Clean eating in tough spots!

By Razor.

Anna asked me to create an article for the primal blog, so I’ve given this whole ‘writing’ thing a shot and managed to come up with what you are hopefully about to read. My article focuses on ‘primal eating in the bush’, but the real focus of the article is about how clean eating can be done anywhere at anytime!

I have loved clean eating July so far! However, as I started thinking about the months ahead and the coming bushwalking season, I started to wonder how I would cope. Whilst thinking about bushwalking, I started to consider what I would normally eat, out in the rugged wilderness of Tasmania. The following menu can be classified as a pretty average day for out in the bush;

Breakfast:
Porridge, huge amounts! With a few big lumps of brown sugar, (got to have all of those carbs if I’m going to get through the day right?) Coffee x2

Snack:
Mixed nuts with chocolate, lollies, dried fruit and muesli bars x3

Lunch:
Crackers with peanut butter, nuttella and wraps

Dinner:
Instant creamy pasta meals

Dessert:
Biscuits with a hot chocolate

Besides the coffee, I don’t think this list contains anything that even slightly resembles ‘clean eating’. So after a few minutes of brain storming, I came up with a new menu for the bushwalking trips I plan to do in the future. This is my new ‘clean’ bushwalking menu;

Breakfast:
Breakfast was the hardest one to think of, as I needed something that would be light and easy to carry. After a while I came up with the idea of carrying eggs, pre cracked into a zip lock bag which I could fry up with a huge lump of butter! This worked out well, I carried around the eggs, pre cracked, in a double zip locked bag in my back pack for a day and it was fine. This breakfast only weighed 200 grams which is lighter than the amount of porridge I would normally take so I was pretty confident I could take eggs for breakfast for a 3-5 day trip with no worries. Coffee - never leave home without it!

Snacks:
I could do the easy thing and say nuts, lots of them, but that would be boring. So I thought I would try thinking of a few different clean eating snack ideas. The best one was beef jerky, light, easy, salty, (good for rehydration after a long summers day) and yummy! Carrot sticks with almond butter is another good option, (actually stole that from Tans post! cheers Tan!) Carrots last ages and don’t get crushed. Another great snack was the small 100 mil long life containers of cream, they weigh little, last ages and take up about the same space as a couple of muesli bars.

Lunch:
For lunch I decided on a big block of cheese and tuna packets. They make tuna in these little sealed packets which is great for bushwalking as you don’t have to carry around the heavy tin. Cheese last ages, has lots of fat in it and is uber yummy! I also put in an avocado for the first day for a bit of variety. An assortment of meat can also be taken, liver paste and kabana will last for a long time in your pack, and they will also insure you don’t go crazy eating just cheese!

Dinner:
Dinner was the easiest. If you have a dehydrator or a friend that has one you can simply make any meal and shrink it down to size! I find bolognaise type sauces work the best, or curries. This is super easy, light and doesn’t take too long to heat up on a MSR stove. The variety of food that can be dehydrated is endless!

Dessert:
These days I would probably go without dessert, but I’ve included one just for the sake of anyone else out there who wants a dessert of some kind! Ash had the great idea of mixing double thickened cream with a hazelnut spread, (as you can see I love using the ideas of other people!) this makes an ice cream type paste which is apparently very nice. Paleo cookies are also easy to make, just look them up on Google, they usually include almond meal, coconut, milk, cocoa and eggs.

And there you have it! That’s my idea of ‘clean eating for bush walking’, light, easy and very simple. I hope this little article has shown you that you can do clean eating anywhere. All you need to do is write down your ideas and plan ahead. This doesn’t just apply for bushwalking, think about that trip up to Launceston, that business meeting where you know there will be 100 biscuits but not a steak in sight! As long as you think outside the box, (except for Drum, AS and Russ who can only think in the box, hehe) and write down your ideas you will be amazed at just how easy it is!