blue dragon red thai curry paste - food find

I heard about this via a vegan food page I subscribe to on Facebook. I’m not a vegan but contributors there regularly post stuff up that also happens to be gluten free. And it happens my partner, Sarah, is vegan so this made a handy addition to our camp cooking repertoire.

There are three pastes in the range, all vegan and all GF, the others are a green Thai and Massaman one. It was the latter I was keen on trying but was unable to find it, so opted for this.

I tend only to cook from scratch when car camping or on ‘Cheeky Overnighters’ where weight isn’t an issue. And it was on one of these that the paste made its way on to the menu.

The plan was to pre-pack rice noodles, a vegetable stock cube, cashew nuts, tamari, sesame oil, and grated coconut cream.  And then pick up some veggies along the way. As it happened we managed to find a ‘Chef’s Selection’ of baby corn, carrot, broccoli and mange tout which made the meal more authentic.

In a Snow Peak 1400 pot I heated the paste on a very low flame, this released the flavours but I was mindful to make sure it didn’t burn. A glug of sesame oil helped here. In went the stock cube, water, coconut, tamari and veggies. The latter I’d cut down into smaller bite size pieces. If I was cooking for one I’d have dropped the noodles in the pot too but I wasn’t, so I boiled some water in a Snow Peak 900 for the noodles whilst the curry sat in a cozy. The cashews nuts were added to it just before serving.

Juggling noodles indoors is a feat in itself and it takes on a whole new dimension when camping. But I managed the divvying up with the help of an Orikaso folding plate that clips together to form a bowl with a spout for draining stuff. The plate also doubled as a chopping board and somewhere to hold the veggies whilst I got the curry on the go.

The outcome? A very enjoyable meal. I’d certainly recommend this paste and will try the others when I’m able to track them down. Meat eaters could add fish sauce, of course, for that authentic umami taste that was obviously missing.

A couple of things to note. The Orikaso plates are no longer available in the version that I used. I carried the sesame oil and tamari in GSI condiment bottles. The Snow Peak pots nest even with the cozies on making for a compact modular cook system. I also own a 600 mug allowing me to scale the system down to a one person one.

peddars way preparation

The National Trails website

The annual Easter backpacking trip planning is finally underway. The National Trails website is my first place to go, followed by picking up a guidebook and a Harvey’s strip map. I then spend time reading up on the route and scanning the map for potential camping sites. Although unfortunately Harvey’s don’t do a strip map of this trail. The decision to take OS maps or rely on the guidebook alone for navigation isn’t an easy one to make. It’s a National Trail so the way marking should be decent enough, the Peddars Way is relatively straight as it follows the course of a Roman Road, and when it hits the coast… Well, how hard is it to get lost when I’ve got the sea on my left hand side? Then I have my gram weenie head saying that the OS maps will probably weigh less than the guidebook but I’m resisting the urge to whip out the scales and put them on trial.

The start of the way is in a bit of an out of the way location, and I know that others who’ve done the trail caught a cab out from Thetford and split the fare. This is a solo venture at the moment but I have since discovered that there is a bookable bus that runs to the start and costs a miserly £2.20. A no-brainer then.

As it’s Easter I’ve also emailed a couple of campsites along the trail to make sure that they were open and had space. What surprised me was the responses from two of the sites; one from a pub that had camping wanted to charge me £15.00, and made no concessions for someone in a tiny tent and who was on foot. The other from a national organisation that had a backpacker concession for non-members at £6.55 per night. Another no-brainer.

Kit list compiling is the usual straightforward deal, with the usual musings over what cook system to take based on what food I fancy, so no change there. I’m debating whether to pack all the food I need or not. I’ll have a meal out but due to my dietary restrictions I can’t rely on finding stuff on route. At least on the coast there may be options but I could find myself subsiding on chips night after night. This might not be all hardship as I’ve discovered a fish and chip shop in Hunstanton that does gluten free battered fish so one less meal to pack.

With four weeks left to go I’m also getting in some training miles when the weather allows but my right knee is beginning to complain which I’m putting down to the cold damp weather but have it strapped to be on the safe side.

marks and sparks gluten free mini pork pies

A thin wash of glaze. 

