Pemmican | Hacker News Reader

Pemmican

en.wikipedia.org

33 pointsethbr112 comments

We used to eat this stuff (and the vegetarian counterparts) while backpacking in the 90's. If you're putting on high mileage, you end up consuming 5000+ calories per day. Pemmican is one of those things that your body learns to love. The first time you taste it, though... and some folks never get used to it. There's probably a whole generation of Philmont boy scouts with horror stories to tell about pemmican bars.

Once my group went super high mileage, we just took tea, rice, vitamins (electrolyte powder wasn't popular yet), and iodine for water treatment. It's amazing how far you can go in a couple of weeks if you're willing to wear river-washed clothes, eat flavorless food, and lose 10-15 pounds in a go.

I'd always carry a can or two of spam, though. Ten or twelve days in, the guy with the salty canned "meat" is a bonefide hero.

Huh. I went to Philmont in the early 2000's and did not experience pemmican. We did a lot of ramen, squeeze cheese and spam. Maybe it had already gone out of style by the time I went. The only reason I know of its existence, is, like sibling comment, because of Rimworld

Philmont '00 and '04 here. Had Pemmican bars on both trips.

Squeeze cheese was one heck of an experience. The food at philmont was so good in a terrible way.

The jalapeño flavor provided by trading outposts was extremely highly sought after in our group.

Yeah idk if it's still the case but in the 2000s there was a solid contingent of habitual appalachian trail hikers that were quirky and crunchy. Eschewed the gear of what would later be called ultralight backpacking but just hiked huge stretches with a tumpline pack, hammock, and pemmican for fuel. Hardcore and you could literally smell them if you were downwind but they always seemed to be having a blast regardless of weather.

No Pain was still doing laps in '08 when I hiked.

My go to camping meal is olive oil, pita bread and zaatar. Don’t need to heat anything (though it’s nice to warm up the pita) and can’t get more energy dense than straight oil.

I only know about this because of Rimworld :)

The Brazilian version of this ("paçoca") is cassava flour mashed with pork fat and dried meat.

> grease derived from marrow bones

that's metal, thinking about processing marrow kind of gives me the creeps though

I feel like every Canadian learns about this stuff during the Native American section of social science.

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