Pemmican

January 20, 2008 | Filed Under Hiking, Nutrition, Climbing | 2 Comments 

Water. Nutrition. Shelter. The three basics of staying alive in the roaring outdoors. You either take them with you, or find them on the way.

I’ve been looking for alternatives to my usual food pack of Snickers bars and curry rice. Snickers are fine but they don’t hold up well in warmer weather. And curry rice tends to be cloying at the end of a dehydrated day, not to mention the mess. Making pemmican has been high on my list of things to try for some time, but this year I’m going to do it.

Pemmican has been described as the ultimate food. Originally a Native American invention (it means literally “travel food for long trips”), it is a high energy but balanced mix of fat, meat and fruits. Per gram, its nutritional value is hard to beat. It can last for years without going bad. Antarctic expeditions lived exclusively on it for six months at a time.

I’ve been racking my mind over where to get the fat though. Hardly a readily available item in the middle of Tokyo, I thought. It was hard enough at the Kinokuniya supermarket explaining that I needed yeast to make bread that one time. I might as well have asked where the armoured weaponry section was.

Then I remembered. Before cooking sukiyaki, the pan is primed with a big lump of fat. Pure, white beef suet. Definitely a supermarket item.

Tomorrow I will trawl the supermarkets of Aoyama in search of ingredients. I may have to skip the powdered beef liver though. But pemmican of some form will be mine.

Does it really have the lasting properties ascribed to it? Can it feed an army for weeks? Is it the food of the gods?

Or will the immortal words of antipodean bard Mike “Crocodile” Dundee ring true:

Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like shit.