Touring - who eats "cookless" while riding?

this past year i decided to give a more raw edge to my life. common sense said it was the right thing to TRY. I felt the unsustainable manner in which we prepare our food (not to mention the extent to which i eat it, ouch im fat) was dumb, and that i would cook very basic foods and have a small amount per day. typically it would be in the form of nuts via trail mix, and rice. both of which do no effect the digestion of nutrients a whole lot when cooked. anyways, i felt great, was eating all day long, dropped down from 225 to 185. my sinus issues and ear problems cleared up significantly (so why the F am i eating like crap again!)

anyways, i see all this stove/cooking talk with touring, and was wondering who goes pretty much raw?. living on a variety of fruits and veggies and nuts, maybe the odd protein shake with some amino;s for that nitrogen.

oh, and a side note. i bought some time attack pedals from a liar. I need cleats for them. they are going on my cheapo commutor bike, and i refuse to pay the 40 that shops in town want for just cleats. anyone?

barrett

I like the raw idea also. But preparation of raw food is tough on the road, as odd as it sounds, no juicer, and often the washing conditions are minimal. I own several stoves, but for the bike I don't bother with them. During the good weather the stores are full of food, and the supermarkets are so completely supplied with every imaginable want, that stoveless is no hardship. I rarely eat at restaurants, but if my menu weakens I can always look at something like a cooked chicken breast at the supermarket. Other than that, I drink large amounts of water, fruit, yogurt, anything that looks as though it will keep over the time I have it in the paniers.

If I have to go through unserved areas for a long time, I try to keep my menu as natural as possible, but I may be required to carry weird stuff if weigh and volume conspire sufficiently. Then it's right out of the backpacking rulebook. A stove can really pay off if wter is easy to come by, and reconstituted foods are the most practical.

I agree mostly with you all, but I also eat at restuarants, mostly to get hot evening meal, and to sample local fares. I like to travel light, but I keep protien bars/energy bars just in case. For mje it's stoveless. No cooking utensils. I drink from my bike's water bottle.

I always carry dried fruit and nut mix with me.

raisins, sultans, mangos, bananas , just about anything I can find, mix them all together in a bag, in the back pocket.

But I too like a chicken or fish meal in a restaurant, or a pasta cooked on my stove.

george

I also tour stoveless. I normally use dried fruit as a post ride snack -- although I might get a small packet of sweets if I feel like it. Other than that I normally go with fruit, salads etc. A small cooler bag inside the pannier is a great way of allowing fruit to last a couple of days if need be. That said, I like to get to a cafe or restaurant to sample some cooked food for one meal each day, but going a couple of days between them isn't a problem.

nice to see im not alone.

one thing that got me into raw food was the ability to have a prepareless food source. and i do not understand nor agree with trying to emulate cooked food with raw (although for my bday i had a raw apple pie made, and oh my, HEAVEN!). the body goes into a weird sate of "food love" after a few months of eating nearly all uncooked/unprepared food. you haven't tasted an apple, a banana, even a glass of water, in my opinion, until you get into this state. and the sight of some of these concauctions that companies making processed foods, just no longer have any desire.

anyways, see you guys.
and thanks.

I agree but i dont know what is a raw apple pie... what is it? I am planning to buy a light stove but i am wondering what to cook on it beside those dried enveloppe food that i had never tried. So i m still thinking of ideas of what i will do on it before i buy one. If prefer fresh food though and a warm meal at least once a day. If you like asian food you can find some dry meat, dry fruit, even some squid at their market.

When we tour, we don't take any stove or other cooking utensils. Watching other cyclists at camp sites, it seems like the entire evening is one of preparing dinner. First boiling water, then cooking, then eating, then cleaning up. We live primarily out of grocery stores, except for the inevitable cafe and pastry at some point during the day. For dinner, we generally buy a fresh head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes or cukes, etc at the grocery store just prior to the getting to a camp ground. We'll use the plastic bag from the grocery store as a "plate", tear up the lettuce, put on the other vegetables, and salad dressing. For breakfast and lunch, we have carry bread (always on the outlook for a good bakery), cheese, some time of sliced meat, yogurt, and lots of fresh fruit. Maybe once every two-three days we'll stop at a restaurant for lunch. If we are really ravenous for dinner, we might pick up one of those baked chickens that grocery stores now seem to carry. Although this isn't eating "raw", we find this approach works very well. One of our rear panniers is completely dedicated to food, and is usually very heavy.

