Light weight extended tripping food
PB2 (powdered peanut butter), 1 6.5 oz plastic jar makes 15 servings of 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. Mix 2TBS of powder and 1 TBS of water. If you need fat, it won’t get you there – only 13 fat calories (85% less fat than traditional pnut butter) and 45 calories per 2 Tbs and only 5g of carbs. If you’re paddling 50 miles, you probably want more carbs and fat. But if you like Peanut butter and chocolate, PB2 is available with chocolate – a 2 TBS dessert! Try googling Bell Plantation, Inc. for dealers near you who sell the item – it’s new.
Food for a month
The diet you propose would be a disaster. It is way to low in protein, fruits, vegetables and calories. I agree with the other posters, but they are being gentle in their responses. Add dried fruit everyday. Add raw vegetables for snacks and cooked ones for dinner. Double the quantity unless you want to weigh 165 pounds when you return.
Paddling and living outdoors uses a lot of calories. You are going to need 4500 calories a day, and sometimes more like 6000. Your plan sounds like about 2500 a day. Get some help with the meal planning or run the risk of getting cold, infections, compromised immune system, lack of energy, etc.
Help
– Last Updated: Sep-14-12 11:26 PM EST –
Thank you for your subtle suggestions, help is what I was looking for ppine. It sounds like you are an expert, and have done this before, what did you take? I am paddling the lower Mississippi in a prijion marlin. I have about 90 pounds to play around with. Right now I am 8 on sleeping gear, 6 on clothes, 15 on misc. gear, 15 liters of water. I am doing this solo so I don't want to leave the boat unless it is a last resort. I am basing my exploratory food menu on previous two week trips. I am worried about my nutrition that is why I posed the question. Thanks to everyone who has posted it has been a great help.
"Think about real food…"
This is good advice. Also important on a long trip that you get enough calories and for most people that means a LOT more than you get in your normal life.
Food Help
RedRocket,
I like to eat close to what I eat at home. Oatmeal and fruit, egg tacos, pancakes for breakfast. Flat meat, cheese, fruit, crackers, canned fish, jerky, nuts, Gorp for lunch. Dinners are cooked in one pot like pasta with meat, beef stew, enchiladas, fajitas, plus some salad. You can cheat with MREs, or dehydrated food for convenience, but I find cooking to be very enjoyable on boat trips. I would find a water filter device so you don’t have to haul all of that weight around. Plan on restocking groceries every week or so. Hope this helps.
Eat like the old timers.
If you really want to cut down on weight, you’re going to have to eliminate moisture. That means dry foods. Corn meal, dry beans, flour, pasta, etc. Salted pork, jerky, or bacon will add flavor. Get good at making frybread and buy a GSI 2 qt. LW pressure cooker. If you can supplement with fish or small game, maybe some berries, you’re doin’ it like the pioneers, and about as self-contained as it gets.
cannibal set-up
– Last Updated: Aug-18-14 8:32 PM EST –
A Powerbar for breakfast and two Powerbars for lunch on a four week trip???
You are 5'10" 200 lbs... just visualizing those proportions = a person who is used to eating three square meals and maybe a snack or two?...
My suggestion is to go alone or you might end up eating your companions. Sounds like a death march from hell.
Anyway, skip the pre-fab goo and gels. No matter the claims, they are mostly hype. Eat pure honey instead.
carry cans!
– Last Updated: Aug-19-14 10:38 PM EST –
I never got the concept of carrying dried food if your going to carry the water you need with you. Unless your getting your water from the river and filtering it I'd pack some canned food. You'll have some additional trash but you won't need to carry water to rehydrate the food- which is where the weight is. So you might as well just carry it in the cans. If your resupplying with water daily then that's a little bit different. I'd definately look to resupply food and even scout out an eatery or two along your route. It will be worth the trouble and provide a nice break. Food is a great motivator.
