Ultralight Tip of the Week

[John Coyle]

I also want to commend Frito-Lay for offering a lower sodium version of Fritos. They have 80mg of salt per oz as opposed to 170 according to the Frito-Lay web site. I believe 1 oz of Fritos is equivalent to one of the smaller bags. I am on a sodium restricted diet due to a family history of high blood pressure and my doctor recommends no more than 1500mg per day. Some of the fancy freeze dried meals at REI have more than that in one serving which is the main reason I do freezer bag cooking. The lower price is another reason.

Some of my friends tell me not to worry about sodium while backpacking; that I will sweat it out. Maybe, but I'd rather not have a stroke while doing the Clouds Rest ridge line, for example. Rolling down 4000ft. over near vertical rough granite with one side or the other paralyzed does not appeal to me.

[Lois Austin]

Nuts are densely nutritious,better fats, more protein,compact,and > 160 calories/ounce.

[Mike Clelland]

Oh don't get me wrong, I love nuts, and the book sings their benefits! The recipes are full of nuts!

Fritos are NOT health food, but they are tasty on a break.

cashews = 156 calories / oz
dry roasted peanusts = 166 calories / oz
walnuts = 183 calories / oz
almonds = 163 calories / oz

[Mary D]

Glad you agree! Personally, I'd rather eat nuts any day of the week. Fritos, IMHO, are disgusting! Of course, YMMV applies here!

The one thing that could be said about potato chips (unlike Fritos) is that they contain potassium. I still can't stand to eat them, though!

[a b]

The classic Fritos are three simple ingredients: Corn, Corn Oil, and Salt.
Since when is Corn unhealthy?

Original Corn Chips (Fritos)

Serving Size: 1 oz, Calories: 160, Fat: 10g, Carbs: 16g, Protein: 2g

They can be found for $3 per 12 ounce bag in gas stations and convenience stores near trail heads and at almost every single town resupply point.

Thats 1920 calories for 3 dollars.
They are high is carbohydrates which fuel working muscles and their oil content is super for skin and hair health.
The sodium replaces salts lost to perspiration during heavy activities.
They don't have much protein though.
Personally i find that using the Fritos for a Carbohydrate fuel source during the day and loading up on Protein rich foods like nuts and nut butters at night to rebuild muscle works magic for recovery times on multi thousand mile long distance hikes.
I suppose they could be said to be "Healthy" for people burning 5,000 calories a day such as those on a long hike.
For the pyromaniac crowd;
Fritos also make an excellant fire starter; they burn like a candle wick.
Hey, that makes them dual use!

[David Chenault]

As a bonus, they come in Chili flavor.

[a b]

LIKE!

[Bob Gross]

I'm trying to figure out a way from converting this into finger food. In other words, it needs to be firm and a bit dry. The basic flavor is good, but the consistency needs improvement.

–B.G.–

[Eli .]

Add flour, reduce oil, freeze, coat in chocolate or cocoa powder?

[Bob Gross]

Right now, my leading coatings are either sesame seeds or crushed pecan pieces.

I might need to add some cornstarch to the gooey mixture, then heat it.

–B.G.–

[Mary D]

I'm glad I now have Mike's permission to take more than 2 pair of socks on a long, potentially soggy trip! And even sleeping socks! There are some times/places, especially out here in the NW, in which you can't expect wet socks to get dry!

[Brian Barnes]

Bob – Have you tried backing off on the almond oil? I found that the product's stickiness was heavily influenced by the oil amount added. Also, I like the idea of nut coated mini-cheese ball-like serving sizes. Another thought is the powdered peanut butter you can purchase in the organic sections of supermarkets. I also tried crushing up 1 to 2 Ritz crackers and coating a tablespoon of the mixture for a 100 cal snack bite. Worked well and tastes great.

[Anonymous]

"I might need to add some cornstarch to the gooey mixture, then heat it."

A more nutritious alternative might be non fat powdered milk.

[Mike Clelland]

The super spackle isn't meant to be a finger food.

It is made of runny ingredients.