I thought the thread title was "who eats 'cookies' while riding?" for the longest time and was so confused.

A couple of observations:

1. To cook on a bike tour, you need to know how to cook at home. I often get the feeling that people who tour and eat exclusively at cafes or "cold" simply don't want to admit they can't cook. Of course, apologies to those who *can* cook but for some unfathomable reason don't on tour.

2. The time spent preparing, cooking and cleaning up after a meal is a bit like the old (and I think forgotten) family gathering time at home. I mean... what else are you going to do after you get into camp and have set up? Lie around doing nothing? Well... that's OK, but there is a sort of community in cooking, whether at your tent, or in the campground kitchen. It gives you a chance to interact with others with similar interests, and to pick a bit of information about where you're going and where they've been.

3. What to cook? The sky is the limit! It all depends on your skills (refer item 1). There are countless recipes out there for all sorts of meals. Fresh fruit and vegetables and varieties of potted, canned, smoked or fermented meat are available where most posters are likely to tour. A few condiments and spices can make the world of difference. Really, there are only three or four basic recipes. Take a look at the pictures attached to this post. The curry is lamb made with vegetables bought much earlier in the day; the pancakes speak for themselves. All cooked on a trusty Trangia alcohol stove. I think Stokell has some samples of his culinary art stashed somewhere, too. But you do need to practice at home with your camp stove when your stomach isn't necessarily depending on your to come up with a tasty, nourishing meal reasonably efficiently.

4. I know that when people say they prefer to pick up groceries each night that they haven't really been remote cycle touring in areas such as the Canadian Rockies where shops are very few and far between and what there is stocks expensive rubbish. As in hiking/bushwalking, "remote" cycle-touring does present its challenges in planning menus and food supplies. Like any other part of cycle touring, there is a degree of planning needed.

5. Part of that planning requires you have unused room in your panniers for food.

6. I wonder sometimes, too, at the endless budgets some people have to go on tour. Good luck to you. But for me, bought food in restaurants or takeaway/fast-food joints is just so, so expensive, and it is easy to blow $15 a day just in that. And after a while, it's much the same fare and can become boring. Add another $15 to $25 a night for campground accommodation and suddenly you're up to $40 a day without any other costs. I can't afford that sort of lucre, but it's not going to stop me going on long tours where I am fully self-supported.

6. I like hot meals in the evening except in high summer. That's the way I am. Others might like cold everything. But without a stove, you can't enjoy a coffee, tea or chocolate late in the evening, or if the weather turns nasty, you can't satisfy your inner soul with a cold drink of water.

I agree but i dont know what is a raw apple pie... what is it? I am planning to buy a light stove but i am wondering what to cook on it beside those dried enveloppe food that i had never tried. So i m still thinking of ideas of what i will do on it before i buy one. If prefer fresh food though and a warm meal at least once a day. If you like asian food you can find some dry meat, dry fruit, even some squid at their market.

When I've toured with a stove I've usually cooked lentils and rice on a nightly basis. I usually carry a block of cheese, some fresh veggies and spices to make a nice meal out of it. Cheese can go days without refridgeration, or even weeks if it isn't super hot outside. Whereas meat can't spend more than a few hours at room temperature without causing problems. Pasta also works well with a camp stove. I never buy that freeze dried, camp food crap. It's expensive and it isn't very appetizing in my experience.

the 10% of the time i might carry a stove would be between nov. and march and would be used only to boil up some hot water for some coffee or tea. during the winter, i might have both breakfast and dinner in a cafe. other times of the year, 1 meal. everything else is from the grocery store. once in a blue moon i might make a fire and let a can of something warm up by it. i refuse to have anything to wash up, other than a spoon or fork.

