Food list from a book I read

unregistered29228 · #1 07/14/10, 12:22 PM

I just finished reading Winter Watch by James Ramsey, written in 1989. He spent 8 months in the Arctic, in a small cabin so he could experience winter there. The book is in the form of a journal of his daily activities. It was light reading and I didn't learn a whole lot from it, but it was interesting. The best part was at the end, where he provided a list of all the food he took in with him. I was impressed by the variety and lack of junk food, and mentally compared it to the things I have stored for my family. The main thing I noticed is that he has NO beef products in his stores, and that my food stores is a lot heavier in rice, lentils and beans. He only had four cans of tuna! We eat that in one night!

Food list from a book I read - Survival & Emergency Preparedness

Food list from a book I read - Survival & Emergency Preparedness

mpillow · #2 07/14/10, 01:17 PM

very cool...Arctic "living" books are some of my fav. to read especially non fiction...I'll have to find a copy!
Thanks for sharing!

Cyngbaeld · #3 07/14/10, 01:38 PM

He was probably planning on hunting and fishing for his meat.

InHisName · #4 07/14/10, 03:32 PM

I love lists! Freeze driend cottage cheese? Have to try that.... Thanks for posting.

unregistered29228 · #5 07/14/10, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyngbaeld

He was probably planning on hunting and fishing for his meat.

He did have some caribou and moose meat from a friend who lived up the river, but I would be afraid to count on wild game for my meals.

beaglebiz · #6 07/14/10, 04:26 PM

He packed m and m's...man after my own heart

**GREENCOUNTYPETE** · #7 07/14/10, 04:37 PM

it seems a little light but i like to have lots of food around , i would atleast have more beans and oat meal the bisquick , pancake mix and flour seem very redundant they are all basicaly the same thing but with a tiny difference of salt and baking powder , powdered milk ,

he had everything to make biscuits and pancakes before adding the pancake mix and bisqiuck.same thing for corn bread packages everything to make corn bread was already listed above.

did it make any mention of what he would have brought more of if he did it again also how long was this 2 months 3 months or more , i think that looks like 2 months food for 1 person, but i like food it may well be 3 months but i certainly wouldn't want to go 6 months on that

but it sure would be a weight loss program

naturelover · #8 07/14/10, 04:42 PM

He had a case of canned ham, 6 cans of bacon and a side of bacon. That makes a lot more sense than beef as it's more versatile to go with the other products he had and it's much more digestible.

Dutch 106 · #9 07/14/10, 05:13 PM

Hey,
Oh somebody would die,
only 5 pounds or so of choclate!
Dutch

sgl42 · #10 07/14/10, 05:46 PM

i find the quantities interesting. for comparison, i'm single, so quantities below are for 1 person, not a family. plus i don't do huge amounts of physical labor to build an appetite either, so i would burn much more in an extreme climate.

when i first bought wheat berries, i went thru 25 lbs of wheat in 3 months, and that was before i started making bagels for breakfast too. he has 75 lbs of flour, so about the same, but likely needs far more calories than i due to low temps.

also, 25 lbs of brown rice last me about 6-8 months (i rarely eat white rice). he only has 5 lbs of brown rice and 5 lbs of white rice. guess he doesn't eat it much compared to me, but he doesn't have tons more wheat than i have either. looks like he has some pasta and potatoes for bulk calories too. (not sure how much 5# of dried potatoes is equivalent to in regular potatoes, but probably quite a bit.)

a couple years ago, i bought 5 lbs each of 3-4 different types of nuts. they lasted about 3 months, so about 5 lbs of nuts per month, about 1 lb per week. and that was mostly just for snacking, not specifically for meal ingredients. he has 2 #10 cans of nuts, which i don't know the weight of, and 3 lbs total of 3 other nuts, to last 8 months.

i haven't closely tracked my oil/fat consumption, but i'm pretty sure mine is much lower than his. he has 2 lbs oil, 10 lbs butter, 10 lbs margarine, 2x #10 cans of crisco (unknown weight) etc. plus cheese which is heavy fat also. that will certainly provide tons of calories, needed in a cold climate.

i haven't got a good metric on my bean consumption, so i can't compare his consumption relative to mine. he seems to like navy beans a lot more than other beans tho! (my personal fav is black beans/turtle beans.)

very interesting to see supply lists, and try to reverse engineer what they're eating. seems his diet is a bit different than mine. not sure what i'd do with so much crisco!

