Hiking Food

[AdamJames]

View attachment 26549


I can’t answer now I’m dead!
Remember to subtract the polyols from the total carbs. The highest ‘impact carbs’ is the white chocolate blondie one at 2.1g carbs.

No, don't die! Oh, what have I done...

Well I never, I'd normally skip anything with 37g carbs per 100g. I wasn't aware of this polyol business.

I'm really tempted to make my own recipes for these kind of snack bars. I love the Aldi peanut butter & sea salt ones, they are only 6g carbs per bar, but I can't help feeling I could make my own, half the price and half the carbs. I think the biggest problem will be finding a 'binder' that's low in carbs. I did find something a while ago which claimed to be a nearly zero-carb binder but it sounded horribly like chemicals.

 

[Rachox]

No, don't die! Oh, what have I done...

Don’t worry, I dodged the bullet really. You can’t get rid of me that easily!

 

[Brunneria]

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/grain-free-granola-bars/

 

[lindisfel]

Hi Adam,
Prof Phinney advised the couple who rowed to Hawaii from the States and broke the record by 15 days.They consumed 50:50 Coconut oil and olive oil and to satisfy his Ben Gunn complex he ate cheese. She was a vegan so had something different to cheese I think Tofu.
But suddenly during the journey a mouse would appear when he was asleep and his wife was rowing!
It seems it liked his cheese in preference to the tofu!
D.

Does anyone have any top tips for backpacking food? As a general guide, I'm thinking that ideally it should be:

* Low carb
* High calorie, low weight, low volume
* Not messy
* Able to survive warm temperatures for 2-3 days
* Not need much, if any, cooking

So far, I've been packing:

Savoury:
* Peperami (Aldi's version). I'm really going off this. Never really liked it in the first place.
* Cheese, but not now the weather has warmed up.
* Mini sweet peppers. Seem to last a while out of the fridge, and go well with peperami and cheese so it's nice to have them even though they aren't high calorie.

Sweet / snacks:
* Home made trail mix: mainly nuts, a bit of salt, some low-carb dark chocolate broken up, and sometimes a small number of raisins for sweetness.
* Aldi's sea salt and dark chocolate peanut bars.
* Aldi's honey roast peanuts (lowest carb I've found).

I don't normally pack, but am considering:
* Making my own 'pemmican' - not sure of the best ingredients to ensure it doesn't go off in hot weather. I gather it must be tallow rather than dripping for the fat, for example. Has anyone made this?
* Taking some eggs and a bigger stove, so I can have scrambled eggs. Eggs last a while out of the fridge. Not sure I like the thought of handling raw egg while in a backpacking situation though?
* Low carb bread like LivLife with some sort of filling which doesn't go off in the heat. Cheese sandwiches were okay when it's cold but not when it's hot.
* Ready-made 'tuna snacks' - @archersuz has suggested Princes tuna filler - Mexican flavour. It's low calorie unfortunately but also low carb so I'll be getting some - like eggs, it should add some nice variety so worth carrying the weight.

I haven't been doing any cooking recently - just boiling water for tea on a tiny alcohol stove. But I'm tempted to take a bigger stove for the scrambled eggs, so anything that would go well with scrambled eggs would be great.

Any top-tips would be gratefully received, both what to take and how you prepare it. Thanks

 

[AdamJames]

This was what the food looked like on my travels this weekend. It was mainly on foot during the day, then after I scored the lamb and mint stir fry in a village butcher's, I force-marched high up into the hills again where my car and big stove was to cook it, then I went on a bike ride high up on some typical Welsh mountain forest tracks. I even stumbled across a mountain biking trail, and tried 100 metres of it. I quickly learned the difference between a mountain bike and my hybrid bike with a pannier on the back of it

When on foot/bike, I carried a tiny alcohol stove so I could have cups of tea with skimmed milk powder. To eat, I had the kind of things shown. Unfortunately it seems that if I eat enough of that sort of stuff to feel full of energy on a big day out, my fasting levels go up and so does my weight :



So next time I'll stick to the extremely low carb things in that lot - the blocks of cheese and chroizo in the bag on the right, then mixed nuts, and the pork scratchings.