Before cliff and granola bars were available we made citadel spread and hudson bay bread. You can google either and come up with the recipes. You can pack a jar of peanut butter and use some drink mixes with sugar. Both are calorie laden.
Your body demands certain foods after awhile- hiking the AT many moons ago I hitchhiked from Sherburn Pass to the Rutland Vermont McDonalds. I ate a bunch of cheeseburgers and packed about 8 or 9 more which I ate cold for the next day and a half without refrigeration. Ice cream is another common crave when you start burning fats. So I second the suggestion to carry nuts.
I like to carry some loosener and binder foods as well-
I actually like dried prunes but they literally go right through me and cheese has the opposite effect so you can eat according to your bowel needs.
For packability I like the pepperidge farm bread. I found bagels mold pretty quick but do pack well.
Lots of stuff tastes good when you get hungry and start craving calories- raw ramen noodles, cold instant oatmeal packets, spoon fulls of drink mix.
I used squeeze parkay unrefrigerated for weeks on end and I'm still here.
Pasta on a Procket
Bring the water to a boil, just boil for a min or two, then wrap your pot (with lid) in a towel or extra clothes and let it steep. It will take longer, but it will keep cooking. Figure about 11-13 min on a 7 min pasta. Same with rice dishes. Dont waste fuel trying to simmer, just boil and wrap. (red beans and rice side = good. Add prepack beef, or spam, = better) Using a hobo stove as a primary that you can boil with a handful of sticks and keeping the PR with 2 large cans of isopro for when it rains or there is a problem would let you cook at each meal.
IMHO, you are real light on protien and are planning to go to far without. If you can find smallish summer sausage (prepack) and vacume pack a bagle (they look funky without air) you have lunch.
If you strip your camping gear to a bivi and dont get upwind of humans, you can pack a lot of food but I think you will be pushing it to keep a healthy diet for 28 days with your plan. I could see 5 on protien bars, but you will be running out of steam after that.
grits
grits grits grits
small soup pasta added to ?
Walmart sells a good dried tropical fruit mix
see Campmor.com for freeze dried food
3.2 lb
per day.
90lb/28. That sounds doable but you are going to be maxed out weight wise for the first few days.
http://www.foodsaver.com/vacuum-sealers/FSFSSL2244-P00.html#start=12 I vac each meal together, then vac each day together. Coffee, bfast, lunch, dinner, gatoraid, snacks, one bag per day. I do that for a few reasons, first it cuts down the size. Second, you grab a bag in the AM and you leave everything else in place. Third, the days trash goes back into the days bag. Forth, if water gets to the food compartment, who cares?
Take Dawn DW for your pot, you can use it on you also. I know after about 3 days I need to take a swim with a scrub. Makes the trip much better.
from paradise to hell in four weeks
Four weeks chained to your kayak sounds like POW training. loading your canoe to absolute maximum and eating rehydrated camp food for a month as you meander through the arteries of old downtowns and the stretches of rooted clay and sand banks that stretch between them. Hmm… could be fascinating or it could be a three-hour-tour from hell.
I would plan to stash your canoe in hiding and then cruise into towns. Most rivers flow through old downtowns that were lost to Mall fever in the 1980s, then cities blew a lot of money back into them to try to re-inflate the old downtown balloons. Most of the time, it didn’t work. SO… the best you are going to get will be going to downtown diners and restaurants. Most old downtowns do not have grocery stores.
You will very much appreciate eating at a restaurant after several days eating riverside from your kayak camp. Fresh salad will seem like Godsent
You can take a taxi to grocery stores or call ahead to locally owned groceries and see if you can arrange delivery - perhaps by local taxi - which will cost you $20 extra at least.
Yukon River race food
– Last Updated: Aug-21-14 9:27 AM EST –
I've paddled the Yukon 1000 mile canoe race (Y1K) twice, and the 440 mile Yukon River Quest (YRQ) twice. It takes a lot of efficiently digested calories to go that far at race pace. Although they both start from Whitehorse and the first half of the Y1K route is the same as the YRQ, they are very different races - physically, logistically, strategically, and nutritionally.