A few months ago I discovered that M&S had started selling gluten free scotch eggs and they swiftly became the go-to day trip lunch item. At the time there was also some jokey dialogue going on a forum about what happened to those good old climbing/hiking food items like scotch eggs, pork pies and garibaldi biscuits. They had, for some, fallen out of fashion to ‘healthier’ options but for me the exclusion was a dietary one – I could no longer eat them.

Imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered that M&S are now doing pork pies and it goes without saying that I was scouting scotch eggs at the time, so grabbed a packet of these too.

A lack of jelly.

There are four mini pies in the pack weighing in at 50g each, and have the following food values 777KJ of energy, 12.3g fat, 14.3g of carbohydrate (CHO) and 4.5g of protein. And a pack of four cost circa £2.40. Being made from gluten free pastry I have to be forgiving, a bit, but I found the pastry a bit too dry. There didn’t seem to be sufficient fat content in the pastry to make the kind of crusty shell that pork pies are known for. There was an insufficient amount of glaze or lack of it on the pastry too. And the same can be said for the jelly which again is a key part of the pork pie experience. The first didn’t have any jelly and the remaining three had a small amount in the bottom of the pie with air space above. But not enough of it before it was lost. This is down to the fact that their size and the manufacturing process, no doubt. The filling again didn’t amount to much in volume but tasted well enough.

After the success of the scotch eggs I was disappointed by how these turned out. Personally I would rather have larger pies either 250g or even 500g sized ones that would have the space between the crust and filling for decent amount of jelly and would obviously contain an equally decent amount of meat too.

gluten free scotch eggs - marks & spencer

Just before Christmas there was a tongue in cheek discussion on a Facebook outdoor page about trail food. One poster was bemoaning the fact that nobody seemed to eat the classic rucksack staples such as pork pies, Garibaldi biscuits, scotch eggs, malt loaf, etc these days. I joined the discussion stating that Garibaldi biscuits were a favourite of mine because they were very durable but these days due to having to follow a gluten free diet they were off menu. As were the rest of the other items under discussion for that matter.

Gone is sixty seconds

Not long after that I was looking for lunch in M&S and discovered that they now sell gluten free scotch eggs so they ended up in my basket in a flash. Back at the office they were gone before I could make note of the nutritional detail! And they were very tasty, a little drier than I'd like but that's gluten free food for you. A quick warm up would solve that but perfectly acceptable as a lunch when out and about. Since their discovery they have found their way in to my daypack on a number of occasions.

As you'd expect from a pork meat encrusted egg fat is high up on the count at 23g per egg (114g each approx) with protein at 13g and carbohydrate at 14g. As you can see with the amount of fat (20%) in it the scotch egg doesn't fit in today's ideal diet but if I'm out and about on the hills in winter these 'fat bombs.' are ideal for bolstering calorie intake, and are far more tastier than some alternatives. 

kabuto gluten free rice noodles

There it was - gone!

I have fondness for oriental food so was happy to find these in my local Sainsbury’s. And sell for £2.00 per pot. There’s a small range of these (some with gluten in them) and the gluten free ones come in two flavours – chicken and miso. The chicken one is light and tasty with a bit of a chilli kick to it and the miso one is, well, savoury and salty as you would expect.

These make an ideal lunch or supper meal on the trail; one pot for lunch and I’d double up for supper. The miso one has 54.7g CHO and 261 calories. And there’s nothing to state that you can’t pimp the noodles with additional ingredients if you have them to hand, adding torn young nettle or dock leaves for example. On day hikes I wouldn’t bother to repackage but on longer trips I’d lose the cup and place the ingredients in a poly bag but remember make a note of how much water you need! With all these types of ‘instant’ noodles it’s just a matter of added the required amount of boiling water, stirring and leaving to stand for three minutes or so. I’d recommend giving them a stir a couple of times during that period because the first time I tried them some of the noodles were a bit chewy.

msr folding spoon

I think it’s a safe bet to make that cutlery items will be the most numerous in any backpackers gear box. I’ve long handled aircraft grade aluminium spoons, LMF sporks, folding titanium foons, sliding sporks, NT wooden spoons, a selection of use once cutlery collected from various salad meals, and GSI lexan bits and bobs. I even picked up a plastic spoon from Kenwood House recently – like I really needed to add to my collection! It’s the spoon from the GSI set that’s been my go-to item, it weighs 12g and is of a decent size for eating with. The only issue I have is that its handle is too long to fit in my canteen so has to be carried in my ditty bag. And even then is not a good fit (I use a 1l dry bag for all those odds and ends).

