I keep a few "quick" food items in my BOB but I keep another bag stocked with more long term meal type foods such as dried veggies, rice,canned meats, etc. If I am leaving in a hurry and can only grab my BOB I have a few things but if I can grab my food bag it would give me a lot more to go with.

We definitively should have a cooking section on this forum !! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

What?? No jar of marshmallow?? How can you expect to survive without that?? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Seriously, the stuff I carry was meant to be mainly comfort food than anything else. Wiggle into the shelter, boil a cup of water, mix in the bouillon and slowly sip while contemplating life's little mysteries - like how I was dumb enough to get stuck out here in the cold... <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Like a lot of people, I carry enough food inside me - though some people I know actually call it a beer belly! HA!! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

A cooking section sounds like a good addition to the Long Term Section.

Marc

*Nods*

Cooking to store and with stored foods is a part of that that I will be tossing data in for. I found it amazing, back when I was on the Y2K crew, that people were buying wheat, but they didn't have grinders. Yeah, you can make it work, but wheat stew gets awfully old real fast. Among my various stashes and caches of information, I have some 80+ year old cook books, and if I've tried it, I'm willing to share a recipie or three. Not whole books, but a few of the best, and lots of the general advice.

For eample, how many of us know how to use mason jars? How many people have tried canning oddish stuff, like your favorite chinese place's General Chicken. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> (It didn't work too well, but I am going to try again if I can talk them into getting more sauce, and put the rice in a seperate jar.)

My automobile BOB is intended for 4 days. I keep 2 Mainstay 2400cal. packages in the bag: 3-4 days food in a pinch. Since I envision this for bugging out and keeping on the move (e.g. to a larger cache).. not setting up any camp.. I picked a food source that required no prep. Also it is tolerant to the heat and cold of storage in my truck.

Yep, like I said, you can buy good rations, or you can make good rations. I guess it's just my style, being a camp cook, that I prefer rollin' my own. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Ben, I've experienced two problems with the pemmican I've made:
1) It got 'et before it got stored.
2) I wasn't sure about heat tolerance given the fat.
The solution to #1 is, I guess, willpower.
Re: #2 Do you have a pemmican recipe that stands up to storage in a vehicle in the summer. How'd it do in the sandbox?

I never got to make any over there, unfortunately. Wax candles wouldn't have made it through the peak of the heat there (I logged 137, but I know it got higher than that).

Suet stands up to heat a little better than tallow. Suet is the organ fat, which is a slightly denser fat molecule (and therefore a little higher caloric value for a given mass). You could mix the hot fat with flour and gelatin dissolved in a little water to form a really soft roux that, when cooled, would stiffen up but not crumble, and will take the heat a little better. I'm not sure if parrafin and suet will homogenize, but if they do, that would certainly harden the Pemmican up, just don't overdo the wax. Maybe you could take a frozen Pemmican ball and coat it in wax like they do cheese wheels.

I've never had a problem with Pemmican getting too soft to handle. If I am going out into hot terrain, I'd just put the plastic wrapped pemmican into a ziploc bag and be done with it. It won't liquidate, but even if it oozes a little, I can recover it all, and it won't go bad, so to me it doesn't matter much if it gets squishy or deforms, long as it stays in the container.

Another great side use of Pemmican is it can be a great aid in getting a stubborn fire going.

I agree with you, I have a 3 day pack (as well as the wife and kid). I carry 3 days worth of rice, boullion, beans, jerky, some protien bars and a few "goodies". However, all I have to do is get to our pre-determined meeting place. It is 2 hours away via 1/2 interstate and 1/2 dirt road. There is food supplies there as well as shelter, water etc... Our plan is simple, drive if we can, walk if we must, make it either way. We also carry handguns, a shotgun and a hunting rifle. If it has 4 legs and I am hungry... it just became food. I also have one backpacking fishing pole that I could grab if we are headed in a direction that has lakes or streams. Food is only as distant as nature allows.