Most calories per gram

[Neumo]

pemakin: This seems to be what a lot of the old trappers & mountain men used to take with them. It's made of dried beef with spices (60%) and rendered beef fat i.e tallow (40%). You then dry it on a low heat in the oven. I was watching a Ron Hood DVD (Cave cooking series) where his wife made some. it's really high in calories and comes out like jerky. You just add some water & heat to make a nice stew. Worth a look.

 

[Martyn]

pemakin: This seems to be what a lot of the old trappers & mountain men used to take with them. It's made of dried beef with spices (60%) and rendered beef fat i.e tallow (40%). You then dry it on a low heat in the oven. I was watching a Ron Hood DVD (Cave cooking series) where his wife made some. it's really high in calories and comes out like jerky. You just add some water & heat to make a nice stew. Worth a look.

It can go off though, the fat can go rancid. The Shackletom expedition had loads of it that went bad and left them with little to eat. You also have to make it, I dont think it can be bought commercially here, though corned beef would be a similar sort of thing.

 

[sirex]

I have never eaten them three days in a row before and they gave me diarrhea.
.

blimey. i'm 'a guessin' you've never been a uni student ? I used to change flavour by the seasons

 

[sandsnakes]

The other tinned meat that would give you a very high calorific count is Spam. Dont mock it, its got one of the highest amino acid counts around. Both Spam and Corned Beef have been used as military rations.

Sandsnakes

 

[gregorach]

My daughter makes tablet after being introduced to it by toddy. I have found it really useful in that you can fry quite bitter tasting wild greens in it and and they then taste edible. Stuff like nipplewort that can go bitter taste fine fried up in tablet, it adds calories and the greens add vitamins.

Sorry, did you just say fried up in tablet? Now there's an idea... You don't have any Scots blood in you by any chance?

Now I'm thinking about tablet in batter, deep fried in tablet... I might have to lie down.

 

[EdS]

Theakstons OP with a bag of pork scratchings.

 

[crazydave]

carry a jar of smooth peanut butter and have a spoonful every now and again.

 

[Draven]

Peanut butter probably would be pretty good, really - just took a look at the jar of crunchy in the kitchen, per 100g it has 592kcal,, with 49.7g of fat, 12.5g carbs and 23.6g protein.

Pemmican should be a good trail food as already said but as Martyn pointed out, y'gotta be careful about the fat, which is the difficulty with looking for high-fat food really. Tinned products are probably the best way for avoiding rancid fat - hate to bring up that sausages and lard thing again, but it'd probably be one way to go! And as I said in that thread, to quote Croc Dundee, you can live off it, but it tastes like ****

Tablet probably would be a pretty good morning pick-me-up.

Toddy, if you're reading, do you by any chance do mail-order tablet? Sounds like I need to give it a try

 

[jon r]

What about a jar of honey to give you a boost. If i feel exhausted anytime i have a big spoon of honey and i feel better within minutes. The crystalized stuff is probably best because it will be less messy and you can get more on your spoon I'd make sure you are buying propper honey though... not the stuff out of a squeezy bottle, that stuff has been tampered with.

I was wondering how long bacon would last without being in a fridge?

I also heard someone mention Pork Pie being good, my first thought about this was that it can go off pretty quick and then you'd be in a survival situation for sure if you ate it. I guess you'd be best to eat it very early on in your journey.

 

[dogwood]

I was wondering how long bacon would last without being in a fridge?

Natural salted and smoked bacon lasts almost indefinitely provided it's not allowed to get soaked.

 

[dogwood]

Peanut butter probably would be pretty good, really - just took a look at the jar of crunchy in the kitchen, per 100g it has 592kcal,, with 49.7g of fat, 12.5g carbs and 23.6g protein.

Peanut butter is a great food, for sure. Should be on everyone's packing list. A word to the wise though, in bear country something about the smell of peanut butter brings the bruins in from far and wide -- you need to take extra care with it.

And as Jon_r notes, honey is great too -- and has tons of other benefits beside the sugar jolt. So honey and peanut butter sandwiches (heavy on the peanut butter) are a good call.

Pemmican should be a good trail food as already said but as Martyn pointed out, y'gotta be careful about the fat, which is the difficulty with looking for high-fat food really.

Well made and well packaged pemmican will outlast you on any trip you're taking. Pemmican does eventually go bad, but it's measured in months, not days.

When I ate meat, I used to make a batch of pemmican to take on all trips. Make sure to add berries in the Native America manner and there's almost no match for it as a survival food.

Quinoa is a complete protein for humans and easy to pack although if you need to soak it, that's a pain but not a deal killer. And some quinoa doesn't need to be soaked.

I'll bet one could make a vegetarian pemmican with quinoa and tofu for the protein base. If done right, it should provide the same overall benefits of real pemmican.

 

[Sleepy Weasel]

'Scuse me being ignorant, but, what's Tablet?