I came across the MSR folding cutlery set whist searching for something else and decide to purchase a spoon and give it a try. The set also has a spork and fork, and are colour co-ordinated with other MSR cookware. Their folded length is 12cm and they weigh 10g.

The spoon is currently nesting happily in my AGG Three Cup Pan, along with an AGG Pepsi can stove, pot lifter, lighter and GSI Cascadian Cup making a complete canteen set up. I’ve yet to try to see whether it will integrate with some of my other set ups. But looking at my smallest capacity system, a set up based around my Snow Peak 600 mug, it fits in the mug with my Coleman F1 stove but a small (200g) gas cartridge no longer fits snugly in as it did without the spoon. I rarely use that as a cooking pot preferring systems based on the larger Snow Peak 900 these days. It’s a long handled spoon, being twice its folded length, which is handy if you use a freezer bag cooking method or eat retort meals. The only downside I can see at the moment is that the bowl of the spoon is smaller than the one I’m used to.

food find – nairn’s gluten free biscuit breaks

 Like the 9Bars that I blogged about here, these have become a lunchtime stable and have found their way into my rucksack.

There are three varieties but the two that I favour are the oat & syrup and chocolate chip. The four biscuit pouch has 188 calories and circa 24g of carbohydrate, the slight variation is because the choc chip ones have a little more CHO. And, of course, they are gluten free. The biscuits have a great crunch and texture with the oat & syrup winning on the latter. Although I’ve not tried it yet the oat & syrup ones would make a great crumble topping on some stewed apple, with some Bird’s Instant Custard on the side - yum!

calorie and carb counting

Being a type 1 diabetic my overriding concern when out on a hike was how much carbohydrate (CHO) I’d need to keep me going, replace the glycogen in my body, and prevent hypoglycaemia (dangerously low blood sugar levels).

Over the weekend, among many of the conversations I had, one discussed weigh loss when on the trail. This got me thinking about the calorific value of the food I pack, and whether it met the demands of a day’s hiking.

The starting point was to establish my BMR (basal metabolic rate) this is an estimate of the minimum amount of calories needed to keep body functioning whilst at rest. I used the one on the myfitnesspal website here. Once I’d established that figure, I found an Activity Factor formula which is a basic multiplier of the BMR subject to the level of activity – see below.

Little/no exercise	BMR * 1.2
Light exercise	BMR * 1.375
Moderate exercise (3-5 days/wk)	BMR * 1.55
Very active (6-7 days/wk)	BMR * 1.725
Extra active (very active & physical job)	BMR * 1.9

   

A simple Excel spreadsheet did the trick. I’ve highlighted what I thought that would apply to time out hiking in the hills, and the formula determined that I would need 2,900 calories to maintain that level of activity. I then set about calculating how many calories I’d consumed listing them in the same spreadsheet. The outcome was a bit of an eye opener – I was short by circa 600 calories, that’s an approx. 20% shortfall. This probably is a factor in how I’ve managed to stay trim – which isn’t a bad thing. Whilst doing this exercise I also analysed the amount of CHO I consumed. This was also very revealing as it indicated that I need to increase the amount of CHO consumed at the end of the day, to top up the glycogen reserves, and to avoid an overnight slingshot hypo (never a good thing, and potentially life threatening).

In this instance, the shortfall was made up with a portion of chips and a few jars of cider. But going forward I’ll be re-introducing the stalwart Bird’s Instant Custard as a pudding with a cake bar or similar, not for the calories per se as I’d like to keep my figure, but for the necessary CHO loading.

food find - 9bar

I’ve been packing these on day walks and trips since Autumn last year, and been using them as a lunchtime snack even when I’m not out and about.

