In this episode of the Primitive Camping & Bushcraft Podcast, Chris Speir transitions from fire-making to the crucial topic of food in the wilderness. He discusses the importance of nutrition, different food preparation methods like dehydrating and freeze-drying, and strategies for packing and procuring food in the wild. He also shares insights on calorie management, survival food choices, and his personal experiences with food on long camping trips.
Why Food Matters in the Wild:
5 Key Food Categories for Camping & Survival:
Dehydrated Foods
Freeze-Dried Foods
Just Add Water Meals
Prepackaged Foods
Procured Foods
Survival Food Lessons & Hacks:
Upcoming Topics & Community Engagement:
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to the Primitive
Camping in Bushcraft Podcast.
My name's Chris Speir,
and I'm gonna be your guide
to enjoying the great outdoors.
So today we're going to move
right out of the fire chaper,
chap, chaper, chaper.
We're gonna move out of the chaper.
And we're gonna move
into the food chapter
and or the food section.
And it's gonna be, let's see, page 182,
if you're following along in your book.
But first I have a little mail that came,
and I wanna open this package here.
And this is going to be
from one of my viewers,
Mr. Auman
And we'll,
I don't know any kind of
addresses and stuff like that.
But he asked that I would sign his book.
And so I said, what
better opportunity to do that
than to do it on the podcast.
So, right here.
All right, so I'm gonna be
dropping this in the mail.
And you should be
getting it pretty soon, okay?
All right, so moving along, we have food.
And food is one of those
things that you can go it out
for a very, very, very long time.
I mean, think about it.
Jesus did 40 days and 40
nights in the wilderness
without anything to eat.
He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights.
After that, that's when
the devil came to tempt him
because he was at his
lowest or his weakest.
So the devil came to
tempt him with bread.
And the first thing he
tempted him with was food.
And so food is one of those
things that after a while,
you will almost do anything to get it
because you know that you are,
if you don't have
enough food, you will die.
You will be malnourished.
You will slowly, your body systems will
start shutting down.
So food is extremely,
extremely important,
but it's not as important
as shelter, fire, and water.
Excuse me.
But let me explain why.
So shelter is one of those things that
you're going to need
to keep the elements
off of you, keep the rain,
keep the wind, keep the cold.
It's gonna create a microclimate
or a little area where you can control
the environment, okay?
So shelter is something that is important
and it is not necessarily your, it is
necessarily your first,
I'm sorry, I said that,
it is your first priority
when you're out in the woods.
If you're in a survival
type situation, but anyway,
then after that, you're
gonna try to get some fire
for warmth and then after that,
you're gonna be looking for water
and the fire is actually
going to help purify your water
or render it safe to drink
and get rid of all the
biological contaminations.
So, and then after that,
then you worry about your food.
You can go several days,
several weeks without food.
Has anybody ever
watched the TV show alone
or Naked and Afraid?
I get it, whether you
think Naked and Afraid
is a real survival
show or not or whatever,
it still shows you something
that these guys go 21
days without eating usually
and sometimes they find something,
sometimes they don't.
So, but alone, I've
watched that series on alone
where these folks went
days and days and days,
weeks without eating anything
and finally they get a piece of fish
and they're like, "Oh
my God," and they eat.
I remember watching one
episode of Naked and Afraid
where a guy dug up a
tuber, some kind of tuber.
It was full of
carbohydrates and everything.
Hadn't had anything to eat
in like two and a half weeks.
They were almost getting ready to leave.
And he ate that tuber
and it has so many sugars
and so many carbs in
there that he passed out
and slept all day long after eating that.
(laughs) But yeah, food is one of
those detrimental things
that can be pushed off a little bit,
but you have to have it.
Eventually you have to have it.
Your body has to have
nourishment and nutrition.
You have to have these
vitamins and minerals
and stuff like that to keep
all your systems and organs
to work the correct way
they're supposed to work.
Especially like your heart, your brain,
all your endocrine system,
all your different systems
have to have certain
vitamins and minerals
in order for them to work correctly.
Heart is your main thing.
Whether the heart and the
brain are your two main things
that have to have vitamins and nutrients.
You don't get enough potassium.
You're gonna throw stuff out of whack.
Your heart's gonna start
skipping beats, stuff like that.