 

[Toddy]

It's a very buttery, sugary, milk rich, Scottish sweetie.
It takes a lot of making and it's very popular, though most folks can only manage to eat very small amounts at any one time.
Commercially made stuff is horridly hard and kind of overcooked. Home made stuff is melt in the mouth delicious but has the energy equivalent of a neutron bomb

I take some along to every meet up I get to.


dogwood, I like the sound of that veggie pemican. We make vegetarian haggis and it's really good, but it's heavy on the carbs.
The Jerkymeister makes a vegan tofu jerky that's flavoured with Marmite that is really, really good. Wonder if we could persuade Martyn to make up a batch.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Broch]

There's what you should eat and what you can eat!

Raw fresh Hazelnuts – 628 Kcal/100g; but I can't eat them or I'd die
English Cheddar - 403 Kcal/100g; but there's only so much you can eat without wine or beer.
Pasta – 357 Kcal/100g; needs a good sauce. I tend to pack lasagne because it takes up far less space than any other type of pasta.

Some 25 years ago I made a complete food list of what we could pack and what we could forage on long backpacking trips in the UK to ensure we had suitable diets. I wish I could find it

Broch

 

[Martyn]

Pasta – 357 Kcal/100g; needs a good sauce. I tend to pack lasagne because it takes up far less space than any other type of pasta.

Spaghetti is pretty compact, it's easy to cook and tastes good just with garlic butter and herbs. Make up a reduced mushroom soup from a packet and you have a mushroom sauce. A little cheese and milk powder boiled in a pan with some chopped bacon or chorizo and you've got a carbonara of sorts. Break it into small pieces and add to soups and stews. There are lots of dried packet things that would make acceptable pasta sauce. Pretty versatile really and a pleasant change to rice.

Napolina spaghetti = 362 kcals/100g, 85% carbohydrate. (that's about the same nutritional data as for rice)

 

[Javapuntnl]

Calories can only give you so much energy... I get my energy (/motivation) from flavor, the better it tastes, the more it tantalizes my taste buds, if I just really, Really enjoy eating it because of the quality of the food and the fantastic flavor, it gives me far more energy than some noodles dredged in peanut butter for example (or so I like to think...). Of course, when exerting oneself in the woods, working up an appetite makes even raw beans taste sweet...

 

[Martyn]

Calories can only give you so much energy... I get my energy (/motivation) from flavor, the better it tastes, the more it tantalizes my taste buds, if I just really, Really enjoy eating it because of the quality of the food and the fantastic flavor, it gives me far more energy than some noodles dredged in peanut butter for example (or so I like to think...). Of course, when exerting oneself in the woods, working up an appetite makes even raw beans taste sweet...

That's the thing innit? When using it to supplement/augment forraged berries, leaves and mushrooms and maybe a bit of fish or squirrel, then as Ray Mears says "...you have to adjust your expectations".


Fortunately for "carry along" items, the things with the highest calorific content - sugar and fat - are usually the things that taste the nicest. No accident there I think. Also, our sense of appetite is a fluid thing - we tend to be hungry for the things we need and what we are hungry for, changes as what we need changes. So while in front of the TV with a beer, we may only have an appetite for spicy chicken wings and doughnuts, in the forest bbq'd squirrel with wild herb, mushroom and chestnut rice might be quite appealing.

 

[Javapuntnl]

Martyn, you hit the nail right on the head. A philosophy I live by. If it tastes good, I mean REAL Good, it is good for you!

 

[dogwood]

dogwood, I like the sound of that veggie pemican. We make vegetarian haggis and it's really good, but it's heavy on the carbs.

Toddy,

Here's what I'm thinking for the veggie pemican:
a bunch of quinoa -- like 50% of the total volume,
some tofu jerky,
some combo of dried cranberries, cherries or blueberries
and then something like cashew butter for the binding

From a protein perspective, it would have as much as as much meat since quinoa is roughly the equivalent of beef on that score. And people keep forgetting about protein in this equation -- if you go too carb heavy outdoors you'll be in big trouble in a couple of days of vigorous hiking. Your judgment will go to hell, your energy fail without lots of protein.

The above "veggie pemmican" should keep for several months.

You'll get fats, protein, some carbs and vitamin C all in a nice little package. And it should taste good too.

I'm not entirely convinced that cashew butter is the right way to go on the fat/binder front. But it's worth a shot. I imagine you could just use a regular oil and bake it into bars too.

 

[dogwood]

OK, right after I made my post about a quinoa "veggie pemmican" I thought to do a google search and I came up with this nice recipe. It's more elaborate than my basic one, but it looks really good.

If my calculations are right, a bar like this would have about 15-18grams of protein in a couple of ounces and it's packed with a solid mixture of fat and carbs, vitamins, fiber and micro nutrients. I would go with 3/4 cup of quinoa rather than a 1/2, but that's just me.

Plus, it should taste really good and should be good on the shelf for a few months.

Looking at this, it really is a very complete meal in a bar and would likely be a fine pemmican substitute. You *might* want to up the fat content a little, but if you look at this mixture from a nutritionists viewpoint, this recipe is close to ideal.

I'm going to make some up before I head out to hunt in about 10 days and I'll report back....

http://backpackerrecipes.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/a-recipe-for-trail-bars-made-with-whole-grain/