural version of some mac&cheese stuff that was dried alfredo toppings, mostly parmesan and dried milk, along with whole weat fettucine. The box weighed about what a MH did, and had the same 105 cals per oz, but cost 1.24. That is about 1/4 as much. I once spent about 8 hrs on snowshoes, munching nothing but a bag of homemade granola. I typically don't have a problem finding water, so freeze dried makes sense. Next time I go out, I think I will have less packaged food and more oats, whole wheat spaghetti, cheese, seasonings, raisins, etc. Maybe even some beans. I am thinking about saving the mounain house bags for my own cuisine, just for the handyness of them.
 
Moutain house food has its place too. I live in SO CALI so we all know that the ground would shake at some point. Im setting up a sort of BOB bag for my parents to keep in the car. To make it simple i got enough Montain house food to last my parents for atlist 3 days and some extra in case they have some one from the family with them. Both my parents are older and im sure they are not into playing what we can eat now. Im trying to keep the bag as light as posssible.

Sasha
 
Here is a list of food from http://www.anasazi.org/recipes.html Anasazi:

ANASAZI Food Pack
Bacon Bits
Baking Soda
Brown Sugar
Bouillon
Powdered Butter
Powdered Cheese
Cornmeal
Wheat Flour
Fruit Drink (Tang)
Lentils
Macaroni
Powdered Milk
Oats
Raisins
Rice
Salt
Sunflower Seeds
Sun-dried Tomatoes
Fresh Potato
Fresh Carrot
Fresh Onion
Fresh Apple
Fresh Garlic

Trail Recipes Post your favorite recipe!
If you are an alumni and would like to submit a trail recipe, please send it to Amber at amber.long@anasazi.org

Ash Cake
Mix flour and salt with water. May add different amounts of cornmeal, oats, and/or "loved up" seeds for variety. Dough should be sticky but not gooey. Knead dough vigorously and make into flat cakes. Place on hot ashes and rotate and flip until evenly cooked.

Spanish Rice
Add rice, garlic, onion, and "loved up" tomatoes to water and boil. Cook until rice is soft. Season with cheese and salt to achieve desired taste.

Teriyaki Rice
Add rice, garlic, and onion to water and boil. Cook until rice is soft. Season with brown sugar or tang and bullion to achieve desired taste.

Cookie Dough
Mix oats, flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, and raisins with a little water until you reach cookie dough consistency.

Cold Cereal
Mix oats, brown sugar, and raisins with powdered milk and a lot of water.

Lasagna
Boil water and add macaroni and half of the desired amount of the following: tomatoes (loved up), garlic, and onion. When the macaroni are almost done, add the rest of the tomatoes (loved up), garlic and onion. Season with cheese and salt to achieve desired taste.

Tostada
Cook Spanish rice and lentils together. Make sure lentils are thoroughly cooked (mushy). Make an ash cake with cornmeal in the mix. Put layers of rice and lentils on ashcake. Top with successive layers of cheese, onions, and bacon bits.

Pizza
Sautee some garlic and onion in the cup. Add "loved up" tomatoes and water. Boil long enough to prepare and cook ashcake. Add cheese to sauce and pour on ash cake.

Apple Muffin
Chop and mash 1/2 apple and add flour and cornmeal in a 70/30 ratio. Add a pinch of baking soda. Add water and stir until moist and slightly runny. Place another cup upside down on top of the cup with the muffin mix in it, and place it in some hot ashes. Rotate every couple of minutes until muffin is thoroughly cooked. In another cup, chop and mash the other ½ of the apple. Add a lot of brown sugar and cream to make apple butter. Pour of muffin.

Wet Dog
Mix tang and powdered milk in approximately a 50/50 ratio. Add a little water. Mix to taste.

Seed butter
Roast sunflower seeds in cup and mix with brown sugar and small amount of powdered milk and water. Crush sunflower seed mix into a paste.

Jelly
Mix tang and water to desired consistancy.
 
If going light and simple like mainly pasta or rice with wild game supplements I would recommend bringing some type of seasoning, spices. Wild game is often distinctive to near raunchy tasting depending on the animal and time of year.
 
Hi Craig PHX. Those are some cool recipes. It would cool to play with some of them. Thanks I like the apple muffin one.
 
Thanks for the recipes Craig. and the link. Often for breakfast I eat whole oats, w/ raisins, sliced almonds, maple syrup, and maybe some flax seed or wheat germ. Most of these ingredients are multi-purpose. Could also lose a couple and boil all of it for oatmeal.

upnorth, your absolutely right. I am on the lookout for a lightweight way to keep half a dozen spices. I am thinking sea salt, cayenne, black pepper, garlic, and maybe maple syrup or sugar. Probably just end up putting them in little bags though.

'Course, with all this gourmet food, I am going to need a frying pan.:)
 
The recipes are meant to be cooked in a metal cup or directly on your campfire coals. My wife and I did an overnight class with an Anasazi Shadow Walker. We made Ash Cakes, oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar, and rice with bullion and bacon bits. It was all good!
 
I use Mountain House more than anything else. I take a small ziploc with spices (italian spices for spaghetti, lasagna, etc. ; chili powder for Chili Mac..you get the picture) and a tiny plastic squeeze bottle of olive oil.... you can really improve those freeze-dried meals that way.