You don't get enough fats
and then you're gonna
start getting real foggy.
You have to have fats.
A lot of people's like,
"I'm cutting all fat out of my diet."
Well, that's crazy
because if you don't have fat,
then sugar and fats is
what feeds your brain
and stuff like that.
So going straight to the book right here,
right out of the pages,
we all have our go-to
foods when we're at home.
There are comfort foods at home.
But when heading out to the wilderness,
a little outside of the box,
or in my case, potato chip bag,
thinking it sometimes is required.
That didn't make a look of sense, did it?
(laughs)
We all have our go-to foods
when we're in the
comfort of our own homes.
But when we head out into the wilderness,
a little outside the box,
thinking is sometimes required.
So now that sounded better.
I don't know why I
jumbled that all up a while ago.
But oh well, I get used to it
because I jumble
things up left and right.
It's crazy.
So one of the food items that I will
always bring with me
whenever I go camping is going to be
this dude right here.
Not a shameless plug,
but either primitive
camping blend coffee.
I'm not, and even
whenever I don't have this,
I have some form of coffee with me.
And that is one of the things
that's gonna help energize you.
It just gives you
reassurance in the morning
when you wake up.
And it's nothing like
having a good old cup of coffee
in the morning, a hot cup
of coffee in the morning,
especially on a cold morning.
But there are many
things you could do to prepare
before you go out into the woods,
especially when you're going camping.
You could do so much.
You can, there's so many
variables when it comes to people.
People are picky.
Case in point, my wife is the pickiest
person in the world.
And she will not eat certain things
and are some things that I think
is out of this world delicious.
She's like, oh no, it's
got too much X, Y, or Z,
some kind of something in it.
A spice that I don't like.
And I'm like, you are so picky.
And then there's other family members
that they're so picky.
The only thing they eat is chicken
nuggets or hot dogs.
And I'm like, golly, how do
you survive off of just that?
But apparently you can.
But we got to think outside the box
whenever we start packing our foods.
And there's many things
that you could do to prepare,
even if you're
planning to procure your food
while you're camping,
you're not going to be able
to procure all your food
while you're in the woods.
You can procure a lot.
Now some individuals will.
Some people go out
there with a rifle, shotgun,
deer hunt, or wild game, some kind of
wild game or whatever.
But depending on the
seasons, you're not always
going to have a hunting
season where you're located.
And unless it is a
true survival situation,
shooting or killing any
kind of game out of season
is illegal in most, all 50 states,
plus the rest of the world.
(laughs)
So, when you're planning to go several
miles into the woods,
let's say you load your backpack up,
you want to head out.
And, you know, cool thing,
and this is a segue here,
this is a tangent, or this is off track,
but cool thing is I
just recently did a video
on some bags for some vacuum sealed bags.
From Flex Tail, or it
used to be Flex Tail gear,
but I believe they
changed their name to Flex Tail.
And these vacuum
sealed bags are pretty cool
because it allowed me to
put my wool blanket in there
and suck it down to where
there was no air in the bag,
and it was cool, it
took up a lot less room.
Plus it kept everything waterproof.
I did my clothes, I did
my pillow, I did a pillow.
I hardly ever take a pillow with me.
when I go into woods, but this time I
wanted to test it out
because pillows fluff up
real big, so I did that.
But, anyway, when
you're loading your gear,
weight is gonna be a considerable factor.
And so, by using these bags,
I was able to reduce some
of the volume in the bag,
which allowed me to
carry a little bit more food
on my trip.
You follow me?
I know, I said weight is a factor, it is,
but volume is also a
factor inside that bag.
But by using these Ziploc,
they're Ziploc style vacuum sealed bags.
And whenever you take all
the air out of that bag,
it is just like a vacuum seal.
Like if you've seen a
vacuum sealer before,
it's what it is, and it's pretty cool.
And I never
experienced that, or used that,
or thought to use that in
my outdoor camping gear.
And so, but you gotta be careful,
you vacuum seal it, put it in there,
everything fits tight.
And then when you get out there,
you ain't got a way to
reseal it or anything like that,
then you're gonna be messed up
trying to get everything into your stuff,
back into your backpack.
But when you're planning
to travel several miles
into the great outdoors,
and you load your backpack up,
food becomes a major consideration,
because for two
reasons, food is very heavy,
and you need it to survive.