The bars come in boxes of four, each bar weighs 40g and for that you get approx. 11g of carbohydrate, 7g of protein, and 924KJ of energy per bar. The bars are made from a seed mix with a carob topping. Currently on offer in Sainsbury’s at £3.00 for two boxes (usual price £1.89).

That’s the facts bit out of the way but you will already have noticed from my first paragraph that they’ve become a staple in my diet. There are several reasons for this; I like the taste and texture, the carbohydrate load is about right for me as a mid-morning blood sugar lifter, and the bars don’t contain oats. This later point is important. I’m allowed to eat oats but have to keep an eye on the amount I eat on a daily basis, so I can happily eat a couple of these a day without worry.

The only downside I can see is the stability of the carob topping in warmer weather, even at this time of year the topping has stuck to the wrapper a couple of times.

lentil and cheese slices

Lunch is served

It’s often a good thing to get a fresh pair of eyes on things. The subject of food is very close to my heart and a regular topic of conversation with others who have an interest in the same subject. Inevitably I’d end up quizzing people with what they pack for lunch.

The basis of my lunch is oatcakes along with pate or squeezy cheese, not exactly exciting fare but does the job especially when bolstered with the usual suspects such as dried fruit and nuts, fresh fruit, chocolate or cereal bars. On rare occasions, I’ll bake a gluten free flat bread flavoured with cheese, garlic and rosemary.

After a couple of trips, the oatcakes and mushroom pate had lost their appeal, and I was out of gluten free bread mix for making flat bread, so one of the group volunteered to make some lentil and cheese slices ‘for a change’. My first thought was, ‘What amount of carbohydrate (CHO) are these going to have?’ because although pulses are high in CHO not all of it can be digested. Her recipe, below, cunningly includes gluten free bread crumbs to increase the amount CHO. These will keep for a couple of days so make a great option for weekend trips. They don’t have to be an exclusive lunch item – I’d happily have a slice as part of breakfast or supper!

Lentil and cheese slices

225g split red lentils, rinsed
450ml water
1 onion
25g butter
100g strong cheddar
1 tsp mixed herbs
2 slices of gluten free bread
1 free range egg
Salt/pepper

Method

Cook the lentils in the measured water until soft and all the liquid has been absorbed. Chop the onion, then melt the butter in the saucepan and fry the onion until transparent. Combine all the ingredients together and press into an oiled 23cm swissroll tin. Bake in the oven at 190c for 30 minutes. Allow to cool and cut into wedges, wrap the wedges in foil, any that aren’t going into the rucksack can be frozen. 

pennine way preparation

With the news of a new job to start in June on TGO magazine I decided that now would be the ideal opportunity to put the spirit burner back under a long term but as yet unrealised project; the Pennine Way.

This last week I've been cooking, dehyrating, bagging  and vacuum packing three weeks worth of food; Borlotti Bean Chasseur, Soya Mince Chilli, and Cheesy Polenta are all on the menu amongst other stuff.

Along side this I've also been some gathering kit; a Power Chimp, a North Face Infiesto Fleece and a pair of Pacer Poles.

The Power Chimp runs on a pair of rechargeble AA batteries, and I've also bought an adapter to charge my Lumix camera battery. AA batteries are easy to come by so I'm hoping to keep my phone topped up to stay in touch. And my camera charged so I can continue to take snaps.

The North Face Infiesto Fleece is new to the TNF line and has been sent for review. The base fabric is Polartec Power Dry and seems thin compared to the TKA100 fleece that I usually use so I'll see how that works out.

Lastly are the Pacer Poles. I've been friends with Alan and Heather for a number of years now and when I caught up with them at the BPC AGM they'd heard the good news about the job and my plans about the Pennine Way, so offered to send me a pair of their carbon three piece poles to try. I've done my reading and my bag is packed.

kenco millicano wholebean instant

Having just blogged about Nescafe's instant coffee with added microground coffee I found Kenco's offering on the same take.

