Perhaps 5,000 years ago this sort of thing was the pinnacle of food portability, but I suspect that with modern techniques, materials, and technologies we can come up with something better. However, when those things are lacking it’s nice to know the fallback position will work.
In Secrets of Polar Travel, explorer Robert Peary spends several pages waxing poetic about the merits of a ration he brought on his expeditions to the Arctic between 1886 and 1909. In addition to ranking it “first in importance” among his supplies, he genuinely enjoyed the food, writing that it was the only meal “a man can eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in a year and have the last mouthful taste as good as the first.”
Peary was talking about pemmican, a blend of rendered fat and powdered, dried meat that fueled exploration and expansion long before his attempts to reach the North Pole. Archaeological evidence suggests that as early as 2800 BC humans hunted the bison that roamed North America’s Great Plains and blended their meat, fat, and marrow into energy-dense patties with a serious shelf-life. A single pound of pemmican lasted for years and might’ve packed as many as 3,500 calories.
Food certainly does give energy, but I’m not sure if I’d call these ‘energy bars’ rather than ‘food bars’, anymore than beef jerky is ‘energy strips’.
It might be interesting to experiment with. Be kinda nice to make, essentially, some Purina People Chow.
A historical re-enactor did a four part video on the stuff, with it’s history (at least in the US) It’s an interesting watch, if you are into that sort of thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_vLuMobHCI&list=PL4e4wpjna1vxXNa7kCTF3i2LzFE9uKPPU
I haven’t made pemmican in probably 20ish years. Did it just to see if I could remember how. This was before I had the Internet. I have plenty of books with the recipes so no worries there. Used a combination venison and beef tallow with dried cranberries and venison jerky. Turned out ok. It certainly was edible. Came in handy during deer hunting. My project for today is trying to find the book with the recipe in it for something called “Logan’s Bread”. IIRC a 4 inch square has somewhere around 700 calories. Haven’t made that in 20ish years either. But I’ve been feeling the need to add to some high calorie rations to my winter bag for some reason.
Townsend Channel over on U Tube did a series on Pemmican a while back.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4e4wpjna1vxXNa7kCTF3i2LzFE9uKPPU
Is this it?
http://howtowilderness.com/2012/07/29/how-to-survive-logan-bread/
Yeppers That’s it! Thanks Bonnie!
The issue, as I understand it, is how to keep nutritious fats from going rancid. Carbs are easy–dried and kept dry, they’ll keep indefinitely. Same for thoroughly dried proteins. Fats are a problem. Trans-fats truly are evil. “Partially hydrogenated” will keep indefinitely because not even bacteria or bugs can eat it. Try to find lard that isn’t hydrogenated. I ended up rendering my own from organic fatback and I keep it in the freezer for long term storage.
A friend once insisted that the ideal “survival ration” food would be something that you’d never be tempted to raid unless you truly were desperate and hungry enough. He suggested the classic GORP, good ol’ raisins and peanuts, stuffed in a can and smothered in hot, liquid lard. At room temp, you could spoon it out, reasonably nutritious and very energy dense.
They used suet to make pemmican originally- It doesn’t go bad.
Apparently, the loss of free roaming buffalo in North America dramatically changed the ecology of it, with a serious decline of animals, birds, and plants. The main problem is that to have any reasonable number of Bison, they have to be free roaming, as it is not financially feasible to fence the shaggy buggers. They ignore normal fences. Takes steel bars or I-beams to a height of about 10 feet to corral them. Anything less and they don’t seem to take notice. I have heard that their meat is much better/healthier than beef is. Shame we can’t figure out how to replicate their original living conditions within the US.
Local farmers fence the bison with 3″ drill steel posts every 10 feet, and 8 foot tall high tensile wire field fence. It keeps bison in and moose out.
A small herd of Bison has been happily living in a state park 50 miles south of Chicago in Indiana with public viewing area. To see them up close you realise how tough plains indians were to hunt them with small bows/spears (size of large bull with a much thicker hide and BAD attitude)
Had to chuckle. I’m eating the last of my bison tonight.
All ground. Stuffed bell peppers and stuffed acorn squash.
Wonder if prices have dropped on some of these hunts.
No I gotta go check.
There is a lot of fat in real pemmican, and a lot of energy in fat. A pound of tallow is going to have nearly twice the calories of a pound of lean meat or a pound of carbs.
Seal oil and berries is another traditional energy food, in places where you can get the ingredients.
Catfish is right-The RevWar and Mountain Man reenactors are all over this stuff. Pemmican, parched corn, and hardtack, among others. I never did pemmican, but I’ve done hardtack and I love it. I’ve done it original style and with some coconut oil to soften it and Swedish-style. It’s great. I even foil-wrapped the old school hardtack and put it in my emergency kit. It won’t go bad. Hood’s Woods used to do a recipe for Bannock that you should still be able to find.
FWIW- I just buy beef jerkey and beef sticks. My buddy has a freezer full of steaks. He’s set until the power goes out-then he’s in for one heck of a cookout. Me, I can store jerkey for years and if I want to make stew or soup, just toss some small chunks in the pot. Flavors are light years ahead of the old days when it was either teriyaki or black pepper.
Also, I have rediscovered the joy of Spam. If you haven’t sampled Spam in a long time, it’s not as bad as you might think it was. Also, they’ve added some pretty good flavors. Spam Bacon is crazy good with some eggs. The cans are chintzier than I like, but I’ve only seen one or two go bad over the years. It’s painfully obvious when the new aluminum ones go bad, because they turn football-shaped.