If I'm covering a lot of miles, I will fix a package of instant potatoes for breakfast (the kind that's loaded, or already has cheese powder or chives). That'll really stick with you.
 
runningboar said:
DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK OR YOU MAY START A NEW HOBBY!!!!!!

http://www.historicaltrekking.com/foods/
Click to expand...

Hehe, I clicked it and got sucked in for 30 minutes before I knew what hit me!


Glad some people brought up the dehydrators... I've been doing backpacking research off and on for the past two years, and came to the conclusion about a year ago that a dehydrator was the way to go for food. Dried my own fruit in the oven (white flesh apricot + pear = yummmmm) several times. Now I have to justify the funds to get a dehydrator, I'm sure it's cheaper in the long run than running the oven at 135 for 8 hours!

Something people may not realize is that you can make complete *cooked* meals, and then dehydrate them. Supposed to work well with soup if the veg/meat in it is chopped to a reasonably small size. I think this is how 'minute rice' or similar is made. Regular old rice takes anywhere from 15-55 minutes to cook; cook it first and dehydrate it, and you get instant rice. Same idea with beans.

I have repeatedly run across this one online at the low end, http://www.epinions.com/content_85296909956
the Snackmaster Express. So far I haven't found any truly negative reviews of it, which seems to be an exception to the rule for inexpensive dehydrators.
 
GibsonFan said, "Always remember, the more any food product is processed, the less nutritional value it has."

Please, please, please don't throw around a sweeping generality like this as some may take it for truth when it isn't!

I guarantee the frozen (one type of processing) corn in the freezer case has more vitamin content, and more sweetness than the fresh corn you buy in the grocery store since the frozen stuff was picked in the morning, cut, blanched, frozen, and packaged by afternoon while the fresh stuff has been three days, or more, since it was brought in from the field!

Unless one defines "processed" and defines "nutrition" one cannot make the claim made in the sentence above. True, heat can destroy some amount of "some" types of vitamins but even a very high heat doesn't destroy them all. Many processed foods are fortified in that the destroyed vitamins are replaced. Neither heat nor time can destroy protein, fats, carbohydrates, or minerals. Learn to read the nutrition facts panel. The nutrition you see indicated on the panel is what's in the food! ...and if you're afraid you aren't getting enough vitamins, take a pill as a supplement.

Most foods, processed or not, can be part of a healthy, balanced diet in the woods. For the duration of a trip to the trees (or wherever), you will not become malnourished. It's best to take what you'll eat.

Bruce Woodbury
MS, Nutrition & Food Science
Manager, R&D (For a major
frozen food company)
 
Fruit leather, I have a cool old book called "stocking up" all about smoking meat and making preserves, and it has a whole chapter on fruit leather in the oven. The different combinations you can think up are enough to make your mouth water.
 
Hi Kate13, this is the one i got
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/t...parentType=index&indexId=cat570005&hasJS=true

It seems to work very well. A few other people recommended the unit and they all use it alot. Atlist one of the guys said he has an older model for more then 15 years.

For soup i dry all componets that you normaly use cooking the soup. When im ready to make it i boil the water and add all the ingredinats into the pot. If you want to use meat then make sure you rehydrate the meat for about 2 hours before in water. It makes the meat taste much better. Im still learning about the food and how to make it. The more i use it the more ideas i got on the foods to make. It realy is not as hard as i thought it would be. Fruits leather im going to try more this summer when the fruits would be cheaper.

Sasha
 
Slightly off topic but still relevant...I mean, the story has a backpack and food in it.

I was in the infantry in Alaska and, before going on field exercises you'd have to dump out your rucksack for inspection. Without skis, snowshoes and food these rucksacks topped off at about a hundred pounds (we had to carry fake mortar rounds for the charlie platoon and machine-gun rounds, too, so I have no idea what kind of weight we finally ended up carrying).

We had this new guy in the unit, Fuentes, a feisty, bantamweight, Texan, ex-boxer. When he dumped out his rucksack, it turns out that his wife had pulled out everything except his extra socks and underwear and replaced it with foil-wrapped, homemade tamales the night before...like eighty or ninety pounds of them. Our Platoon Sergeant nearly crapped his pants when he saw this and sent Fuentes home to get his gear. By the time Fuentes got back, the Platoon Sergeant had eaten a couple and had the rest of the squad carry Fuentes' gear for him...they were that good. I suggested it might be lighter weight just to get his wife to enlist and have her go to the field with us.

Just a side note, do not spend a week in a cramped tent with ten guys without access to a shower and who've eaten nothing but spicy tamales.
Now I know the real reason we carried those gas masks. The unit chaplain dropped by to say hi and had to leave because his eyes kept watering.
 
I take dried apricots, powerbars and trailmix...when day hiking.

On the longer trips its usually an onion, potatoes and SPAM.

It may sound nasty but spam is pretty good fried, works great as bait for fishing, and the grease from it puts a good shine on my boots.
 
Hi Task Force, i couldnt stop laughing 80lb of tamales...... What was she thinking????????? look on the bright side im sure the tent was nice and toasty during the night LMAO.
Who knows maybe a new weapon system would come out of it.

Sasha
 
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