Calories are energy.
And during my time in the military,
I ate more MREs than
I ever cared to count.
You know, MREs were something.
And there was one that
I would eat constantly,
and that's the beef stew.
I loved the beef stew one,
and I didn't care for the rest as much
as I did the beef stew,
that was the best one.
But, you know, sometimes they were good,
sometimes they were horrible.
And like anything else,
you eat the same things
over and over and over,
you're gonna get sick of it.
And I got deployed to
the middle of Alaska.
It was a 21 day, we were
cleaning a bombing range.
And yeah, I don't think
any, I could talk about this,
but you know, we were
cleaning out a bombing range,
target practice range, and
we were out there for 21 days,
and I decided that I
was gonna save money,
and I had to provide my own food,
and I was gonna save money.
And I brought ramen noodles,
and I ate ramen noodles for 21 days.
And let me tell you, that
was 20 some odd years ago,
and I have not
touched ramen noodles since,
you know, the pack of ramen noodles.
I have not touched them
since, I will not touch them.
Now, that was, I will
never eat ramen noodles again.
(laughs) But, you know, the ones
in the cup are different.
They have the little
vegetables and everything,
but the little powdered
ones in the little pack,
I just have not touched them ever since.
I turned my stomach, but you know,
when you're planning to head out there,
you're going several
miles into the woods,
and weight versus, you
know, nutrition becomes a thing.
Now, I've watched
several videos, you know,
I mentioned him before,
but Clay Hayes on his videos,
he went to Alaska, and
they dropped him off.
He went on a moose
hunt, and he was out there
for a couple weeks,
something like that, two weeks.
I don't remember how
long he was out there.
But when he was out there,
he would eat the Mountain House MREs,
or he would eat, you know, not MREs,
but the Mountain
House Freeze Drive meals.
And I can remember
him saying that he knows
that he's losing weight
because he could fill it
in his waistline, but he didn't,
he would be interested
to see how much he weighs
when he gets back to a scale,
because the calories in the bag
was not covering the
calories he was expending
while he was out there.
So when you're in Alaska, you know,
speaking for somebody that lived there,
you just walking
through the woods, you know,
you expend a lot of calories, you know.
So when you're in a
situation where you're expending
a lot of calories, you have to be able
to replenish those calories.
If not, you're gonna be in
a negative calorie deficit,
so you're gonna start using more calories
than you actually are taking in.
And whenever you do that, you know,
it turns into a
negative calorie situation,
and that's when you start losing weight.
That's what happens,
that's why people go on diets,
because they will go
to the gym and work out
and expend all the
calories they can, all right?
And then they will not
replenish all those calories
with food, and so it puts
them in a negative calorie,
and so they lose weight.
It's not because of the
act of the working out.
The working out is the
method of burning those calories.
You know, aerobics and all
this will actually help you
get to the point to where
you're burning your calories
faster, but what's
happening is you're not replacing
the calories you're using.
You could do the same thing going out
into the woods camping.
When I go out on a 10-day trip,
it is nothing for me to lose
between seven and 10 pounds
on a 10-day trip, because I'm
expending a lot of calories,
and I'm not replacing
all the useless calories
that I eat whenever I'm here at home.
Say, let's say I'm here at
home, and I'm just laying around.
You know, we have a
tendency, if you do this, do this,
for one day, write
down every single thing
you put in your mouth, all right?
It's kind of like the
calorie counter, all right?
And then you will be
surprised at how many calories
you eat in one day.
I'm telling you now, you will.
You will be extremely
surprised at how many calories
you really actually eat.
Nobody really
consciously thinks about it,
because, you know, everybody's warm and
cozy and comfortable,
and this is America,
and we ain't gotta worry
about those kind of things.
But if you consciously take
the effort to actually think
about what you're putting in your mouth,
dude, you're eating way
more calories than you need,
and I promise you,
you're eating more calories
than you're actually using,
and that's how you end up gaining weight.
You know, you'll say,
put on a couple of pounds,
and you know, think about this.
Thanksgiving, every
year, they average that,
the average person is
going to gain, let's see,
four pounds, four to six
pounds every Thanksgiving
to Christmas season, you know, the
holiday season there.
You know, and yes, it is
Christmas, it's not holiday,
it's Christmas, and
Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving,
so we could debate that
offline if you'd like.
