Food for winter nights
Winter is here, any long lasting food suggestions to generate body heat thru the 10-12 hour nights.
I like a bedtime cup of hot cocoa, often with a dollop of peanut butter stirred in.Originally Posted by Ercoupe
The other thing about long winter nights is they can be boring, so you have a lot more time to prepare and cook and eat food. This is especially true in very stormy conditions where you might want to or have to hunker down longer. So in winter it makes sense to be able to prepare and cook and eat food while in shelter from a storm, think blowing snow or freezing rain. Still, important to have food you can still eat even if you can't get a fire going. Nice to still have a flame of some sort, even if it is just a candle lantern. Something about a flame, psychologically, even if just a candle flame. A small improvised oil lamp can be very heart warming also, and the fuel can be a vegetable oil that doubles as food, and can also be used to simmer some tea even if you can't get a fire going. Hemp twine makes a good wick. Try not to have more than 0.5 oz of fuel in play at any given moment, and make sure if it does spill, and it will, that it does not spill on you, or on your clothes, or on your ground sheet and then run down onto you or you clothes or sleeping bag. Make sure if it spills it spills onto dirt. This goes for wax also, as once wax becomes liquid it will also heat up to a very high temperature, same as oil. Think 500 degrees F. Hot enough to burn you to the bone and ignite your own flesh, if there is enough of it. 0.5 oz at a time is a good rule. It will heat up faster, but will be much safer if it does spill.
Foods that are fun to take more time with in winter...
1. tea - regular of chai style with heated milk. Don't scald skim milk powder with boiling water. Saturate the powder first with some cold or warm water.
2. oatmeal porridge - to which you can add a lot of other dry stuff in different ways so you never have to have it the same way all the time.
3. oat cakes - experiment with taking some left over oatmeal porridge and baking it on a hot rock or something into an oat cake to carry with you.
4. lentil soup - again to which you can add a lot of other dry stuff, like dried vegetables, herbs, spices. Parsley adds a lot of vitamins and minerals.
5. bacon - everything is better with bacon, and you can save the bacon fat to use as a fun fuel, or for you oat cakes, or to add to your porridge or soup.
Have fun. Don't burn yourself.
Cautionary note on
Jello makes a nice hot drink before going to sleep.
Lots of fats: nuts, cheese, butter, bacon, pemmican, salami, bologna, dried whole milk or cream, etc. Just keep the non-cook ones from freezing, or warm them up if you have to. Get the rest of your calories from dried foods or baked goods, as other fresh foods with high water content don't necessarily do well in freezing temperatures, and generally don't have enough calories to justify their weight.
I tend to eat dinner around 6:00 - 7:00 on winter nights, turning in around 8:00. For winter night dinners, I make sure there are plenty of good complex carbs (rice, beans, pasta, nuts, etc.), fat and protein in the meal. The complex carbs and fats are what will stick with you through the night but chances are you still will have an empty tummy and cool down in the early morning.
Just before bed, I'll eat a miniature snickers bar or similar to get some quick energy in me and make sure I'm good in warm in my bag. If not for critters getting to it, I'd keep a quick energy type candy with me so if I started getting cold around 3 or 4 am I could pop that in and generate a bit of heat to last me for the next 2 or 3 hours.
And I agree with Jak that longer dark hours make for longer cooking time. I tend to cook with fire during the winter (where legal) and it's just plain fun to sit by the fire taking in its heat. My favorite winter desert is hot chocolate pudding (cook and serve type), teddy grahams, and crushed oreo cookies. Throw in some nuts or mini marshmallows to really make it go. Tastes fantastic and feels like liquid heat going down.
2,000 miler. Still keepin' on keepin' on.
Peanut M&M's are my go to, a fine balance between high energy chocolate, and peanuts to replace those empty carbs.
Also like oatmeal slurry for a quick warm me up and a some what sustained burn.
Jerky also takes a while to digest, and provides some good heat.
Beans are a staple, be it with rice, in chili, or on it's own.
Ditto this. Thus the peanut butter in cocoa, or butter in tea as is done in the Himalaya, I've heard. Winter is the only time I carry butter, and lots of it.
Thanks for the suggestions. I picked up a candle lantern this fall, and have tried it twice. Love the light and flame, bright enough to read with. Not much additional warmth, but I use it with the doorway open on the ground in my cook pot. So I really cannot expect any heat from it.
Had not thought of peanut butter in hot chocolate but it sounds great. Normally I eat potatoes with butter and stuffing mix at night, may have to try more beans/meat/peanuts/fats to get the needed fuel. Cook and serve pudding with oreo's another must try.
I am pretty much resigned to lower mileage and more weight (food/clothes) in winter, I could never carry what Tipi Walter does. But then my planned trips are only two to three nights sections of the North Country Trail, in preparation for a 4 week March attempt on the AT.
Dal bhaat tarkari. It's what keeps the Sherpas going.
I always know where I am. I'm right here.
Grits with bacon, cheese, and jalapenos. Will warm you and keep you warm. A cuppa hot tang with a shot of bourbon likewise. I will usually make a large batch of grits and save half to reheat for breakfast if there are not problem bears in the hood.
For really cold weather I cut up my cheese, sausage , etc into bite size pieces. If they are snacks you can thaw them in an inside pocket. Preped for a meal if they are for cooking. It's hard & dangerous to slice frozen cheese!
That about covers it...darn cant make a good suggestion.
Dogs are excellent judges of character, this fact goes a long way toward explaining why some people don't like being around them.
Woo
One pot chilies, stews, chowders, etc... A nice jambalaya with some fatty spicy sausage is a favorite of mine. Long ago we used to drink hot tang.
Try not to lose too much weight. By the time I hit the smokies in an unusually cold year, the only thing that kept me from waking up cold was adding (or drinking) extra olive oil to my last meal of the day. And the stuff tastes horrible! But it worked, as the nights were no colder than Georgia had been, but my loss of fat and muscle was really starting to show by then.
Of course this followed a full meal and then some. It's just that carbs and protein didn't seem to work as well as fat. I didn't have the problem when I started despite similar weather, it was clearly related to weight loss.
Eat when you wake up in the middle of the night. Works for me.
COG 2011
corn chips make a good quick snack and do have fat(oil) and carbs
Also the only good time for Recees Peanut Butter cups.
One of the best memories of my life is sipping whiskey from a Sierra cup in front of a fire during a wet and cold January hike. Don't remember what we had for dinner, but I do remember that whiskey.
Hearty soups - lentil bean dried dehydrated soup mix is a favorite which I add some hot peppers too
thermogenic foods containg garlic, peppers(cayenne is a good one)/tobasco sauce/capsacin, blk pepper, ginger, green tea, Chai tea, cinnamon, mustard, Bitters(from the Liquor Store)/shot of schnapps/brandy, vinegar, Hot Apple Cider(add some brandy or schnapps, cayenne pepper/Bitters, tobasco sauce to it)
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