A couple of observations:

1. To cook on a bike tour, you need to know how to cook at home. I often get the feeling that people who tour and eat exclusively at cafes or "cold" simply don't want to admit they can't cook. Of course, apologies to those who *can* cook but for some unfathomable reason don't on tour.
Apology accepted. When I was in college, I used to cook because I longed for Thai food, and to save money. My friend would walk over a mile to eat my food and talked lovingly to his mom how delicious my food was. She couldn't understand how stir fried cabbage could ber made tasty.

2. The time spent preparing, cooking and cleaning up after a meal is a bit like the old (and I think forgotten) family gathering time at home. I mean... what else are you going to do after you get into camp and have set up? Lie around doing nothing?
I go for a walk, see the sights or watch the sun set. Other wise I do the routine chores like taking a bath or shower, laundry etc.

Well... that's OK, but there is a sort of community in cooking, whether at your tent, or in the campground kitchen. It gives you a chance to interact with others with similar interests, and to pick a bit of information about where you're going and where they've been.
Different stroke for different folks. You do things you like, mean while, I talk to local folks and enjoy local wisdom.

3. What to cook? The sky is the limit! It all depends on your skills (refer item 1).
For some folk, the skillet would be the limit lol.

6. I wonder sometimes, too, at the endless budgets some people have to go on tour. Good luck to you. But for me, bought food in restaurants or takeaway/fast-food joints is just so, so expensive, and it is easy to blow $15 a day just in that. And after a while, it's much the same fare and can become boring. Add another $15 to $25 a night for campground accommodation and suddenly you're up to $40 a day without any other costs. I can't afford that sort of lucre, but it's not going to stop me going on long tours where I am fully self-supported.
When I tour, I'm on vacation. A penny earned is a penny saved for splurge. I worked very hard, and saved for future when I was young. If you look out for local restuarant instead of chain eateries, you can very often have opportunity to sample local delights. I'm not saying it's wrong not to eat local food. I respect your priority.


6. I like hot meals in the evening except in high summer. That's the way I am. Others might like cold everything. But without a stove, you can't enjoy a coffee, tea or chocolate late in the evening, or if the weather turns nasty, you can't satisfy your inner soul with a cold drink of water.
I hear you. Nevertheless, I don't drink even soda pop. So plain water is plenty for me. But hot choclate drink is something I usually don't resist. BTW I get inner peace with my soul through meditation.
Dear Rowan, we both have common likes despite having different taste for many things. We like touring, and cycling.

A couple of observations:

1. To cook on a bike tour, you need to know how to cook at home. I often get the feeling that people who tour and eat exclusively at cafes or "cold" simply don't want to admit they can't cook. Of course, apologies to those who *can* cook but for some unfathomable reason don't on tour.

I wouldn't go that far. I'm not the world's greatest chef, but my reasoning for not cooking on tour is slightly different. My first tours were done at a time when I simply couldn't afford the outlay on purchasing cooking equipment for a tour (the equipment I use in the kitchen isn't really appropriate for that setting), and were done in a Queensland summer when the last thing you want after a hot day's riding is a hot meal. I learned to do it the other way when I started touring, and simply haven't had a reason to change a policy that works.

[QUOTE=Rowan]A couple of observations:

1. To cook on a bike tour, you need to know how to cook at home. I often get the feeling that people who tour and eat exclusively at cafes or "cold" simply don't want to admit they can't cook. Of course, apologies to those who *can* cook but for some unfathomable reason don't on tour.

Rowan - the food looks great and I agree with you completely. I'm just beginning to explore touring so I do have a question...

That stove looks HUGE as does your pan and the half gallon container of milk. How / where do you carry it all?

such respect on this board, i love it.