I recently started buying these instant energy packets you find in grocery stores in the juice and tea/coffee area for emergencies. Sort of like Crystal Lite, they’re intended for cyclists and hikers. You mix the pre-measured powder into your water and drink it for a temporary meal replacement.
Most of what I pack for day trips and emergencies are energy bars. I like the Lara bars, which are just dates, nuts, and apples. Dates are really dense and fill you up fast. I also like the Rx bars. I was a Cliff bars fan, but they’re just too sweet, still that’s not a sin if you need to eat it. These days, you can even find meat bars if you’re willing to pay the extra $$$.
BTW- with all the shelf-stable meal pouch options in the stores, you can pretty much assemble your own MREs at the grocery store. I get one of the big ziploc bags, put in a disposable fork, knife, spoon, napkin, pepper and salt packet from a recent fast food visit, put in an instant meal in a foil bag (no cans-too heavy), add an energy bar, put in some boullion cubes or powdered soup or even a single serving box of soup or baked beans, and a packet of instant coffee and a tea bag and there you go. If you were a fan of the crackers and peanut butter or cheese spread, you can even approximate that with packaged saltines and single-serving peanut butter pouches. I’ve even seen some camping stores selling shelf-stable cheese. I note the contents and calories in permanent marker on the bag. I can even do vegetarian and carnivore meals to suit various friends’ and family members’ tastes. With the contents of 1 bag, you have everything you need for at least one meal and possibly for a full day. If you eat fast food occasionally, you have a ready source for single serving ketchup, salt, pepper, mustard, napkins, taco sauce, etc. It’s bulky, but no worse than an original MRE. And you can customize them to your taste. No more having to root through the case to find the one good meal. And with the crazy options in the stores now, you can have instant Indian channa masala with basmati rice for lunch, follow it down with a cup of tea and a breakfast bar for desert. That’s a big departure from the good ol’ days.
I wonder if Logan bread is a home made variation on the Logan bar or D ration of WW2. As far as food science goes, no one has come up with a truly better emergency ration than pemmican. The alternatives are cheaper and can be mass produced, but usually don’t equal the energy density.
“People chow” just makes me think of Soylent Green.
I’m going long on Mountain House beef stew, Chili mac/beef and Italian pepper steak and rice. After a long day of shooting zombies, patrolling the perimeter and cleaning guns, I want enjoy my whiskey and eat good.
Any wandering sorority members with self esteem issues may not want to stick around if all there is to eat is fatty buffalo scraps.
Besides, I don’t think we have much longer to why not live it up while we can.
The French voyageurs were famous for living up to a year on pemmican while trapping and paddling huge cargo canoes up to 100 miles in a day. The major drawback is it is the definition of a ketogenic food(body converts fat to ketones for energy),unless you have gone through “keto flu”(your body going through carb withdrawal and starting to use ketones-happened to me in USMC bootcamp and was as bad or worse than drug withdrawl(from my description to addicts-they cringe, Drill instructors were frightened at my symptons until corpsman told them I probably would not die on them) in a SHTF situation you may well persish. You will lose weight as your body scavanges for energy.
I have spent some time researching pemmican thoroughly, and then making, eating, and storing my own. There is a tremendous amount of misunderstanding out there about what pemmican is and how it’s made.
First off, pemmican is NOT made with fat. It’s made with the rendered product of fat, which would be tallow for most kinds of meat but is called lard when it’s pork. I love cooking with lard like my grandma did but it’s not suitable for pemmican, it’s melting point is too low. Suet is the name given to dense, high quality fat from around the kidneys of an animal, which is preferred for pemmican AFTER it’s been rendered. Rendering is simply the process of heating the fat to a uniform 230F or so for long enough to remove all of the water, and then poured through a strainer to remove other impurities.
Second, properly stored tallow doesn’t go rancid. It’s the water that causes it to go bad so you remove the water, use completely dried (not cooked!) meat, and then keep dry and cool for storage and it will last indefinitely.
Third, the quality of the meat and fat you use has a VAST impact on the nutritional value of your pemmican. In a nutshell, dried (not cooked!) meat and rendered fat from grass fed animals is so nutritionally dense that Hudson Bay trappers were said to have wintered far north with no other sustenance without experiencing scurvy or any other ill effects.
Last, pemmican is extremely calorie dense. Carbs and proteins typically have around 3 calories per gram but fats have around 5 calories per gram. If you are worried about eating high natural fat foods, don’t be. Everything you have been taught about the traditional food pyramid is wrong, including the dangers of natural fats in the diet. (Stay away from man made fats and oils.) Properly made pemmican is a huge source of energy that won’t spike your glucose levels around.
Here’s the best resource on making pemmican you will ever find:
http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf
The best thing I have found to add to my pemmican is dried orange peel. It’s a good flavoring that won’t add moisture.
If you have a vacuum sealer I think adding honey is fine but I wouldn’t do it otherwise because it will attract insects.
Is pemmican humidity sensitive ? I ask as our local environment is very sauna like. Summers are over the century mark and often humidity levels of over 70% and above – as a rule, not an exception.
You need to keep it dry. Moisture is what feeds bacterial growth, it won’t grow on properly made pemmican otherwise.
It may not be historically accurate but I’ve found a good vacuum sealer to be awesome for pemmican. Sealed and stored at room temperature it will last longer than you will.