Volumetrically Dense Food?

Not serious :-)

Use the bear can or can slightly larger can to allow shrinkage to bake 4 different cakes/breads inside it, one at a time of course;-)

1. traditional Christmas time "Fruit Cake"

2. Highly dense pecan pie type cake.

3. Banana bread cake (dense)

4. Carrot cake(dense)

Cut all cakes length wise into quarters.

Take one quarter section of each cake and assemble back into the bear can till filled complete volumetrically. This is done for variety :-)

Freeze the remaining quarter sections.

Dan, most of those cake items are kind of low for calories per ounce. One exception might be lemon-date-nut bread, and it seems to have lots of liquid butter poured into it. The problem is that many of these cakes and breads go stale after just a week or two. That isn't good for a backpacker. Boston Brown Bread might work.

My Logan Bread recipe is moderate for calories per ounce, but it takes it months and months to go stale.

–B.G.–

" my primary food would be Garden of Life's "Raw Meal" mixed with virgin coconut oil. The latter is easier to digest than lard and the Raw meal powder provides a full spectrum of both macro and micro nutrients in an easy to digest, highly bio-available, and light form."

Very tempting, but if I were you, I'd field test that one on a few trips of at least a week. This would be long enough to find out if it remained palatable after a few days. Like nuts, nut butters, and other very calorie dense foods, I suspect it would get old real fast if you were eating it all day, every day. I could definitely see it as one component of a calorie dense menu, but as the primary source of calories, I dunno, Justin…

Too right Katherine, multi-purpose.

I definitely get your point Tom. Would definitely bring other food for a little variety. I have trained both my body and mind to have an unusually high detachment to food via taste, texture, sameness/repetition, etc. So, don't think it would be too much of an issue. I've also done a certain amount of fasting which furthers increases non attachment to food.

Unfortunately, unless my life really changes, a colder weather Alaska trip is at this point, a pipe dream. What is much more plausible since i have the summers off now (well mostly, i work a 2nd part time job, but hopefully the family i work with will have someone else besides me by then), is going to the southern hemisphere for a cold weather trip–like southern Chile or Argentina.

"I have trained both my body and mind to have an unusually high detachment to food….I've also done a certain amount of fasting which furthers increases non attachment to food."

Hey, I know this one – the punchline is "make me one with everything"

Good one Ralph, indeed a fitting punchline.

1. Lard
2. Garden of LIfe raw protein blend and coconut oil
3. Fast with Justin

I'l take #4, please.

Hey BoB, use Textured vegetable protein in place of flour for making the canister cake :-)))))

I make a banana bread that I quite like. Essentially banana-granola bread. This one weighs over 4 lbs. Done in a regular loaf pan. Sprinkle some cinnamon on a slice. Most of the dry ingredients were ground (in a cheap coffee grinder) to make it dense (this one is a little burnt on top).

Ingredients:

Wet – 4 bananas, extra virgin olive oil, blueberries, water.

Dry, Ground – oats, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, quinoa, brown rice.

Dry, Not Ground – corn meal, almonds, coconut, raisins.

Looks fabulous. Care to share the recipe?

Banana Bread

Preheat oven to 350F.

For grinding many of the dry ingredients, I use a cheap Black & Decker coffee grinder. They (or similar) are about $15 or $20 at Walmart.

The measuring for the dry ingredients that I grind is a bit wonky. I just fill the grinder (photo). It works out to be about 7/8 of a cup. Not critical. Below I will call it "one cup".

I don't add any sweetener. Doesn't need it. For backpacking one could add some honey or maple syrup (1/4 cup +). It would add some calories and help hold it together (though it holds together fine). Up to you.

It's OK to swap out some ingredients. For example you could use cranberries instead of blueberries.

— Dry Ingredients —

Ground each of the following…

3 cups oats (not quick oats)
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 cup brown rice

Add (but do not grind) the following…

1 cup coconut
1 cup corn meal
1 handful almonds
1 handful raisins

Mix all the above together in a large bowl.

— Wet Ingredients —

4 medium/large bananas
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup water (I eyeball this. You want enough to wet all ingredients enough to make the mix "doughy", but not sloppy wet.)

Combine and mix wet ingredients in a bowl. I use a potato masher to mix and mash bananas.

THEN add a handful of frozen blueberries and mix in. Don't mash them.

Lightly oil a large non-stick loaf pan (the top, inside measurements on mine: 9-1/2" by 5-1/4")

Add bowl of dry ingredients to bowl of wet ingredients. Mix enough to wet the dry ingredients.

Press the mix in the loaf pan. Smooth out the top.

Bake in preheated oven at 350F for 49 minutes (49 min in my convection oven).

Take out of oven and let cool for 20 minutes (don't ignore this step).

Turn upside down on rack. Drop ONE end of the pan onto the rack with some force to "shock it out" of the pan. Let cool.

Keep in the fridge. It will get firmer.

Try a slice with some cinnamon on top.

Fruitcake is pretty d@mn dense.

But it's tough to find a palatable fruitcake. ;o)

Has to be moistened with rich, hot cocoa so you can swallow it:-)

If you make your own fruitcake more like the Logan Bread that I have posted the recipe for, you can really control the texture and the flavor.

I've done backpacking trips where Logan Bread represented about 50% of everything that I ate.

–B.G.–

that is not to be sneered at..If you like candied figs and cherries and LOTS of pecans,it truly is excellent.

Unfortunately,in the world of Fruitcake ,that is not common..;)

But, do you really want candied fruit? In my Logan Bread, I use dried fruit.

–B.G.–

Your dried fruit infused Logan bread sounds excellent.