The first mandatory rest stop on the YRQ is 185 miles from the start, and most serious racers do not stop at all before then. For my voyageur team, that first leg distance takes about 21 hours, nonstop.
As with any marathon endurance race (at least when canoeing), frequent calorie intake is necessary, and it can't take the time of missing more than a couple of canoe strokes. But it is important to keep internal systems working. Under hard working stress, the digestive system tends to shut down and food becomes difficult to swallow if that happens.
I find that frequent small bites of something, especially fruit, will keep the digestion going between times of more substantial intake. So I have a container of cherries along with small soft candies (bits of snickers and twizzlers and the like) mounted within easy reach. A couple of cherries or grapes every 15-20 minutes does the trick. Small smoked sausages are popular Yukon food (as seen from the large stocks in local grocery stores), so I might grab a bite of one of those.
Every 60-90 minutes, before the "energy bonk", something more is needed. Many of us like boiled eggs (pre-shelled) or small boiled salt potatoes and hard cheese. Liquid Ensure or Boost or Instant Breakfast are also good -I'll have one of those every 2-3 hours. What the heck, even a pb&j or half a ham sandwich stuffed in the mouth will keep you going. I also like fig newtons or snickers and granola bars for variety.
On the YRQ, our pit crew meets us with a real meal at the mandatory 185 mile stop, along with a 7-hour rest and replenishment of our food bags to last the remainder of the race, before shoving us off again. 150 miles later we get another 3 hour mandatory stop, this time without pit crew support, but there is a soup and sandwich meal provided at an isolated remote roadhouse on the river.
The Y1K race, also starting from Whitehorse, is much different. It is to be totally self-sufficient, with no pre-designated location rest stops and no pit crew support of any kind allowed. The only strict requirement is we are required to stop for a 6 hour window per "night" (it doesn't get dark) at whatever random sand bar looks good to us at the time.
Snack food remains much the same as for the YRQ, but now we have to bring and prepare our own major meals of breakfast and dinner. A diet of Cliff bars won't hack it. For the inaugural Y1K in 2009, the race organizers required 20 kg (44 pounds!) of food per person to be taken onboard at the race start. It didn't matter if it was high quality dehydrated food or cans of beans (but they would not count a 50 pound bag of potatoes or large watermelons). They figured a week for fast boats, two weeks for slowest, plus a third week for emergency or weather hold over. In addition, it had to all fit into IGBC certified bear resistant containers that are required for travel through the section of the Yukon-Charlie National Preserve.
I was responsible for obtaining the daily main meals. I home dehydrated high quality real food meals for all breakfasts and dinners, supplemented with a small selection of supermarket off the shelf items. We could not include the weight of water to make the food edible. Do the math, 20kg each for 7 voyageur crew members. At meal time, while the others continued to paddle, one crew member heated water and filled each paddler's mug with hot food, to be eaten one at a time while still underway.
We finished the first Y1K in a bit over 6 days with almost 3/4 of the food left over. No one went hungry and no one lost weight as we paddled at race pace for a strict to-the-minute 18 hours per day. Thankfully, that ridiculous food weight requirement was dropped for subsequent Y1K races. In 2011 I dehydrated and packaged enough food for 10 days. We again finished the Y1K in just over 6 days, this time with far less food left over.
dehydrate
I’ve done 6 weeks unsupported. Dehydrate all your own fruits and veggies and make your own one pot meals. Easy to do and cuts down on weight. Plenty of dried soup stocks and such as stores now days or make your own.
food on the river
Tdaniel sounds like he is a long distance tripper. After awhile, say 7-10 days town food sounds really good. It would probably not be that hard to find towns for resupply. Thirty days worth of freeze-dried food would be torture for me. I would plan to resupply if it was somewhat out of the way. Paddling 50 miles a day is going to generate a huge appetite by about day 7.
food
peanut butter