First night or two is usually a big serve of morrocan beef stew with spiced couscous and pistachios . The beef stew is slow cooked the night before cooled, divided into serves and vacuum sealed . Heat and eat when ready, lasts two days no problem . Couscous goes great with the stew, is small, light and cooks in a minute, flavour the couscous water with a mix of cumin, corianader, cinnamon, vege stock, paprika and chilli powder . I keep the flavour mix in individual serves in little zip lock bags . Best meal ever .
After that its a long last meal I invented that is a chicken curry, it is cheap as, light as, quick to cook and one pot . Bring a cup and a half of water to the boil with dehy coconut milk mixed in, a single serve of dehy pea, carrot, corn mix, a small tin of chop chop chicken(or tuna), when boiling for a minute or two add indo mie mee goreng noodles with its flavourings, cook for three minutes, then eat . If you love curry, you will love this . The tin the chicken comes in is small and light and not hard to carry out .
Mmmm...definitely love to try that but we're gluten free but it can be adapted, I guess.
What is this Coconut milk thing ? never heard about it before
Williams22,
look in the milk section of your supermarket, usually next to the soy milk cartons and powdered milk. Nestle/Maggi do a packet of powdered coconut milk for around $6. Brilliant for adding to curries, asian food etc.
Asian supermarkets are the best you can get all manner of dehydrated products . I buy my dehy coco milk in single serve sachets for about a dollar fifty . Makes a cup . It is light as a feather just add a cup or less of water and stir . Great for making curries and desserts on the trail, you can drink it too in an emergency situation .
Asian supermarkets are also good for many kinds of dehy vege and mushrooms . They have very cheap two minute noodles that have so much more flavour than your standard maggi chicken types . I buy a brand called indo mie mee goreng, it comes with sachets of dried shallot, chilli sauce, thick soy sauce, palm oil and seasoning, for twenty cents a pack . Add a small tin of chicken or tuna in spring water, dehy vege and mushroom mix and you have a hearty soupy curry for three - four dollars .
not a fan of dehy coconut milk,
the fat is normally liquid above twenty odd degrees which means they have to doctor the fat to make sure it stays solid since you can't dehydrate fat.....
they way they doctor the fat is by hydrogentating it which essentially makes it toxic and cancer causing to the body.. not really something you want to be in the habit of eating regularly.....
In my hand I have a packet of Kara brand coconut cream powder.
Ingredients list coconut extract hydrolysed starch whatever that is milk protein and emulsifier. Under nutrition it says 62.2g per 100g total fat 54 of which is saturated and 0g trans fat
trans fats are the bad ones but saturated fats are the ones that give armchair athletes heart attacks. Not really an issue for hard working trampers
I think if there's less than .5% transfat then they can claim it has zero percent. This is what they do for margarine. Apparently saturated fat got the bad reputation when the tremendously successful advertising campaign was put into place for Crisco, a hydrogenated cotton seed oil. Check out Weston A Price who would beg to differ. I know there's no history of heart disease in our family and in those days there were no cooking oils used, just saturated fat.
My brother (15 months older than I) got the honour of the first heart attack in the family from blocked coronary arteries in his late 40's. Incredible stress with his business haemorrhaging money, working 100 hrs each week including getting up at 2am to do a fare because none of his taxi drivers were prepared to, eating junk food (yes, cooked in oils that were heated and used repeatedly), smoking on the sly to fit in with the boys, and doing no exercise. Now he's to afraid to go tramping or even a day walk in case he has a heart attack in a location where there are no defibrillators because as we mostly know, CPR againt gonna work in the hills (apart from for drowning). On the streets of Christchurch, you only get a 2% chance of successful resuscitation.
I'm far more nervous eating the coconut powder though I do occasionally, than eating saturated fat which is a natural unadulterated food. However my main source of fats are coconut oil from Samoa and the Phillipines and olive oil, the latter not recommended for sauteing, frying etc. We have been brainwashed bigtime and it's no coincidence that the safe oils come from tropical countries who don't have the propaganda machine of places like the States. After high fructose corn syrup, soy oil is the largest source of calories in the USA.
Of course the real concerns are refined carbohydrates from grains and sugars but don't let me get started on a new rant! But I will say that 40% of the New Zealand adult population have metabolic syndrome. If your waistline is greater than 100cm for a woman, congratulations, you've got it. This leads to PCOS, pre and actual diabetic states. When I was in Mongolia I was still a victim of the brainwashing and turning down offers of bones to suck the marrow out of. When I came back here it was like a walking freak show with all the fatsos walking around after being there where they love their meat, yak butter, cream, cheese and fermented horse milk.
hydrogenated fats are also bad fats
saturated fat in tropical oils like coconut, do not clog arteries, they do the reverse.... they are quitedifferent from saturated fats in animal fat.....
i eat a lot of saturated fat, i"m 45, my blood pressure is 108/74, in my twenties i used to have high blood pressure
resting heart rate 45... cholesterol perfect,.
Just looked at the olive oil based spread in the fridge (not allowed to call it marg but its virtualy the same stuff) It quotes 0.29g/100g or 0.29% trans fat.
Hydrogenating oil is what creates trans fats but only a portion of it is bad. They are caused when hydrogen atoms attach to the wrong side of the oil molecule.
I agree trans fats are bad as the body has no digestive mechanism to deal with them. As a result it just stores them and they have been linked to all sorts of nasty ways to die.
There is another way to solidify oils though and I believe the coconut cream is done this way. Absorb it is a solid starchy medium. If it was done any other way it wouldnt be water mixable. This would explain 0 trans fat but also as its foreign packaged the local rules there could also explain it.
Personally I keep dehy products for tramping only and dont believe an occasional amount is all that bad. Eating it all the time though the results may vary.