This is the stir-fry I got from the butchers, after I cooked it. I made it sitting by a lake where the car was parked. It was packed full of meat, with just a bit of veg and a bit of sauce to give it flavour - I'll bet it was very low carb:



I was really pleased with myself when I floored it back up to the car to make that stir-fry. I felt like I was shifting at quite a pace, including up a significant hill at the start. I went online to get the accurate height and distance, and if I apply the Naismith rule, it should have taken about 65 minutes for the average hiker to get to the car, but it took me 50 minutes.

So I can either conclude that, in spite of high blood sugars killing me, I am in some respects quite fit for an obese person. Then again I can also conclude that nothing makes me move faster than the thought of food

 

[AdamJames]

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/grain-free-granola-bars/

Great stuff. So it seems that coconut oil is the main 'binder' there?

I find that's very temperature dependant, i.e. would be solid in winter but liquid on a hot day. I've got to try it though. So long as I put whatever I make into a plastic bag to prevent a mess, I bet it will taste great whether it's sludge or not. I'm going to experiment with adding a layer of Aldi's dark chocolate melted to one side of home-made snack bars, that should help the binding effect as well.

 

[AdamJames]

Hi Adam,
Prof Phinney advised the couple who rowed to Hawaii from the States and broke the record by 15 days.They consumed 50:50 Coconut oil and olive oil and to satisfy his Ben Gunn complex he ate cheese. She was a vegan so had something different to cheese I think Tofu.
But suddenly during the journey a mouse would appear when he was asleep and his wife was rowing!
It seems it liked his cheese in preference to the tofu!
D.

It's looking like I need to do a lot more with coconut oil!

How could there be a mouse on a ... oh, I see

 

[AdamJames]

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/grain-free-granola-bars/

I missed the eggs. Eggs and coconut oil will be the main binders, I guess! Must try this.

 

[Rachox]

Great stuff. So it seems that coconut oil is the main 'binder' there?

I find that's very temperature dependant, i.e. would be solid in winter but liquid on a hot day. I've got to try it though. So long as I put whatever I make into a plastic bag to prevent a mess, I bet it will taste great whether it's sludge or not. I'm going to experiment with adding a layer of Aldi's dark chocolate melted to one side of home-made snack bars, that should help the binding effect as well.

Oh you saying you’ll put chocolate on reminder me of this recipe. They come out very like Bountys :
http://www.thelittleblogofvegan.com/2016/10/raw-coconut-bars.html?m=1

 

[lindisfel]

It's looking like I need to do a lot more with coconut oil!

How could there be a mouse on a ... oh, I see

I guess vegans are like the guy I worked with once who said he was a vegetarian because he had been to a slaughterhouse. He said he just ate chicken and fish.
A bit like the people off the West coast of Scotland who would not eat meat on a Friday. They classified the winter visiting Barnacle Goose as fish rather than fowl and reckoned it came from Barnacles! . D.

 

[AdamJames]

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/grain-free-granola-bars/

I don't have the exact ingredients for that recipe, and I've never had any 'sweeteners' in the house, but I have followed it fairly closely and it's now in the oven!

I used roughly half the amounts it mentioned. I used:

* A 150g bag of mixed nuts
* 25g coconut flakes
* 1 heaped tablespoon of roasted almond butter
* 1 egg
* 25g of melted coconut oil
* 5g cocoa powder (for flavour and a bit of sweetness)
* 5g raisins (for sweetness)
* 1 tsp of mixed spice
* A couple of twists of freshly ground sea salt

I put all that in a nutribullet and gave it quite a few pulses. Not easy - had to keep shaking it down. I might do the nuts and raisins (or granulated sweetener if I get any, to keep the carbs lower) first next time. I think the egg was making the mixture cling to the sides and avoid the blades. Anyway the end result, before cooking, looked and smelled quite appealing and was holding together very well.

I'm not confident about how it will taste, given I didn't have any sweetener, but at the very least it might be nice as a savoury with butter on

Can't wait to see how this turns out. May try melting some dark chocolate on half of it to compare and contrast, but I'm aiming for extremely low carbs the next few days so we'll see...

 

[AdamJames]

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/grain-free-granola-bars/

It's holding together very well now it's cooled. Eggs and coconut oil are definitely something I'll be experimenting with.