--sgl

Spinner · #11 07/14/10, 06:53 PM

The list looks a bit sparse for my taste, but he has a lot of things on it that I don't use, so maybe that makes up for it a little.

I'd go thru that 1 gal of olive oil in 4 months or less. 1 lb of baking powder wouldn't last me very long either. 10 lb of butter would last me about 4 or 5 weeks! I guess I use a lot more butter than average. That 75 lbs of flour would worry me. I use about 500 lbs of wheat berries a year, not sure how that would translate to ready to use flour.

Cyngbaeld · #12 07/14/10, 07:04 PM

For 8 months that is a bit low on calories for someone dealing with cold, cutting wood and whatever other work he would be doing. Might make it 4 on that, IMHO. I think he would need rather a lot of meat from game and fish.

Dutch 106 · #13 07/14/10, 08:04 PM

Hi,
I think he is making biscuts from a mix of margerine and crisco. What he is doing with the bisquick I'm not sure
Dutch

mpillow · #14 07/14/10, 08:22 PM

Mom-of- four is sending the book to me....whom should like it when I'm done? ...Shall we sign and pass along? I think it would be fun....1st PM with snail mail gets it when I'm done :-) but you must promise to pass along!

**GREENCOUNTYPETE** · #15 07/14/10, 08:52 PM

my guess is crisco would be for biscuits and frying things

unregistered29228 · #16 07/14/10, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpillow

Mom-of- four is sending the book to me....whom should like it when I'm done? ...Shall we sign and pass along? I think it would be fun....1st PM with snail mail gets it when I'm done :-) but you must promise to pass along!

Great idea, Mpillow! I'll sign in side the front cover if that's what you meant, and then you can add yours and pass it along.

I've probably got another book or two lying around here that I didn't want to keep after reading. Let me check and I'll "advertise" to see who wants to read it next and pass it along.

Oh, I know! I have one called A Mile In Her Boots. It's a collection of stories written by women who have outdoor jobs - fire watcher, forest ranger, white water rafting guide, salmon fisher, field researcher, etc. It's a fun book that someone would enjoy. Just PM me with your name and address if you are interested.

wyld thang · #17 07/14/10, 09:49 PM

that's an interesting list, it doesn't look like enough to me either, for 8 months in the arctic, in the cold and vigor. Nice varied list though--it would be interesting to get a total calorie count of everything on that list, a grand total, then you could divide by # of days to see how much per day available.

I'm sure having that variety helps in the long winter days for something to do while you're holed up. Cook.

Harry Chickpea · #18 07/14/10, 10:07 PM

INSTANT grits??? Guess this is an arctic list...

The fun thing about lists like this is that they show personal preference more than food requirements. Ask a Chinaman or an Indian and you'll get an entirely different list (perhaps a lot tastier).

unregistered29228 · #19 07/14/10, 11:05 PM

I did think his list was a little light on the spices - I have a large stock of all kinds of spices and would really miss the variety if I only had curry, cloves, allspice, garlic, vanilla, onion and cinnamon. At least he had a bottle of hot sauce!

He spent a lot of the book talking about the food he fixed - he was heavy on baking cakes, cookies and pies. We don't eat a lot of desserts, but probably would eat more if we were doing the manual labor needed to live in the Arctic.

texican · #20 07/14/10, 11:28 PM

Having lived in the Arctic (not an entire winter), I can imagine he had plenty of time for baking... at a certain stage, an obsession over what's the next meal going to be gets to the top of the list.

The first time, I went light, and suffered the consequences... tighter notches on the belt. Was to the point where we thought about taking down a moose... but had no way to preserve that much meat, and it would have quickly been a bear attractant... would have been hard to explain why we had a dead moose and a bear in camp... seeing as we were the ones sent out to protect them in the first place.

Even if I were taking lot of game, I'd want spices to enliven it up... unless he was using Inuit spice (letting the meat ferment, rot,or get infected with skippers).