The box of ten sachets retails for £1.99, and each sachet weighs 2.5g. There's nothing on the packaging about how much water I needed to use, so I made up a mugful. And as expected the coffee had the all important creama on top.

And the taste? I think I prefer it to the Nescafe one.

With three different offerings now in the market place it looks like I'm going to have to hold a head to head blind tasting. Watch this space!

bratwurst - food find

Bratwurst, like frankfurters, are precooked so only require heating through either by simmering in hot water or frying. And are similarly vacuum packed making them an ideal backpack provision, keeping for several days unopened. The net weight is 540g so plenty for two, although I managed to greedily devour a whole pack to myself.

I prefer to fry them because it adds a bit of colour as they are something of a sickly white colour. But don't let that put you off as they have a distinct flavour that marries well with pickled cabbage for example.

On a recent trip I sliced them and cooked them in my skillet, serving them up with instant mash. Other ideas could involve making a pasta sauce or some sort of stew.

msr quick skillet

I love cooking. At home the two most used pots/pans are a large Le Creuset casserole and a frying pan or skillet as they are otherwise known. Apart from the more obvious job of frying things I use mine to make risottos, pilavs, chasseur sauces, pasta sauces, in fact anything that requires a large surface area allow the food to reduce down and concentrate the flavours.

Out on the trail I'm lazy, I fall back on the same two meals; cheesy polenta, and tuna and mash. Because they're simple, easy to prepare, tasty and filling. And in the depths of winter I don't want to be waiting around to eat.

Come the summer though, the days are longer and there's more time for messing around with fresh ingredients. Cooking uses more fuel so there's a weight penalty but this can be offset. Most campsites stock basic provisions, and there's a chance that you'll pass through a village where things can be bought and then carried for the last mile or so to the campsite. And vegetables don't need boiling to oblivion; red pepper, courgette, and mushroom are edible with the minimum amount of cooking.


The MSR comes with a folding detachable handle which means if you take any of the other pots or pans in the range only one handle is needed. It has a hard non stick finish which is essential for any frying pan/skillet, the capacity is 1.4l making it big enough to cook a meal for two. It's 5cm deep, has a diameter of 19cm and weighs 160g. The one thing it lacks is a lid but I'm sure I can fashion one out of an aluminium pie dish.

With the handle out there will be stability issues with stoves with small pot supports, although it's wise to hold any pot or pan by the handle when cooking especially whilst stirring the food.

nescafe - food find

This is Nescafe's take on Starbuck's Via. Currently on offer for £1.00 at my local Sainsbury's. A box contains five sachets of instant coffee with added micro ground coffee, just like Via. Each sachet weighs 2.5g and the instruction state to use 200ml of water, so for a decent sized mug you might need two.

And the taste... as you'd expect the micro ground coffee adds taste particularly as you get the all important crema on top but it isn't as good as the Colombian Via because I prefer bolder flavoured coffee. But at the current promotional price it's hard not to like.

classic kit - green top poly bottle

I'm going to start a competition by posing the question, how old is this bit of kit? But any self respecting backpacker will already know the answer to this without needing to reach for their copy of the 1976 book Backpacking in Britain by Derrick Booth and Robin Adshead... Doh!

I'll claim that this one isn't that old but it isn't that far off. I only have two of these left, and they still get used for carrying dried milk and fresh coffee these days, not some freeze dried stuff like yesteryear.

One of the best culinary tips I gleaned at the time was to break eggs into a jug and decant them into a (larger) Green Top poly bottle. Devoid of shell they could be carried without any chance of being broken - that had already been done at home! From an advert at the time where the question was posed, 'How do you like your eggs? Fried or boiled?' Well boiled is the only way you can't serve them.

heinz squeeze and stir soups

I read about these on Darren's blog, so when I was next in the supermarket I headed off to the aisle where they have the soups and picked up a couple to try. Heinz Cream of Tomato soup needs no introduction and is the utimate winter comfort food, ideal for the coming season. And just like it's big brother that comes in a can it's gluten free. They weigh 72g and are simple to use, simply tear off the perforated top, squeeze into your mug and stir in the water. And as the soup is a concentrated paste you don't get that after taste like you do with packet soups. Apart from the obvious use as a warming starter there's scope to use the soup as a base for something more substantial by adding pasta, dried veg, etc to it. So it's lightweight, tasty, low bulk and no packet soup after taste, so what's not to like? Well at 59p a satchet, the price is a bit hard to swallow. That said one or two of these are going into my food bag on trips out over the next six months.