But anyway, for between
Thanksgiving and Christmas,
you know, the average person
gains about four to six pounds,
and that's because we eat way more
than we're actually, you know, expending,
and that is the whole
thing about being at home.
A lot of times, unless you are conscious
about what you're actually eating,
you're actually going to
expend, I mean, not expend,
the intake more than you're expending.
So that becomes a
factor whenever you head out
into the woods.
Now when you get out
into the woods and you start
hiking, then you start
fishing, you start, you know,
doing all these strenuous
activities when you get out there,
you're going to really put yourself in a,
your energy levels are
really going to decline.
And so I think I spoke about this before,
whenever we covered
food, you know, last year,
but we went, my brother
and I went for 10 days.
We brought a pound of beans and some
dehydrated vegetables.
The rest of the time we were going,
and I brought a peanut butter jar,
a little jar of peanut butter.
The rest of the time we were
going to supplement our food
with whatever we call.
The fish were not biting,
we couldn't catch any fish.
We finally started catching some fish,
but for the first several
days, we didn't catch any fish.
The fish, you know, and
then we were expending
more calories than we
were actually taking in
and our energy levels
just started dropping.
So when you get out there
and you haven't had anything
really to eat in a
couple of days, your energy,
you're going to feel
like somebody beat you
with a baseball bat.
And then I had that jar of peanut butter,
I remember that jar of peanut butter.
I think this was like
day, day five or six,
and I was just exhausted, I was tired.
And I went and I started eating that,
within two or three
bites of that peanut butter,
I felt like I could run a marathon.
I felt like a brand new individual.
I mean, it was amazing.
And I told my brother, I said,
"Here, eat the rest
of this peanut butter."
And he did, and the
same thing happened to him.
And it was like, wow.
So that little jar of
peanut butter always makes it
into my food bag usually,
when I head out into the woods,
because one, they're very nutrient dense
and they have all the
nutrients that you need.
And peanut butter has
everything that you need.
It's got the fats, it's
got the calories, the sugars,
it's got the protein, the carbohydrates,
it's got everything that you need in it.
And it really gives
you a boost in energy.
And so for the next couple of
days, where we're good to go.
But instead of
explaining why you need food,
which you likely already know,
let's explore how to
ensure you have enough
when you need it.
So for our purposes,
food can be broken down
into five categories.
We got dehydrated,
freeze dried, just add water,
pre-packaged and procured.
Now dehydrated food, if
you've ever used a dehydrator,
everybody knows that you
are removing the moisture
from the food by applying a low heat
over a long period of time.
Now this is the same
principle as cutting venison
into small strips and
hanging it to dry over a fire
or out in the sun,
something to that effect.
It's the same thing.
It's just a controlled environment.
No flies gonna get on it
later, stuff like that.
You're doing it on a smaller scale.
A dehydrator, by dehydrating your food,
you'll often make it hard and brittle
depending on the type of food.
Most cases, all your dehydrated food
is gonna be hard and brittle.
Now, when it comes to dehydrating food,
I love dehydrating vegetables.
I love dehydrating onions.
I love bell peppers, green beans.
Let's see, tomatoes are amazing.
Now there's certain things
you have to do to like potatoes.
You have to pre-boil them.
Whenever you see the hash
brown potatoes in a box,
it says just add water, let
soak for 30 minutes, then cook.
Well, what they do is those are
pre-boiled and shredded
and then they're dehydrated.
And then they're added to the box.
And then you add your water to it
and it reconstitutes them.
And then from there,
you're able to fry them
to your liking.
If you've ever been to Waffle House,
they got that nice crispy outside
throw that cheese and that
little bit of ham on there.
I think they call it covered and chunked.
So that's like, that's a South
Mississippi thing, I guess.
But dehydrated food is amazing way of
reducing the weight.
Now you could take a 10 pound
roast and you could dehydrate
it and by the time it's done,
you'll have one pound of meat.
It's just, I'm just figuratively,
how do you say that word?
Figuratively, figuratively.
I am figuratively saying that, whatever,
you know what I mean?
So that's just a
figure of speech, I guess,
because I don't have the weight and I
don't have it actually,
you know, to scientifically say that,
you know, a lot of
people this day and age,
you lied, you said this,
you know, get over yourself.
