Recipe: My Favorite Hot Cereal

After months of testing, I've found my favorite. The recipe is my own. If published, just give credit to Gershon.

My criteria for cooking is 300 calories/serving, 1.5 pounds for 3,000 calories in a day. 30% fat, 15% protein over the day. Cost less than $5.00 a day. Everything can be cooked in a 2 cup pot. (The size of the pot with my SVEA 123 stove.) Each serving must fit in a small Ziplock snack bag.

This recipe will not respond well to adding hot water and waiting as the carob won't melt well and the grain won't absorb enough water. I simmer it in the pot until it is bubbling well and the mixture turns chocolate color from the carob melting. Be sure to stir to the bottom or there will be clumps on the bottom.

I add water to the mixture so it is about 3/8 inch from the top of the 2 cup pot. It looks soupy at first, but thickens as it's simmered.

All measurements are in grams.

I would have to double it! I am a big breakfast eater. Sounds yummy! I totally agree that taking non-instant grains and cooking them a bit is far superior to the instant "add water" grains. I like to vary breakfast grains- oatmeal, Malt-o-meal, cous-cous, barley, cream of rice. Also I vary my nuts- almonds one day, walnuts next, cashews, sunflower seeds, etc. Same with fruit. For long duration trips, the variety is great. Also spice up breakfast with cinnamon, allspice (my favorite). Chocolate flavors in breakfast cereal is not something I would like. Sometimes I dice up a little summer sausage and dump in the cereal. And to add calories, I always put a spoon of margarine in the cereal. To boost protein I add a spoon of Nido and one spoon of TVP.

My criteria are a bit different. I aim for 20% protein since a protiens are incomplete so I feel I need more overall for a better chance of getting enough complete protein. I do not get too focused on the cost but do avoid packaged freeze-dried meals (I simply do not like them). I do splurge and buy the freeze-dried fruit. Diced dates are also a favorite of mine.

If a recipe (or ingredient list) names a specific amount of protein, those grams of protein are complete. Incomplete proteins are not listed in the nutritional data because, in essence, they are various amino acids.

Newbie to the site, but I wanted to be sure that you understand the concept.

Incomplete proteins ARE listed as protein. Case in point- rice- on any package it will say 5 grams of protein per serving. But rice is NOT a complete protein. It lacks lysine. It is a 75% complete protein. A complete protein has to have all the 9 essential amio acids. To make rice complete you can eat other incomplete proteins that contain the missing amino acid- hence-- rice and beans -- a complete protein meal. Because backpack food is primarily a grain-based diet, you CANNOT simply add up protein as stated on box labels and assume you get complete proteins. You have to specifically combine incomplete proteins. Good combinations are: rice with legumes, wheat with milk or milk products. If you were simply to have a meal of rice -- no matter how much rice, even though the box says 5 grams per serving, you will not get a complete protein. Short term this is not a real problem, but long term- say you are out several weeks, it would be a problem. Muscles need complete protein to rebuild.

I use this site to evaluate the menu for each day: http://caloriecount.about.com/

You have to log in, but it checks all sorts of things. We all have different needs. Cravings will likely tell us what we are missing. Usually, it's a large vegetarian pizza for me.

Good stuff their wandering_daisy. Impressive how many traditional diets are complete protiens. I discovered recently oatmeal is very nearly complete, just a little low in lysine. Then when I was reading about conversion of protiens into glucose I read that lysine doesn't convert. I think this might mean if you eat some surplus protien, the lysine is spared in the conversion, so what is left might be complete protien. Does that make sense? Probably moot because you can only scarf back so much oats anyway, and you will still want to balance your diet for vitamins and minerals.

Lately I've been having my oats by sort of frying them in a pan, or my cook pot, with canola oil, and then adding stuff like almonds and sunflower seeds and dried blueberries and dried cranberries. Then adding some skim milk powder and water.

Sardines are also very good fried with oats in canola oil. I like canola oil with fish and oats versus olive oil because it seems to have more of a fishy nutty flavour. Also cheaper. Also experimented lately with oven drying sardines for hiking. Not sure how safe, but good for a week or two I should think, if dried enough. Debating whether to pack it in oats or canola oil or by itself. I use convection oven at 170F, but filleting the sardines open helps, and a little pre-broiling might help also. Work in progress.