and the cookie comment, pricless, i was about to get the camera out and take a picture of me riding my bike eating a cookie, but im too lazy. thanks tho./

i dont agree really with the not knowing how to cook thing. i cook alot, and good, so ive been told and i feel its warranted. but the manipulation of food for me is hobby i suppose and not a lifestyle, and perhaps that is the difference. there is also extreme pleasure in using food simply for its sutainability. i beg you, if you are in a groove of culinary excersise, go raw or non-prepared for just one month and the opposite for that matter if you are and have been raw for some time, i swear you will have a tiny apifany in terms of relocating ALL of your sense awareness's

i did the juan du fucas trail from sombrio to chin beach (about 5-6 hour hike, camp on beach over night and hike back) on vancouver island (where i was living at the time), and one of the people that came was a camp worker for youth. she loved to cook and had all the tools of the trade. ya we carried tons of weight for the food we made, a great spagetti dish with potatoes, and yes it tasted good, but it confirmed all my notions about missing the point, for me, in exploration. as dumb as it may sound, i am interesting in utilizing my visual and audio senses more while exploring. the trips in which i am concerned with my taste senses, ive found to be asbsent of a magnitude to which my other senses can explain/create a newer reality for me.

while eating raw, i noticed this aswell. it wasnt about being healthy, different, a challenge, so much as it was about experiencing life in an utterly different perspective.

If I toured on my own, I would NOT bring any cooking equipment at all, and my cooking would be limited to heating something up in the microwave at the hostel.

Why?

I can't cook, I have no desire to cook, and I dislike everything having to do with cooking ....... and I am the first one to proudly admit all that!! :D

I lived on my own for 6 years, and in that time I assembled food for myself ... often raw stuff, and often microwave stuff ... and if I can do that every day for 6 years, I'm sure I could do the same thing on a tour.

This post started out about how to eat raw or close to it and became a post about stoves! The poster is eating crap because he or she is missing key nutrients and developing cravings. A good liquid multivitamin is in order to fill in the gaps. Check out www.MetabolicWealth.com

Have it your way. My stove post is deleted.

This post started out about how to eat raw or close to it and became a post about stoves! The poster is eating crap because he or she is missing key nutrients and developing cravings. A good liquid multivitamin is in order to fill in the gaps. Check out www.MetabolicWealth.com
i think you missed my posts point. its not about how to eat raw, i know the nutri facts, and why would i need a vit sup if i were raw vs cooked. perhaps a bit of head shaking. i just wanted to hear more or less who else did it, and who are cooked, and so on, and i think it was forming those types of responses quite nicely.

i welcome all posts, whatever you feel like in terms of response to what this post has become, let yourself ring free!

It seems rather obvious, though I haven't seen anyone mention it: Is there any problem with buying canned soups (like beef stew) or other canned goods and just eating them cold? That's my plan when I can't stop at a diner and eat.

It'd be nice to have a stove, but they're expensive, heavy, and require cooking time. It doesn't seem worth the effort for me when solo touring. If there were other people to share the load and the cooking tasks, then maybe.

Great topic! Yes, my wife and I eat raw on all our tours. Actually, we eat raw all the time. We felt heathier when we gave up cooked foods, and we enjoy fresh foods more than what we ate before. So far, we have rode across the Pyrennees, Corsica, Provence, and Languedoc Rousillon on a raw diet. It is actually much easier to prepare and find food when you don't need to cook it. We just bring a large tupperware bowl to prepare our meal, and we have never had a problem finding a way to wash our produce. On our rides, we eat and burn a high fat diet that includes any of the following: avocados, nuts, tahini, olives. We'll sometimes splurge on raw goat or sheep cheese. Fresh green veggies with grated roots/ tubers like: carrots, cucumbers, celery roots, turnips, radish, etc. go great with a thick tahini and garlic onion dressing. Fresh fruits are wonderful treats. Everybody wonders how we sustain energy without a "protein" rich meat diet. In fact, we get our fuel from a plant based diet like our powerful cousins, the gorilla. I also am a Kung-Fu instuctor, that needs as much energy as I can get from my diet, and raw is the best source for me.

I always cook on tour, if you are cooking for 1 or 2 people a meal takes no time to wack up, be it pasta, a nice curry dish. It is a pleasure to sit at the end of the day and cook a tasty meal whilst enjoying a good bottle of wine. I guess you would have to enjoy cooking to get off on it. I also enjoy grilled meats. Marinate the meat at breakfast, travell with it, pull it out at lunch. I have a alu seive. I put 3 metal skeweers through them so the seive sits 10" off the groung. I load it with sticks, light it let the wood burn off then grill the meat. Creat your own dips the whole thing takes 20 mins and cooked meats can be kept for longer time. If you do not enjoy cooking then you have to be inventive as the folks above. Where I go my trangia has to follow....

