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Odd but tru - how many of you fry on the Trail..

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    • Odd but tru - how many of you fry on the Trail..

      Saw this on the other forum that one was fed up with boiling meals.... I get it, But I doubt anyone frys food anymore on the trail.... I just don't see it that much and I could be wrong... what are you folks eating?
      Be wise enough to walk away from the nonsense around you! :thumbup:
    • TrafficJam wrote:

      Dmax wrote:

      Usually no cook for me. Been doing that for years.
      When I'm hiking with the wife I eat really good. Our last hike she broke out the skillet and made smothered chicken, fried potatoes and asparagus. Farther on into the hike it's usually Mh.
      I'd like to cook more but don't trust my fire making skills.
      Squirt some hand sanitizer on the kindling and then light. It works wonders for starting a fire.
      "Dazed and Confused"
      Recycle, re-use, re-purpose
      Plant a tree
      Take a kid hiking
      Make a difference
    • NoAngel wrote:

      TrafficJam wrote:

      Dmax wrote:

      Usually no cook for me. Been doing that for years.
      When I'm hiking with the wife I eat really good. Our last hike she broke out the skillet and made smothered chicken, fried potatoes and asparagus. Farther on into the hike it's usually Mh.
      I'd like to cook more but don't trust my fire making skills.
      Squirt some hand sanitizer on the kindling and then light. It works wonders for starting a fire.
      I'm making a new batch this week.....
    • NoAngel wrote:

      TrafficJam wrote:

      Dmax wrote:

      Usually no cook for me. Been doing that for years.
      When I'm hiking with the wife I eat really good. Our last hike she broke out the skillet and made smothered chicken, fried potatoes and asparagus. Farther on into the hike it's usually Mh.
      I'd like to cook more but don't trust my fire making skills.
      Squirt some hand sanitizer on the kindling and then light. It works wonders for starting a fire.
      ^this

      Dmax wrote:

      NoAngel wrote:

      TrafficJam wrote:

      Dmax wrote:

      Usually no cook for me. Been doing that for years.
      When I'm hiking with the wife I eat really good. Our last hike she broke out the skillet and made smothered chicken, fried potatoes and asparagus. Farther on into the hike it's usually Mh.
      I'd like to cook more but don't trust my fire making skills.
      Squirt some hand sanitizer on the kindling and then light. It works wonders for starting a fire.
      I'm making a new batch this week.....
      or this^
    • If anyone has a lightweight solution for occasionally wanting to fry something, I'd like to hear about it. Once in a great while, I have a trip that might possibly involve fish. While steaming the fish (over real rice and veggies; the juices from the fish flavor the rice and it comes out kind of being a fish risotto) is nice, simply being able to flour them and throw them in a pan with some grease would be really nice, too.

      I do a fair amount of home-packed FBC or FBC-hybrid. (One of my favorite sorts of FBC-hybrids is Indian-inspired stuff - do rice and dal in the freezer bag, and simmer some sort of curry in the cookpot while they're steeping.)
      I'm not lost. I know where I am. I'm right here.
    • If you cook in aluminum foil, leave the salt and anything acidic (lemon juice, vinegar, tomatoes, many sauces) off until actually eating the food, or better yet after transferring the food to something not made from aluminum. Some may wish to avoid aluminum in their diet. Maybe I should think about that, but for me it is all about the taste. I would never wrap lasagna or pizza in aluminum foil.
    • Aluminum metal passivates so easily that it's hard to extract any significant amount of Al+3 from metallic Al with acid alone. The amount of Al you get from cookware is a tiny fraction of the amount you get from typical municipal water supplies that have been treated with aluminum-based flocculants such as KAl(SO4)2. Etching aluminum usually needs another metal as a catalyst (copper is common), HF, a strong alkali, or peroxide.

      For surface prep on aluminum components that will be exposed to harsh conditions, I usually specify an etch in 1-2 molar NaOH for 1-2 hours followed by a hard anodize. That would be food-compatible. Do not cook in aluminum vessels that weren't intended for food use - they may be chromate etched (MIL-DTL-5541), and Cr+6 is harmful.

      I won't speak about taste, but the chemical hazard from Al cookware is overrated. The speculative studies about the role of Al in Alzheimer's have not been borne out on repetition. The epidemiology just isn't there.
      I'm not lost. I know where I am. I'm right here.
    • Kevin,

      Do you have any insight on the Aluminum in Baking Powder (Sodium Aluminum Sulfate). I know some people bake with 'Bakewell Cream' from Maine to avoid the Aluminum.

      I have heard mixed reports on Al's role in Alzheimer's.
      “Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
      the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”


      John Greenleaf Whittier
    • Aluminum is definitely far down on my "things to worry about" list. It's ubiquitous, it's always been ubiquitous on the Earth, we're adapted to deal with it.

