Butter...

[Appalachian Tater]

The question I have is where / how to get olive oil on the trail. The smallest sizes I've seen are just to big to carry the whole bottle/amount. Have you been able to split with other folks?????

Most grocery stores will have an 8 ounce bottle of olive oil. That's 16 tablespoons, not so much as it looks like in the thick glass bottle.

[Jack Tarlin]

Funny......someone said people carried Squeeze Parkay "back in the day".

I STILL carry it, or something like it, like "I Can't Belive It's Not Butter".

And some folks laugh at me, or question that I'm carrying 8 ounces of it, but funnny thing: If it's on the picnic table, at least one person, and usually more, will want to "borrow" some, guaranteed. So the 8 ounces goes faster than you think!

Oh, and I carry Olive Oil, too, in a four ounce Nalgene.

[Pedaling Fool]

The question I have is where / how to get olive oil on the trail. The smallest sizes I've seen are just to big to carry the whole bottle/amount. Have you been able to split with other folks?????

Most grocery stores will have an 8 ounce bottle of olive oil. That's 16 tablespoons, not so much as it looks like in the thick glass bottle.

I've also had luck in finding the small 8 oz platic bottles in Dollar stores.

[aaroniguana]

In place of butter I carry... Butter!

http://www.internet-grocer.net/butter.htm

[beeman]

I have a vacuum sealer and I made a series of tubular seals in a quart bag. Orient it so the one open side doesn't get sealed yet. Then I poured different things in them, one ingredient per bag, like olive oil, dr brommers soap. Regardless of how many tubes you make in a bag, I would only pour soap in a tubes in the same bag.Then I put the bags upright in the freezer. The next day the oil and soap was hard enough for me to vacuum seal them. Then I cut the individual bags free and dropped them in a resupply box. That's how I resupplied my small squeeze bottles. Works pretty well.

[Lellers]

mayo packets from the deli. It's just beaten oil and melts down. It's probably full of icky preservatives, too.

[scout005]

I think enertia trail foods sells dehydrated "butter powder" in bulk. It sounded good. i'm considering buying some of their stuff for my thru. They also have 26% dried whole milk which sounds interesting.

http://trailfoods.com/index.html

[Alligator]

Those were very good suggestions Beeman. Did any of the side seals fail?

[Appalachian Tater]

I've also had luck in finding the small 8 oz platic bottles in Dollar stores.

Watch out, sometimes that stuff is a blend of olive oil with other vegetable oils. I've even seen "honey" that was a blend with corn syrup. You have to read the labels.

[minnesotasmith]

back in the day everybody carried Squeeze Parkay

They started reading labels and saw the word "hydrogenated". Olive oil has made Parkay obsolete for trail food. (It even comes in small plastic bottles that are compatible with it, if you look.)

[mudhead]

I have a vacuum sealer and I made a series of tubular seals in a quart bag. Then I cut the individual bags free and dropped them in a resupply box. That's how I resupplied my small squeeze bottles. Works pretty well.

What sort of bag and sealer did you use? This sounds like a slick trick!

[jersey joe]

I wish I had thought to bring olive oil on my thru hike. Good source of calories that I could have used. Also, a few people out there carried sticks of butter, especially in March, April, May...it seemed to keep well enough.

[Philippe]

Aaroniguana said it best! Use butter. There's no substitue. I carry it in a food tube. Make sure you have the end on properly. Maybe I'll try stuffing it into squeeze bottles like Beeman suggests. Sounds like a good idea. Make buckwheat ployes and eat them with real butter.

[JumpInTheLake]

Salted butter holds up well. It's salted so it will last longer, and it tastes better. I take real salted butter in small Nalgene jars. Nothing beats butter!

[sarbar]

I know I have posted it before but make Ghee at home with butter. It is butter after you do it - it is just shelf stable. It is very easy to make. All you do is heat and clarify your butter and ta-da, good for a year.

[Mud]

We always just used ice cube trays to freeze the olive oil. Once frozen, vacuum seal them, then cut them apart. Perfect serving size in each one. Course, we stuck them all in a bag as well, just in case they leaked.

[Lone Wolf]

Whats a good sub for butter or other things that would help keep food from sticking. I read a recipe for quesadilas somewhere on a backpacking site, but it called for butter which is hard to keep in the desert. Any other options???

Thanks as always,
--Nick--

squeeze Parkay

[mudhead]

My jug of squeeze Parkay no longer has trans fat. I liked the old version taste-wise, but will struggle on!

Beeman- I would still enjoy knowing the brand of bag and sealer you used. Was the cutting apart difficult? (Kinda clutzy, is it a fussy job?)

[beeman]

regarding olive oil. I have a vecuum sealer. I took a sealer bag and sealed across it vertically to make a series of narrow tubes out of one bag. Then I poured olive oil in each tube and set the whole thing upright in the freezer. Next day the oil had solidified and I vacuum sealed it, then cut the individual tubes free. I dropped them in resupply boxes. Once they arwmed up they returned to liquid. Later I earned about mayonaise. It is emulsified oil. You can easily find fast food mayonaise packets. Open one or two of them in your pan and after a little heating they return to oil.

[fehchet]

coconut oil is good for everything.