But – the GROOVY-RIFIC bars are a better alternative, and these can be eaten like a cookie!

______________________________________

Home-made no-bake groovy-rific bar recipe

A calorie dense alternative to purchasing expensive store bought bars. Easy to make and delicious.

2 cups spelt flakes (or rolled oats)
1 cup dates (finely chopped)
1 cup almonds
1 cup cashews
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup almond butter
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon hazelnut (or almond) extract
1 teaspoon salt

Put almonds, cashews, walnuts and spelt flakes in a food processor. Pulse briefly, until the mix is granular, with minimal chunks. Place this mixture in a big mixing bowl. Add the raisins, cranberries.

In a small sauce pan, melt coconut oil over very low heat. Add brown rice syrup and almond butter. Stir until a smooth consistency, and add the chopped dates. Remove sauce pan from heat and add vanilla extract and hazelnut (or almond) extract into this mixture.

Add the oily mixture into the large mixing bowl and stir the contents with a wooden spoon until it’s completely mixed. Add the tapioca flour and salt and continue mixing with your hands.

Press this mixture into glass baking dishes or cake pans. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour, until mixture hardens.

Remove from refrigerator, cut into bars into squares.

Put a small amount of tapioca flour in a large plastic bag. Put the squares in the bag with the flour and gently shake, this creates a dusty covering to keep the bars from being too oily or sticky.

[Bob Gross]

Hmmm. Powdered milk sounds good. I'll have to try that.

I had already deleted the almond oil. The natural almond butter that I purchased already had oil floating on it.

What I am trying to end up with is the peanut butter equivalent of a cheese ball.

Although peanut butter is very common here in the states, in some countries it is kind of weird to have nuts dug up from the ground.

–B.G.–

[Lois Austin]

Delete the extra oil. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 F for 10-15 minutes. It will be a cookie. Any nut butter will do. You can add spices and molasses for a ginger spice cookie or almond butter, almond flavoring and poppy seeds for a delicious almond poppy seed cookie. Use peanut butter for a peanut butter cookie.

Tend to your feet at the first sign of trouble or your hike is dead.

[Henk Smees]

Hello Mike!

Nice to see you brought up Tip 152. I sent you an E-mail about this tip last August but I'm sure you must have missed it (probably hiking somewhere) :)

I'll copy and paste same here, because some other people might have come across the same *problems* I encountered.

-o-o-o-

The reason for this e-mail is to ask about Tip nr 152 and, more specifically, the part about the “Homemade No-Bake Groovy-rific Bars”.

Where I live (in Spain) it’s not always possible to get all the items mentioned in recipes and this particular one wouldn’t be an exception. I’m fully aware of the fact that any recipe can be altered to meet the specific taste and needs of whoever is going to make the food (bars in this case), but I’d like to do the utmost to not change anything at all – at least the first time.

Having said so, “vanilla-”, “hazelnut-” and “almond-” extract is only available at an extremely high price-ticket (as much as € 14 for just a few mls.). For just doing an experiment once it might be feasible, but making these bars more often if these turn out to be palatable (and I have no doubt about this – with all these ingredients they’ll be more than delicious), there is no way I could afford this kind of money for “just” bars – no matter how energy-rich and delicious these are.

Another thing I’m having trouble with finding is the tapioca flour. Is there a certain reason tapioca flour is better (or at least more recommendable) than any other type of flour? Almond-butter is another problem, but peanut-butter and hazelnut-butter are both available (although the latter comes -again- at a rather high price: € 8,00 for 325 ml).

All the rest is readily available over the shelf – having said so, the “spelt flakes” here are called “copos de espelta” and, although it might seem pretty obvious (once you know), it took me quite a while before I found out (the only thing the Google Translator could come up with was a form of the verb “to spell”.

One last thing: I’m a bit puzzled about the fact you mention coconut oil. I’ve always understood olive oil was far better – correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe it’s because of the taste???

OK. Let’s get to the point.

