Food on Tour

Food As A "Problem"

(Work in progess, more text, detailed receipes and pictures to come.)

Living the Low-Carb life is fairly easy on a day-to-day basis as long as I'm cooking myself, sticking to fresh produce from the greengrocer and butcher/fishmonger. But already a longer drive in the car or just looking for a snack in town is a problem. Baps, rolls, sandwiches, wraps, pasty... everything is covered in some kind of bread.  Fish is battered, chicken too. Can't go down the sugar road as well, which leaves what? "Healthy" salads often include couscous, pasta or potatoes. What the heck?! So I find myself nibbling on an apple looking forward to the next proper meal.

The problem is multiplied when thinking about hiking for days or weeks even. I can't take fresh eggs, steaks and a bag of veg really. Too heavy and bulky. Village shops - often the only ones within miles around - limit the choice for top-up shops considerably.

So, what do I do, if I can't have noodle snacks, trekmeal, not even an energy bar or snickers and fresh food is too heavy und bulky and will go off eventually?

SOLUTION: Prepare my own rations!

Step 1: Cook & Dehydrate

Enter the dehydrator! The star of the show. The solution to all my troubles. The saviour. I mainly use it to make my own beef jerky and dry some fruit. But you can also use it to dry whole meals. One of my favourites is chilli con carne (see below).

To be continued.

Step 2: Make It Last - The Art of Vacuumizing

So you have all your nicely dried food, but you need to protect it from moisture or it will get mouldy. The best solution is a vacuum sealer. You can pick one up for around £50 and I strongly suggest going for an electric one and not just a hand pump. 

This way you can pack one meal per bag and always know how many meals you've got left. In the wilderness at the end of a cold wet day, all you need to do is boil some water and open one of your sealed bags. Job done.

Photos coming soon.

Step 3: Supplements

Coming soon

Sample Meals - A Day in the Wilderness

MORNING
Option 1
Scrambled Egg with Bacon and Herbs

• Mix dried egg powder with dried herbs and little bacon cubes and water
• fry in pan

The dried egg powder can be ordered online and is the stuff that is used when producing cakes etc. It's simply mixed with water and then fried off in a pan. Even though it is literally dried egg, it's not quite the same taste-wise. Still, you get about 30 eggs in a 500g bag. Not bad, ey? Mix with some herbs and you have a quick, easy and high protein brekkie.

Option 2
Power Yoghurt

• Mix yoghurt powder, natural (or flavoured) whey protein powder with water
• Add dried fruit, nuts, homemade low-carb granola

What goes for the egg, goes for natural yoghurt. Buy the powder online and all you need is water. It's a bit runny, but add some protein powder and the texture improves a lot. In with dried fruit and nuts for a power brekkie, that doesn't even need cooking.

Option 3
Pancakes

• Mix MyProtein Pancake Powder with cocoa powder (no added sugar) and water
• Add dried fruit
• Pour in pan and fry

Discovered the Pancake Mix a while ago and love it!!! High in protein, no sugar and all you need is water. Brill! Add cocoa powder and fruit and it tastes pretty good.

Chocolate protein pancakes with fresh banana

SNACKS
Beef-Jerky, dried fruit (apples, bananas, blueberries, cranberries), flapjack, salami, cheese, nuts

EVENING MEAL
Chilli Con Carne

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