      Because of the early reports suggesting the role of Al in Alzheimer's, the element has been studied intensively. So intensively that the studies suffer from the green jellybean effect:

      [IMG:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/significant.png]
      "So, uh, we did the green study again and got no link. It was probably a--"
      "RESEARCH CONFLICTED ON GREEN JELLY BEAN ACNE LINK; MORE STUDY RECOMMENDED"

      If you're not the type to think that the Centers for Disease Control are misleading us, then you can read their summary of the current state of affairs. From the executive summary:


      You cannot avoid exposure to aluminum because it is so common and widespread in the environment.

      Exposure to the levels of aluminum that are naturally present in food and water and the forms of aluminum that are present in dirt and aluminum pots and pans are not considered to be harmful.

      Eating large amounts of processed food containing aluminum additives or frequently cooking acidic foods in aluminum pots may expose a person to higher levels of aluminum than a person who generally consumes unprocessed foods and uses pots made of other materials (e.g., stainless steel or glass). However, aluminum levels found in processed foods and foods cooked in aluminum pots are generally considered to be safe.

      If you're still worried, you needn't go to some odd supplier - for a teaspoon of baking powder substitute 1/3 tsp baking soda and 2/3 teaspoon cream of tartar, both of which you can get at the regular grocery.

      If you take buffered aspirin or aluminum-based antacids, you get several hundred times the amount of aluminum from that source than you get from anything in your diet. (And I still occasionally use Mg/Al based antacids, because Ca-based ones have a horrible rebound effect.)
      I'm not lost. I know where I am. I'm right here.
    • Kevin,

      I did not know that OTC antacids have Al in them (I have never needed these). That got me thinking about this study...

      webmd.com/alzheimers/news/2016…-dementia-risk-in-study#1

      Perhaps the increase in dementia was not caused by the PPI drugs after all, but the regular heartburn medication these folks probably take for many years previous? Just thinking out loud. I am sure the CDC is right, just like they are about Chronic Lyme Disease :)
      “Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
      the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”


      John Greenleaf Whittier
    • NoAngel wrote:

      take some aluminum foil. Coat the fish in olive oil, and a little water, and wrap with a folding seal on all edges. Cook about four minutes per side. I have done this car camping and at home many times.
      When fortunate enough to catch a fish or two, my preferred method of cooking is using this technique in the coals of a campfire. This method is also good for steak and a small pork loin.

      Lest we forget.....



      SSgt Ray Rangel - USAF
      SrA Elizabeth Loncki - USAF
      PFC Adam Harris - USA
      MSgt Eden Pearl - USMC
    • ScareBear wrote:

      For trout, I prefer to gut them and insert a stick from tail out the mouth and roast over the fire like It's on a spit. At an angle so the stuff in the head runs down and flavors the meat....
      Worth a try next time I'm out on a river. My fishing buddies are mostly catch and release folks. But rarely will one resist an offered bite when I'm cooking.

      Lest we forget.....



      SSgt Ray Rangel - USAF
      SrA Elizabeth Loncki - USAF
      PFC Adam Harris - USA
      MSgt Eden Pearl - USMC
    • IMScotty wrote:

      Perhaps the increase in dementia was not caused by the PPI drugs after all, but the regular heartburn medication these folks probably take for many years previous? Just thinking out loud. I am sure the CDC is right, just like they are about Chronic Lyme Disease :)
      The study also didn't control for other factors such as type II diabetes. Acid reflux, type II diabetes, cerebral vascular disease are all significant comorbidities with metabolic syndrome. That's the danger of retrospective analyses such as that one. You can easily find that use of insulin, oral antidiabetic medications, statins or ACE inhibitors is significantly correlated with dementia - for the same reason: the dementia is caused by the underlying degenerative process, and the drug is simply being used to treat another symptom.

      People who say that they have chronic Lyme undoubtedly suffer from something. What the evidence does not support is long-term antibiotic therapy in those individuals, and in fact there's little evidence of latent Borrelia being present. I'm virtually certain that long-term sequelae of Lyme do indeed exist in some populations - but that chronic infection is not the culprit. There may be an autoimmune process at work, or co-infection with something other than a spirochaete. (I'm moderately astonished that nobody's discovered insect-borne retroviruses yet; it seems a logical route of transmission, and a scary possibility.) The current (low-quality) evidence suggests that long-term antibiotic toxicity does more harm than good.
      I'm not lost. I know where I am. I'm right here.
    • WanderingStovie wrote:

      Thanks. OK, maybe it was the salt, but something turned the aluminum foil black and ate holes in it. Maybe it was truly awful lasagna.
      The acid in food makes the holes in aluminum foil. To solve this first cover the lasagna in parchment paper then cover in foil. The parchment won't react with acid and the foil crimps to the lip of the pan.
      Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
      Dr. Seuss Cof123
    • Dmax wrote:

      I figured it was the owners of the plastic bottle industry putting out the Al scare. Some people drink a 12 pack of soda a day while others drink 12+ beers every day back to back out of Al cams.
      Beer before the invention had a metal taste - I have watched a "how its made" and discovered they spray a very thin layer of shellac to avoid the problem - Remember "Classic" beer? it had a plastic liner....Concerns about canned beer bearing a metallic taste, which once was a factor that made bottles more appealing, should be long gone now. Decades ago, when the cans were made of tin and lined with lead, that was a valid worry. Today’s cans are made from aluminum and have a water-based polymer lining, though, so the beer doesn’t even touch the metal. Then BPA came apparent and the plastic liner disappeared,

      there was a time when tin cans sealed with lead killed people.. just saying.
      Be wise enough to walk away from the nonsense around you! :thumbup:
    • Wise Old Owl wrote:

      Dmax wrote:

      I figured it was the owners of the plastic bottle industry putting out the Al scare. Some people drink a 12 pack of soda a day while others drink 12+ beers every day back to back out of Al cams.
      Beer before the invention had a metal taste - I have watched a "how its made" and discovered they spray a very thin layer of shellac to avoid the problem - Remember "Classic" beer? it had a plastic liner....Concerns about canned beer bearing a metallic taste, which once was a factor that made bottles more appealing, should be long gone now. Decades ago, when the cans were made of tin and lined with lead, that was a valid worry. Today’s cans are made from aluminum and have a water-based polymer lining, though, so the beer doesn’t even touch the metal. Then BPA came apparent and the plastic liner disappeared,
      there was a time when tin cans sealed with lead killed people.. just saying.
      That was my point. They started spraying bottles and such ... High levels of Al in certain groups of individuals raised concern. Decades ago is also when plastic bottles came out...
      I'm suprised how many years my grandfather lived. He always kept a big stock of canned goods. He'd always send me to the pantry to get a can of soup. Chicken and stars. He always said get the oldest. FIFO. But I couldn't do it. Some of them cans were 5 years expired with rusty tops. I always got a fuss' from him for the can I'd bring up, but I'd just place stupid and that I didn't know know better. He probably passed away thinking I was a dumb ass lol.
    • Dan76 wrote:

      NoAngel wrote:

      take some aluminum foil. Coat the fish in olive oil, and a little water, and wrap with a folding seal on all edges. Cook about four minutes per side. I have done this car camping and at home many times.
      When fortunate enough to catch a fish or two, my preferred method of cooking is using this technique in the coals of a campfire. This method is also good for steak and a small pork loin.
      This is also my method, but I sprinkle it with Good Seasons 'Eyetalian' dressing in the packet
      Cheesecake> Ramen :thumbsup:
    • The last time I fried anything backpacking was in 1981. Some friends and I did the Old Rag Loop. They insisted on having pancakes one morning. We learned that no amount of vegetable oil would keep the pancakes from sticking to the pan like glue. It was a disaster. I don't think we got one edible cake out of the ordeal.

      These days I cook in my pot - favorites are rice and bean/lentil mixes. Bring to boil, set in pot cozy. Basically like FBC, but without the freezer bag. One difference is you can bring the food to a full boil before cutting the heat so I think things cook better and faster. I don't have any data to support this but I believe it anyway, kind of like how everyone believes the Alzheimer-Aluminum link based on no data.
    • odd man out wrote:

      The last time I fried anything backpacking was in 1981. Some friends and I did the Old Rag Loop. They insisted on having pancakes one morning. We learned that no amount of vegetable oil would keep the pancakes from sticking to the pan like glue. It was a disaster. I don't think we got one edible cake out of the ordeal.

      These days I cook in my pot - favorites are rice and bean/lentil mixes. Bring to boil, set in pot cozy. Basically like FBC, but without the freezer bag. One difference is you can bring the food to a full boil before cutting the heat so I think things cook better and faster. I don't have any data to support this but I believe it anyway, kind of like how everyone believes the Alzheimer-Aluminum link based on no data.
      I would bet on nitrates and nitrites instead of aluminum, based on the eating habits of two who had it, but that is just anecdotal.
    • The best fish I've ever eaten I caught at Coleman Lake while camping, large bream and crappie, filleted, cast iron skillet directly on a camp fire, I cooked fried potatoes with onions and jalapenos in the oil first (I believe that to be the secret) then threw the fillets in a zip lock with corn meal salt and pepper and fried in a hot skillet...you gotta cook fish fast so they come out crisp...washed down with a PBR...and a cigar and bourbon for desert....don't get no better!
      I may grow old but I'll never grow up.