But when you dehydrate your food,
you're removing all
the moisture out of it.
Now, dehydrated tomatoes are amazing.
I mean, golly.
You add a little bit of
salt and pepper to them
whenever you dehydrate them.
And whenever they
dehydrate, they turn into these chips
and they are amazing.
They give you the full tomato flavor
with the crispness of a potato chip.
Zucchini and squash do the same thing.
My brother actually introduced me
to the zucchini and squash chips.
He'd slice them dudes and put a little
salt and pepper on them
and then put them in a bag and eat those.
And they are way, way
more healthier for you
than potato chips.
And they don't have all the fat content
and all that garbage
that's going into your body.
But, you know, they're
good and they're filling.
And plus you can
rehydrate them for dinner
and you're good to go, you know.
What I like to do is
I'll take onions and garlic
and some green beans and, you know,
all the vegetables that I dehydrated.
I'll take those vegetables
and I'll throw them in a pot
and cook them, make a beef stew,
make it like a stew,
like I said, beef stew,
but like a stew, you
know, just a vegetable stew.
If you got some fish to
augment with it, you know,
that is an amazing meal
and it really gives you all the minerals
and vitamins and stuff that you need
and it boosts your
energy, it picks you up,
it makes you feel so much better.
Next on the list is freeze-drive foods.
Now we've talked about freeze-drive foods
so many times, it's crazy.
You know, freeze-drive food is different
from dehydrated food in that
it involves freezing the food,
then thawing it out under a vacuum to
remove the moisture.
The major advantage to freeze-drive food
and this is over the dehydrated food
is that it drastically reduces weight.
An eight pound roast that has been cooked
and freeze-drive will
weigh less than a pound.
Whereas an eight pound
roast turned into jerky
will weigh three pounds.
So that was what I was getting to
because I did that and did some videos
for my YouTube channel
and I did some videos
on freeze-dry on a roast
and I actually weighed
the eight pound roast
and then made beef jerky out of it
and then weighed it and it
was three pounds of roast.
But you know, you got five pounds of
water content in there.
You know, that's crazy.
If you're gonna carry
that much food with you,
like eight pound roast would be a long,
a lot of roast for a long time
and you know, that's
a lot of water weight
to be carrying around with you.
So it's, when
reconstituted, freeze-drive food
retains the same texture as freshly
cooked food usually.
You know, I've had
some beef stew type stuff
that yeah, some beef that
was really questionable,
but oh well.
I've had some chicken that then,
that seems to be the
problem with large chunks of meat
that are freeze-dried.
Whenever you throw,
whenever you reconstitute,
they don't all the way get
reconstituted for some reason.
But it's still good
and it's already cooked,
it's already done.
So freeze-drying, a freeze-dry unit,
if you were able to afford one,
it's very cost
prohibitive for many people.
In comparison, if you could
get one of a freeze-dried unit
to make your own meals,
you could cook anything.
Throw it in a freeze-dryer and turn it
into a freeze-dried.
My brother was joking, he was like,
"Man, we need a
freeze-dryer so we could go ahead
and throw some chicken
leg quarters in here."
(laughs)
I was like, okay, let's try that.
I've never had
freeze-dried chicken leg quarters,
but who knows, it might be
something that actually works.
That's crazy.
But freeze-drying is expensive.
A commercial dehydrator
can cost you somewhere
in the neighborhood of $4,000,
but you can also find
small models for $2,000.
So there's actually a
misprint in the book.
They put 400 in as low as 20.
So actually, I goofed up.
Now, a commercial dehydrator can be found
in around 400 bucks and a
small one can be 20 bucks.
What I was talking about with the
freeze-drying machine
is you can get them between $2,000 and
$3,000, $4,000 and up.
I saw a freeze-dried
machine that was $1,100,000
and it was a commercial
kind of walk-in freeze-dryer.
I was like, "Holy moly,
who has that kind of money?"
Some people do, I mean,
especially for businesses.
But anyway, I was wrong whenever I said
there was an area in the book.
The commercial dehydrators are expensive.
The personal home
dehydrators are cheaper.
I bought a commercial dehydrator
for about $150 from
Academy, believe it or not,
of all places, Academy Sports.
It's got five trays in there
and it does everything
that I need it to do.