Since I haven’t found the tapioca flour and almond-butter (yet??), and I wouldn’t like to part with the amount of money involved with the different extracts, I thought of doing the following:

1. Change the almond-butter (which I can’t find) for hazelnut-butter (which would give me the taste of hazelnut, instead of using hazelnut-extract) or maybe even peanut-butter, which is quite a bit cheaper, although I’d follow your advice about hazelnut- or peanut-butter.

2. Forget about the vanilla-extract (maybe there is something else that could be added to give a bit of a vanilla taste???). I believe the extracts are only in the recipe to give the taste required – or not??

3. Change the tapioca-flour for any other kind of flour (whichever you’d advise).

4. Change the coconut-oil for olive-oil (unless its taste would be too dominating, which I’m afraid of) and use dried or raw coconut flakes or chips (the small ones) to create the dusty covering for the finished bars (instead of the flour); this would give at least some kind of coconut taste to the bars, if the coconut-oil was meant to give a bit of a coconut taste.

All the rest would remain completely unaltered. What do you think about these changes?

Best regards,

Henk Smees aka TFD
(The Flying Dutchman)

BTW. I ordered your book thru’ BPL on April 26st. I’ve read it at least 4 times since. Great stuff – I learned a lot.

[Pit Martin]

I always carry two pair for hiking, and one pair for sleeping, no matter the length of the trip. Another great tip: Take boots and socks off the feet every 3 hours, and let the feet breathe for 5 minutes – it really helps fight off blisters, and rejuvenates the feet. Saved my feet on the Colorado Trail in 7 days of nonstop rain in 2010 (Thanks, Wolverine, and to Escalater and Hamster, for the advice). Socks dried quicker by hanging them up inside the tent or vestibule. Pit Martin, Colorado Springs, Colorado

[Mary D]

Henk,

When experimenting with recipes like this, it's best to make no more than a quarter of the original recipe, or maybe less. Some of the alterations you suggest (and that I suggest below) will definitely alter the taste. Make up tiny batches and taste-test until you get the result you want.

I would want to use another oil than coconut anyway, because coconut oil is a saturated fat. Canola (rapeseed) or safflower oil would be less flavored than olive oil. My daughter in law makes cookies and pie crust with canola oil, and they taste just fine.

As I recall (it has been a while), in Europe most cooks use dried vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract. You'd need only a tiny piece of bean, pulverized. If you're using almonds and almond butter anyway, no real need for the almond extract. I suspect that leaving out the extracts will be no big deal, although the almond taste will be less strong.

You can grind almonds in a food processor to make almond butter, and I'm sure that's a lot cheaper than almond or hazelnut butter. You could do the same thing with cashews, walnuts or hazelnuts if you want the finished result to taste more like those nuts. Using peanut butter would be fine, too, except that the result will taste more like peanuts than almonds. With peanut butter, you might want to substitute peanuts for one of the other nuts. Again, experiment with tiny amounts until you get the taste you prefer.

I would think that wheat flour would be fine for the thickening instead of tapioca, and honey instead of brown rice syrup.

[Mike Clelland]

REPLY TO – Henk:
================

1) Hazelnut butter sounds awesome. Go for it!

2) Ignore the vanilla extract, it's such a tiny amount it should impact anything,.

3) Any kind of flour should be fine. The reason I use tapioka flour is that is is sweet and it acts as a thickener.

4) DON'T USE OLIVE OIL! THe coconut oil gets stiff unless it's warm, so it acts as a binder. And olive oil is too strong of a taste. You could just NIX the oil altogether and add a little more brown rice syrup.

Just so you know, i am totally content to "wing it" in the kitchen. I love tweeking recipes like this, and encourage you to do the same!

[Henk Smees]

Hi Mary & Mike,

Many thanks for your advice.

Last August I made a spreadsheet with all the ingredients (changed some because -as said before- I couldn’t find everything here in Spain) and their specs regarding nutritional info (calories, proteins, carbs and fat), cost and quantity (according to the information on the store-bought item); then it calculated the nutritional info per used amount and, last, the same information for 2 bars of 50 grams each. Liked the result, because the proportions of Proteins (12.56%), Carbs (55.09%) and Fat (32.35%) were very close (if not exact) to the recommended amounts. So, I was really pleased.