As for this cobbled-together recipe, I'd say it could definitely do with sweetening.

I tried a bit with salted butter on - nice.

I then tried another bit with a very thin spread of melted dark chocolate on (after putting it in the freezer so the chocolate set again). In an ideal world the chocolate needs to be at least 2mm thick to be worthwhile I'd say, but still, this tiny amount did make it quite nice. It was helped by the retro plate it was served on I think:



As you can see the blending job was haphazard, but I quite liked the results. A lot of the mix went to small particles but there's still the odd almost whole nut and big bit of flaked coconut.

If I was served this in a restaurant I expect I'd spit it out and demand to see the manager, then write a stiff letter to the local council to try to get the place closed down. But I made it, so it was lovely.

 

[archersuz]

Don’t worry, I dodged the bullet really.

Good job @AdamJames didn't shoot you with his bow and arrows swoooooooooooooooooooosh you wouldn't have heard it coming......

 

[archersuz]

if I apply the Naismith rule, it should have taken about 65 minutes for the average hiker to get to the car, but it took me 50 minutes.

Do you think it could be the exercise rather than the food that's causing the higher readings? If I walk I'm fine. If I walk very fast (my son has long legs) I'm fine, If I jog my BG goes very high!

 

[AdamJames]

Do you think it could be the exercise rather than the food that's causing the higher readings? If I walk I'm fine. If I walk very fast (my son has long legs) I'm fine, If I jog my BG goes very high!

It's the morning fasting readings which go up in the day (and days) after, along with my weight. I'm 99.9% sure it's over-eating and weight gain which are at the root of it.

I don't seem to have an instinct for sensible amounts of food. I did start calorie counting a couple of weeks ago which really helped during the week, but then after the big bank holiday weekend, when I did a massive amount of walking and eating what felt right and not bothering to log food, I put all the weight back on and sure enough the blood sugar was high again.

I've never bothered logging food when I've been out hiking at weekends, and I really need to. It's an impossible task to balance things however - according to some info, on the big days in the hills I may be burning 5,500 calories, according to other info it may be 1,500. Either way, if I eat what feels right, I put on weight and my blood sugars go up. So a pen and paper in my pocket and a bit of logging and discipline is required. It works during the week and I'll make it work during the weekends if only I bother to do it instead of getting caught up in all the lovely countryside and forgetting that I have health problem to work on!

 

[AdamJames]

Good job @AdamJames didn't shoot you with his bow and arrows swoooooooooooooooooooosh you wouldn't have heard it coming......

So long as she didn't hear the noise I normally make when I'm straining to get the string on the bow

 

[archersuz]

So long as she didn't hear the noise I normally make when I'm straining to get the string on the bow

I trust you use a bow stringer????

 

[AdamJames]

I trust you use a bow stringer????

I used to, but he complained to some union or other so I need to do it myself these days.

Oh, I see... Yes.

 

[archersuz]

I used to, but he complained to some union or other so I need to do it myself these days.

You need to get yourself a coach then............ As I always say, I don't have a coach and work on my bow myself.

 

[DCUKMod]

It's the morning fasting readings which go up in the day (and days) after, along with my weight. I'm 99.9% sure it's over-eating and weight gain which are at the root of it.

I don't seem to have an instinct for sensible amounts of food. I did start calorie counting a couple of weeks ago which really helped during the week, but then after the big bank holiday weekend, when I did a massive amount of walking and eating what felt right and not bothering to log food, I put all the weight back on and sure enough the blood sugar was high again.

I've never bothered logging food when I've been out hiking at weekends, and I really need to. It's an impossible task to balance things however - according to some info, on the big days in the hills I may be burning 5,500 calories, according to other info it may be 1,500. Either way, if I eat what feels right, I put on weight and my blood sugars go up. So a pen and paper in my pocket and a bit of logging and discipline is required. It works during the week and I'll make it work during the weekends if only I bother to do it instead of getting caught up in all the lovely countryside and forgetting that I have health problem to work on!

Would it work to do an inventory of your food and drink befoire leaving, then at the end of each day, do the inventory again, and then log what's "missing", and you might even remember what you ate, roughly when in the day? Repeat next day, and so on, until you get home. Just a thought of how you might do it, without too much intervention in the day.