I have dehydrated so much food on there
that if it broke tomorrow, I
would go buy a brand new one.
That's crazy.
Now, the third
category is just add water.
Readily, ready,
readily, readily available
at pretty much any grocery store
or big box store, any
store, is just add water food.
And for instance,
that is mashed potatoes,
broccoli and rice or macaroni and cheese
or those are just a few examples.
And all you need is access to water
and you'll have a decent meal in no time.
Granted, that's all gonna be carbs.
You're not gonna have a
lot of proteins in there
but what you're looking for
is something to give you energy
and your carbohydrates is
gonna give you the energy anyway.
Number four is gonna
be prepackaged foods.
Now, popular prepackaged
foods for primitive camping
includes sardines, beans, Vienna sausage,
Spam, any kind of canned meats, any kind
of canned to anything.
That is prepackaged foods.
One of the best
prepackaged foods that I ever use
is a summer sausage and you can get the
little six ounce ones
or you can get the one pound ones.
They don't take up a lot of room
and they don't need refrigerated
and after you open it is
whenever they need to be eaten
within a couple of days
but they still last for several days
after you open them.
So you could eat a
pound of summer sausage
and have all the proteins,
meats and fats and meats,
all the fats and proteins and all that
stuff that you need.
And it will really help
you cognitively to think.
They're finding out now that cholesterol
is what makes the
brain like a cholesterol
is causing
Alzheimer's, believe it or not.
All these folks are on
these cholesterol pills.
All right, so next,
next we have procured food.
Procured foods is anything
gained from hunting, fishing
or foraging that augments
what you brought with you.
These require some
additional skills and knowledge,
of course, but the results
are well worth the effort.
And doing that, we're talking about
foraging for different kinds of berries.
We're talking about
mushrooms, different stuff.
If you're foraging for
any kind of wild edibles,
I encourage you to get some kind of guide
to show you how to look for wild edibles
for the area that you're in.
You can be in a certain
area and eat something
that it looked like
something else from another area
and it would be the poisonous,
there's all kinds of stuff like that.
So, but anyway, so
procured food is anything gained.
Fishing, if you're gonna go
out, you're gonna go fishing.
Fishing is the most
readily available source
of procured food and easy.
It's easy to bring you a
small fishing pole with you
and go fishing.
And I have a telescoping fishing pole
that I've showed in many videos
and it goes on my backpack
and it's easily deployable.
And I catch fish with it and
I augment what I'm fishing.
I mean, I augment what I'm eating.
Boy, my eyes are itching today.
But, you know, when you get out there
and you start procuring your own food,
it is very, very
important to know what it is
that you are actually eating.
You don't just eat
something and not know what it is.
Make sure you can 100% positively,
absolutely identify what
you're putting into your mouth.
So, all right, so next
week, what we're gonna go over
is, you know, like dehydrating stuff.
We're gonna break dehydrating down.
I'm gonna go through different steps
about making beef jerky's eggs
and different
vegetables and stuff like that.
And then after that, you know,
we're gonna keep going systematically
all the way through the rest of the book.
It's gonna be good times.
And, you know, I had some
people that saw last week's episode
that really gave me some
ideas and talked about,
let's talk about doing
bushcraft on the budget.
And I think that is a very good idea
and we're gonna start going through
some of that stuff as well.
But anyway, you know,
hopefully this stuff's helpful.
Hopefully you enjoy it.
Pick up your copy of
"Premitive Camping in Bushcraft."
Right now, it's gonna
sell at Amazon for $14.40.
And it's got a normal cover price of $20.
So, go ahead, swing by
Amazon, pick up a copy of the book.
And then also, check
out "Premitive Camping
in Bushcraft Blend Coffee."
This stuff is great.
We got a group on Facebook called
"Premitive Camping in Bushcraft."
And a lot of folks in there
have been posting pictures
of the coffee and it's awesome to see.
And a lot of folks has been posting
pictures of the book.
So, but anyway, I thank
you so much for joining me
and I appreciate all your support.
And I will have that
book into the mail for you.
Mr. Auman, coming Monday.
Today is Saturday.
So, Monday, when
you're here in this podcast,
you'll be good to go.
All right, I really thank you guys.
I appreciate you and
I'll see you next time.
God bless you.
(upbeat music)