Touring - Food. What do you guys eat?

Do you just pack a few cases of powerbars for a tour? Do you cook? If you do cook what do you cook?

I usually take along some trail mix and a few clif bars for snacks along the way. I cook when I need to otherwise I eat at resturants if possible. I take some lentel soup and oatmeal in case I can't get to a resturant.

On my short weekend trips, I've been trying out those Tasty Bites entres in ready-to-eat boil bags as suggested by another forum member here or from another touring mailing list. They're quick & delicious, and these hot meals are compact and convinient to store.

I'm not too particular about road food, but you can do well grazing off food stores. There's a wide variety of meals to be had in the average grocery... and good ones will have a deli where sandwiches and salads are easy to come by. Just walk up and down the aisles and grab what strikes your fancy. I like canned soups, pasta dishes, lots of fruits and vegetables, milk, yogurt, etc. An occasional stop in a cafe is a nice change (they are great for early breakfasts).

Well,
It all depends on how long you're out and how heavy you pack. I pack light and stealth camp so I'm really into self heating meals. You get a hot meal without having to start a fire or bring a stove.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=58875

If you're credit card touring you might do 2 star restaurants between B&Bs. Everyone is different.

Pasta, or pasta. With whatever you want in it. Bouillon, tuna, cheese... It's really fast and easy. In my last touring trip we also made sure we had a bottle of wine every night.

Usually I stock up with oatmeal, spagetti, powerbars, and nuts. From there I stop at grocery stores and fill out my meals. Cheese, sauces, bread, yogurt, etc. Usually end up eating out once a day.

My family is mostly diabetic so eating a lot of carb is bad form. I can eat a bowl of oatmeal within a couple ofr hours start shaking like because my blood sugar has dropped like a magnet.

Anyof your guy have any special eating that do tours?

Start out with a couple of Powerbars/Cliff bars /whatever, and an 'emergency' breakfast and dinner. Last mini-tour (7 day) we cooked only twice, and ate out the rest of the time.

Hi,
I just discovered the large Gu containers. They hold 5 packets at a time. We always get a bag of fat free pretzels. We stop and get cold drinks at stores. Not just Gatorade, a favorite is that Starbucks iced coffee in the small glass bottle. I like Clif Bars but run out pretty quickly. We try to stop for lunch at a restaurant.
This invariably contains too much fat, but it's nice to sit down and chat for a while.

Anyof your guy have any special eating that do tours?

I toured on a vegan, almost completely raw diet while touring this summer. Bread and Cliff Bars were the only things not raw. I just pre-made a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches and brought a lot of dried fruit and nuts. Made for a heavy pack, but sure kept me energized.

Love the Tasty Bites Jaipur Vegetables...you can actually get them at a pretty decent price on Amazon

One thing I haul with me is breakfast cerial, something nice and dense like shreaded wheat. Grab a quart of milk at the nearest gas-station and you're good to go.

Road kill is quite good. You've got to see the car hit the animal, though, to know it's fresh enough. Or you can just smell it, but that takes practice.

Carrying a stove helps. Raw road kill isn't very pleasant. But you do need plenty of fuel to cook it. The recipe for roadrunners calls for onion, garlic, water, salt, a few veggies, the bird, of course, and a rock. Put all into a pot, bring to boil and simmer for two hours. The rock helps retain the heat.

At the end, throw the bird away and eat the rock. But I did make my sleeping bag out of all the feathers I've gathered up. And the fur's been put to good use as cycling gloves.

Ultimately, it depends where you are touring and what services are available along the way. Mom-and-pop stores (what a quaint saying that is), or supermarkets? Are you omni or vego? Can you cook at home (believe it or not, this is a prerequisite to being able to cook on tour!!!)? What are your tastes in food?

Me? I cook my own, make use of fresh vegetables and meat when possible and flavour with curry powder and mix in rice or noodles or pasta; eat porridge for breakfast; and whatever goodies (especially custard filled chocolate eclairs) a bakery can serve up on the way for lunch, morning and afternoon tea. A bottle of wine or beer in the evening rounds it all off. And if I don't feel like cooking, I'll gather together ham, cheese and something like a baguette in traditional French style.

It's also useful to plan your packing of panniers and bags to leave a little room for carrying each evening's fixings, and to have an emergency ration of, say, instant noodles or pasta. Travelogues are rife with people going hungry at least once a tour in a difficult location at night.

