Pemmican as camping/trail food. Anyone tried it? page

[Corvidae]

Hey all, so I spent this labor day weekend on a long camping trip up in the Sierras. Hiking in VFFs and getting sunlight and swimming in alpine lakes...it was pretty primal and awesome.

Anyway, while we brought a lot of meat and veggies for cooking, and canned fish, nuts, and dried fruit for trail food, I got to thinking about Mark's post about pemmican (How to Make Pemmican - Pemmican Recipe | Mark's Daily Apple) that I read a while back. I found while hiking that I wasnt that hungry; during breaks, I just wanted to eat some food and get on with things. Back at camp, we were often so tired that setting up the veggies and meat for cooking was quite a chore. I started to think that a calorically-dense food like the pemmican might be kinda dull, but it would save a lot of time, effort, and weight. Also, my camping-partner (who is not primal) talked about backpacking trips hes been on where the food was primarily carb-loaded things, because thats what was light and would keep. Ive never backpacked before, but I would like to someday, and Id think pemmican would be better than bags of rice-a-roni.

Has anyone had experience with it?

[Paleobird]

Mark makes it sound kind of dull in his post but really pemmican can be quite delicious if you know your way around a spice rack. I made some with dried venison and bacon drippings that was awesome. Little fat/protein/calorie bombs. One or two of those and you are stuffed.

[Daemonized]

I made some last year. I made mine really spice but it still tasted way too much of tallow. I think if you're going to need survival food then it would be great but for camping I don't need that much fat. I prefer just to bring along beef jerky.

[Paleobird]

Yeah, I'm not partial to the taste of tallow either. Tastes like you are eating a candle. But the bacon fat was goooooooood. I prefer lean jerky too but for sheer calories per cubic inch, you can't beat pemmican. (I made the pemmican back when I was still believing all the people here telling me I needed to eat more fat to lose weight.)

[Marnee]

Sure! I use pemmican all the time for backpacking. It's great. I am a light-weight backpacker and pemmican really cuts down on weight and bulk (high nutrition density) as well as fitting into my diet, of course. I don't spice my pemmican (and I love it that way).

Other dried meat items I love are biltong (dried, lacto-fermented jerky) and doerwors (dried, lacto-fermented sausage). They all keep really well. And when you are hungry I swear pemmican is the most awesome tasting stuff in the world.

We usually have a bunch all prepared and ready to go for any spur of the moment trips and to store-up for longer trips. This and dark chocolate, and sometimes a bag of dried fruit and nuts, are all I take. Works for me (and my husband).