grower's cup coffee brewer

The Grower's Cup coffee brewer is an innovative way of getting a cup of fresh brewed coffee on the trail. It's simple to use just open the top, pull a red string (that opens the spout) and pour in 0.5l of hot water. The top is then re-closed and you leave it to brew from 5 to 8 mins depending on how strong you like your coffee.

The coffee, which is from Ethiopia, organically grown and fair trade, has an excellent flavour, and it was a pity that I only got one sample to try. The pouch weighs 45g, and as you can see from the picture it's fairly large although not particularly deep. It's being distributed by Rosker - 023 9252 8711 - sales@rosker.co.uk and will cost £2.50 per pouch. Despite being very good coffee, in my mind, the cost and the bulk of the product lets it down.

helen browning's speedy sausages

These were suggested to me by a friend who also suffers from coeliac disease. Each packet has two portions of six sausages at 100g per portion, a handy size as part of a meal for one. The nutritional values are as follows; 1176KJ of energy, 17g of protein, 23g of fat, and a minuscule 0.6g of carbohydrate per portion.

The cooking instructions say they can be fried in a little oil in five minutes. As I wanted to simulate a camp cook scenario I set up my Coleman F1 lite on the patio and cooked them on a low gas with no oil in a non stick Primus fry pan. These are not called speedy for nothing and they were ready to eat in no time. I loved the taste of these although the fat content was a little high for my liking.


I've not tried any recipe ideas out yet but I guess they could be served with instant mash, with baked beans, or added to a rice or pasta dish. One of the dishes I've always wanted to re-create on a camp stove is Fabada. I can now envisage pre-diced chorizo being heated in a pan with the sausages until cooked through, chicken stock being added along with garlic granules, dried onion, and dried cooked cannelli beans. Then the seasoning; turmeric, smoked paprika, and ground pepper. The whole thing being brought to the boil and simmered, or put in a cosy, until the beans are reconstituted. I can't wait to give it a try.

mrs crimble's crackers

Finding a decent bread substitute for a backpacking lunch is a pain when on a gluten free (GF) diet. Doubly so because I'm a diabetic and need carbohydrate (CHO) to count against the insulin that I inject.

So lucky for me that I was approached by a PR company, The Ideas Network, who's client is Mrs Crimble's, and they sent me three boxes of cheese crackers to try. As it happens at the beginning of this week I was completing the last leg of the South Downs Way, and whilst in the general store in Alfriston I spotted a box of these crackers, so naturally I bought a box.

The three varieties are Original Cheese, Sundried Tomato and Pesto, and Rosemary and Onion, typical Mediterranean flavours then. Nutritionally they all contain 63.8% CHO however the flavoured crackers have few more calories than the plain ones. I like cheese flavoured biscuits because they can be eaten without any spread or topping, and, if you're lucky to have some, they go really well with sliced chorizo or salami.

Each box contains 7 servings of 4 crackers, giving 11.5g CHO per serving, so to suit my need I'd be looking at having a third of a box for lunch when out on the trail.

The crackers are very crisp, and like all gluten free biscuits and crackers they need careful packing because they will break up. Unsurprisingly it's because it's the gluten in wheat and other grains that hold bread, biscuits, etc together. Another point to note is that GF products are usually made from a mix of various starches, and potato starch likes absorbing moisture given any opportunity. Storage in an air tight container is a must, especially as the crackers aren't packed in portions. That said if there were two of you then sharing a box would solve that issue.

The flavouring isn't overpowering like some others I've tried. I'm always wary when food stuff has onion flavouring as usually several hours after eating I can still taste the onion, not so in this case. And I particularly like the crunchy crispness of the crackers.

I'm glad I was offered the opportunity to try these as they will help break up the monopoly that oat cakes have had on my lunch breaks.