I know what NOT to eat. My boy and I did an overnighter in cold rainy Oregon last year and brought along some low carb hot breakfast cereal... almost gagged us. I literally could NOT eat it and my son thought it was disgusting!!!
LOL
Doug

instant oatmeal in flavored packets. mmmm, bananas and cream. coffee. campmor
has a small funnel with reusable basket. instant coffee is evil. tea is eviler.
boil 2 cups water, and almost no cleanup.

lunch, if not at a cafe or fruit stands, is pbj sammies and a couple granola bars.

dinner on the road is rice/pasta flavored with bouillon or packets from the gravy/spice
aisle. (stars or letter pasta cooks much faster than spaggetti. fuel lasts longer.)
small can o' meat (if roadkill already collected by other cyclists) like vienna snausage
or spam, maybe tuna or sardines. carry a couple small bottles of seasonings from
dollar city - chili powder or the stuff that starts with a 't' - i forget. not tartar, not
tumeric, not talcum. it's sorta sulfer yellow. bottle of hot sauce is handy, too.

if you're staying in or near town, hit the chinese or mexican buffet. i like to visit the
grocery once a week for a heavy meal - pound 'o steak, onions, mushrooms, 2-3 tubs
of yoghurt, couple bananas or a cantaloupe. bag of jelly beans or package or oreos.
half gallon chocolate milk. finish up with a 24-ounce can of cold beer.

Most mornings we eat at a restaurant because we just can't cook that much food. But for lunch my son has this way cool stove that can boil water very quickly. One of our favorites cup o noodles with bagles and cheese. Of which we would have bought earlier the same day. At night my son continuely amazed us at the spread he would lay out. Pasta, salad, and fresh french bread was alway a hit. One night he layed out all kinds of things to throw in a pita wrap. It all just tastes soooo good after a day of riding.

But our most favorite, on our pacific coast ride was to rent crab traps, catch the crabs ( the trick is keeping them alive on your bike while you bike to the campground). And then we had a great crab feast. Pictures of the crab fest are on our web site about our recent ride down the coast.

http://groups.msn.com/Bikingthewestcoast

I rode across Missouri this year. Spent 6 days, 435 miles. Katy trail 150 miles. Heck of a good time. I bought from Aldi some of the pasta packets, rice packets, and some instant oat meal. I specifially looked for pasta that didn't require butter or margarin. I have an MSR stove and a flea market ss pot/lid. This worked out great. I always bring coffee! I found the coolest little market and found some raisins and bananas. I usually bring several water bottles and can refill them cheap buying a gallon instead of individual bottles. I drank the town water in bfe once and it gave me a bad stomache! The most important meal of the day...after a long ride-pizza and beer any time I can find it!

I'm into light touring, usually no more than a week or so. Generally, I try to maximize nutrution, and minimize prepartion and weight (these are also good general diet suggestions):

- Eat mostly raw, unprocessed, and whole grain foods. These provide complex carbs for sustained energy, moderate protein, and they usually require little or no preparation. Nuts, dried fruit (it's lighter and travels better than fresh fruit), whole grain bread, oatmeal (it takes some getting used to, but it can be eaten uncooked), etc. Cooked foods are fine if they're unprocessed, but they take time and energy to prepare, so I usually don't bother.

- Cous Cous; a nutritious, easily prepared food. Technically it's pasta, but it's more similar to grains. Unlike other types of pasta, all you do is boil water and add the cous cous, mix, and it's done. It takes minimal time, energy and effort. Brown rice is great, but takes forever to prepare.

- Occasional energy bars. I don't like relying on them too much because most contain lots of processed sugar, but a couple a day are good. They provide a good balance of protein and carbs

Lastly, unless you're in the middle of nowhere, I love to check out the stores and restaurants along the route. If you're outside the city, you can usually find lots of fresh produce in your travels.

We learned the hard way that every store listed in the guilde book may not be open. On this morning it was 20 more miles before real food. Damn I hate biking hungry. I wish you could see the look on Jakes face. When we got to the store and saw it had long ago gone out of business. It was like Christmas morning with no presents.

Washington has alot of long stretches with no stores.

nice to hear from gonesh9 that vegan touring is not too difficult. I was thinking of trying to stay vegan for as long as possible and then go freegan and dumpster whatever I can. I don't plan on eating in resturants much.

tim