Great topic! Yes, my wife and I eat raw on all our tours. Actually, we eat raw all the time. We felt heathier when we gave up cooked foods, and we enjoy fresh foods more than what we ate before. So far, we have rode across the Pyrennees, Corsica, Provence, and Languedoc Rousillon on a raw diet. It is actually much easier to prepare and find food when you don't need to cook it. We just bring a large tupperware bowl to prepare our meal, and we have never had a problem finding a way to wash our produce. On our rides, we eat and burn a high fat diet that includes any of the following: avocados, nuts, tahini, olives. We'll sometimes splurge on raw goat or sheep cheese. Fresh green veggies with grated roots/ tubers like: carrots, cucumbers, celery roots, turnips, radish, etc. go great with a thick tahini and garlic onion dressing. Fresh fruits are wonderful treats. Everybody wonders how we sustain energy without a "protein" rich meat diet. In fact, we get our fuel from a plant based diet like our powerful cousins, the gorilla. I also am a Kung-Fu instuctor, that needs as much energy as I can get from my diet, and raw is the best source for me.
great contribution to this thread, and perhaps, and hence my urging people to try it, is because you are doing it. Needing cooked food, is simply a lie which has be instilled in us since birth, and for most, including myself, seemed a sure way to kill or do oneself sure harm. can you believe that? why would i thinking killing food, and manipulating the hell out of it with heat (not to mention in many cases destroying immune supporting enzymes) would be a detremental and unsustainable lifestyle choice?...well cause i was told by everyone it would be. It were these assumptions which i finally question that envoked me to try raw. I also had a body building background where i was taught certain food values, and assumptions were formed. anyways. rock on,

this thread was intented not only to feel out who is doing it, but to also promote a rawer outlook.

I'm all for different food lifestyle choices, but anyone who goes on a raw diet should know that it has the potential to be dangerous (like everything) if you don't do it correctly. Many people assume that anything raw is better for them to eat than cooked, and this is not always the case. I know this because I was vegan for three years. Just make sure you do your homework first. And no, cooked food is not bad for you either :)

I'm all for different food lifestyle choices, but anyone who goes on a raw diet should know that it has the potential to be dangerous (like everything) if you don't do it correctly. Many people assume that anything raw is better for them to eat than cooked, and this is not always the case. I know this because I was vegan for three years. Just make sure you do your homework first. And no, cooked food is not bad for you either :)
How is this diet dangerous? Please explain.

I'm not saying it's inherently dangerous, it's just dangerous if you don't do it right. There is nothing wrong with raw foods (unless you try to eat foods that *need* to be cooked). Like I said before, just do your homework first. It's like the difference between a person who is vegan and shops at farmers markets, and asian markets, and is aware of all the different varieties of food that you need to supply your body with the proper balance of nutrition... versus the vegan who eats tortilla chips and salsa and thinks they've had a proper meal.

I love raw food meals (but I also like bacon too *grin*)... when I was in LA about 3 years ago, I ate at the most famous raw restaurant "Juliano's" and it was simply amazing.

About cooking on the road.

I like to cook at home, but I hate to play with fire. Besides, when I'm at home, I am one who typically cooks a lot of hot food 8-9 months a year and eats salads in Summer. Since I tour in Summer, I typically don't carry a stove. When it's cold, I will either stop to eat at a restaurant or eat my own food and take coffee in a coffee shop. Not only do I get the warm stuff, I also benefit from the warm place.

As I toured with the children this summer, I decided to bring along the stove. It allowed more variety but also meant more stuff to carry around. So I still think that when I'll tour by myself, I'll leave the stove at home, unless I tour during a cold season.

In re: Raw Diet Danger


As long as you don't make an abrupt(sp?) change it should be fine. Sometimes the human metabolism doesn't like drastic changes to the diet and can go haywire. Ease into it and all will be well.

I have done "cookless" touring if you don't count boiling water for coffee.

Sorry, the sun just doesn't rise without that first cup of joe.