Then I did do a sort of first intend to make my own Groovy-rific bars. I didn’t use any of the extracts and changed the tapioca for wheat flour (like you said Mary); I also used hazelnut butter instead of almond butter (as Mike just said), but the rest was as Mike recommended in his book. BTW. I did find brown rice syrup (melaza de arroz) and coconut oil (although the one I found is not stiff when cold). See next picture of all the ingredients (+ the spreadsheet and the book):

I followed all Mike’s instructions (although, since I don’t have a food processor, I chopped the walnuts, almonds and cashews separately):

Then I mixed the different chopped nuts with the spelt flakes, raisins and cranberries:

After heating the coconut oil, I added the brown rice syrup, hazelnut butter and chopped dates, mixed everything in the same large bowl I used for the first *operation* and then pressed the whole bunch in two glass baking dishes, put these in the fridge and after an hour, this was the result:

Well…… it didn’t work out as well as I would have liked. When I tried to cut the bars, the whole mixture resulted to be too crumbly:

What went wrong? After a lot of thinking, I realized I made several mistakes when converting imperial measurements to the metric system. I went by weight instead of volume, so I didn’t use enough rice syrup and hazelnut butter. I could’ve “killed” myself. (After Mike’s last recommendation: >The coconut oil gets stiff unless it's warm, so it acts as a binder<; this might be another reason, “my” coconut oil isn’t stiff at all). Anyhow, although the end result wasn’t satisfying (because the bars don’t stick together – nothing to do with the recipe) the taste of same is really delicious, so I’ll definitely try again (making sure I’ll use the correct amounts) and maybe changing the coconut oil for canola (rapeseed) or safflower oil, like Mary suggested. I won’t use olive oil.

With regards to tweaking the recipes, don’t worry; I’ll surely do so (once I’ve got my first batch figured out according to the instructions). Thinking of adding coconut flakes as a dusting, for instance.

Can't wait to try again.

Many thanks again.

[Mike Clelland]

Wow! That was some dedication to documenting it visually!

Y'know what also might help, bump up the finely chopped dates a little more. The date "paste" is sticky and makes a good "binder"

The other option is to add a few eggs and then bake it for a little while. That'll turn em into bars.

Keep me posted as to yer progress!

[Henk Smees]

Hi Mike.

I’ll sure keep you informed about progress. Thanks for the advice regarding chopping the dates a little more or adding eggs and baking. I never asked my wife (my culinary knowledge is almost nonexistent), but I’m sure she’ll be able to come up with ways of thickening the mixture as well. I suppose the old saying: “there are many roads that lead to Rome” will be applicable here (with regards to binding the bars).

Are there any natural thickeners (I suppose they’re called starch or pectin) that could be used as well? If so, which are more calorie-dense? If I’m going to add other ingredients, apart from being healthy, they might as well serve other purposes.

BTW, I just realized you said the coconut oil is stiff (unless it’s warm), does that mean you can’t pour it? If so, I suppose it isn’t sold in bottles and if that’s true, how is it presented? As a block, like some fats? Maybe I could try to look for coconut fat? Or am I completely lost?

[Mike Clelland]

Coconut oil in the USA comes in a jar, and it's hard like cold butter at room temperature. It is white and foggy looking on the shelf at the store.

It will turn to liquid if it gets warmed up. Low heat in a pan will make it a clear liquid.

I would NIX any oil, the natural oil in the hazlenut butter will be plenty. And – Adding more dates finely chopped and added to the warm hazelnut butter during the creation should be enough.

bon apetiit!
Mike C!

[Addie Bedford]

Henk: In the States, coconut oil is a solid at room temperature, similar to (though firmer than) butter or vegetable shortening, though sold in jars that you just scoop out of. Seems to me you'll want a fat that is a solid at room temp for the binding you're looking for.

[Author]

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