food

[ibdave]

Huh? I tend to go high calorie on playa. Working the three days of early arrival on average 16 hours each day, I need my energy.

I estimate 3000 to 4000 calories, from bacon and grilled red meats.

Even with all that goodness, I end up dropping 10 pounds by the time gate opens.

ditto.......

edit to take the booze out... I go sober...

[Sail Man]

Anything tomato based, spaghetti, ravioli, beefaroni, stewed tomato's in the rice-a-roni mixes with misc. foil packs of meat thrown in

Trader Joes for they're pre-cooked rice mixes as well

Pickles, beef jerky or sticks

mac and cheese

potato gnochi's with sausage gravy

I try to keep it simple, 1 pot meals, easy snacks

[littleflower]

Whatever you bring, you'll be happy when you're there if you pre-prepare as much as possible. Usually you don't feel like cooking or dealing with the mess afterward. Grab-n-go is great on the playa.

i'd like to second this. next year i plan to pre-prepare everything and put it in containers or plastic bags, so the only thing i have to cook is coffee. this also creates less moop, i think. i love to cook, but cooking was the last thing i wanted to do on the playa. i wasn't wild about cleaning dishes, either.

oatcakes, apples, cheese, hummus, crackers are the easy ones. i'm thinking of pickling veggies to take out there, so i have them.

my drink was mint julep .... i made a container of minted simple syrup and mixed it with whiskey, add some ice, it was terrific. i thought i would drink a lot out there, but i didn't....

for electrolytes, i made iced ginger tea and added electrolyte stuff ... high mineral salts, sugar, and baking powder (i think). lots of it! it's very easy to make and worked great ... especially if you're sugar challenged (as i am). i think that too much water washes minerals out of your body, so just drinking a ton of water doesn't quite work.

think of your own food tastes and issues, and try to think them through. you want to be as comfortable as possible because the conditions are pretty harsh ... and that is part of the fun!

[zachass]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaK9bjLy3v4[/youtube]

[curiousgnate]

cheese cheese and more cheese. i brought 8 different kinds from brie to string, and that with crackers was a beautiful thing.

[Delrious]

A 100 pack of corn tortillas.
A huge bag of shredded cheese.
A jar of salsa.
Black beans, Pinto Beans, Peppers, Onions.
Some vegetable Oil.
A Frying pan.
Your hands.

equals hot oily goodness.

(edit: n some paper towels)

[AKAparttime]

i've never been to BM before, i plan to go in 2010, i was wondering what kind of food do you all bring? i take it you can't bring anything really fresh because it would just go off in the heat, right?

This year precooked rice in a bag was one of the best things to hit my plate.
Trader Joe's has a vary good selection.
I used it to bulk up canned soup.

[unjonharley]

i've never been to BM before, i plan to go in 2010, i was wondering what kind of food do you all bring? i take it you can't bring anything really fresh because it would just go off in the heat, right?

This year precooked rice in a bag was one of the best things to hit my plate.
Trader Joe's has a vary good selection.
I used it to bulk up canned soup.

Rice can be precooked then dryed for instance rice. Saves from any spoilage. Different styles of caned beans, spices and rice.

[zachass]

requires good ice chest and perhaps some dry ice, but:

Make yourself a batch of jambalaya, curry or other rice dishes, and freeze solid in good quality freezer bags. Let defrost on the playa, boil the bag in water for a few minutes and you have yourself a fantastic meal.

[viajera80]

Kern's, Kern's, Kern's! I buy one of those giant packages of Kerns Nectar juices and freeze half of them. Those become our "ice" for the ice chest until they defrost. The other half are just drunk the first two days or so while we get used to the heat.

Pre-cook and prepackage all food. Eat well, the food you eat will be some of your best memories at BM.

My go-to list:

Precooked chicken breast with herbs, throw it into rice and pasta dishes

Cut carrots, celery and cucumber, anything with a cool crunch

Precooked brown rice, good for breakfast too with milk and sugar

Costco ravioli and frozen pesto. Damn good!

Crackers and herbed Boursin cheese

Pickles, nuts, black licorice or anything salty (insert joke here) :roll:

[dinks]

Google "engel"

With one of those you can bring just about anything you want to eat with you.

[Homiesinheaven]

James Shearhart wrote something called Playa Cookery that i found very valuable last year. it has everything you EVER wanted to know about food at BM and it can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.box.net/shared/fvj9aka4m4

[Blurt]

Instant oatmeal, canned ham, chips and salsa, humous. I had an rv but it was too damn hot to cook and the last thing I wanted was to fire up the stove, for anything more than boiling water. We ended up running out of food in the end and temple burn night was spent scadging lasagna from the medical tent. Best thing I ever ate.

This year, a bit more preparedness is in order. I love the ideas of boil in a bag curries and stews. Eat them right out of the bag. No dishes!

[carmatic]

let me share with you , the video which made me aware of the existence of Burning Man... i would not have known about it if it wasnt for this video

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbq2ItIbfY[/youtube]

[C.f.M.]

One of my campmates ate MREs (he's in the military) exclusively, and none of us envied him.

Even he said, about the refried beans, "This is not something I would want to eat in a combat situation."

[carmatic]

One of my campmates ate MREs (he's in the military) exclusively, and none of us envied him. :?

Even he said, about the refried beans, "This is not something I would want to eat in a combat situation."

yeah, from what i've gathered online, MRE's are more fit for disaster zones than festivals ... doesnt stop people from going camping without a stove, tho

[C.f.M.]

In all my years of camping, festivals, burns, etc., I've never taken a stove (would have to buy one, to start).

MREs are crap (compared to what you can do, very easily). I've eaten my fair share of them - plus the waste, from all the packaging, was nuts.

[unjonharley]

I eat on the playa the same food I have at home.

Beans, rice, veggies, fruit, herbs and spices..

Most meals can be prepreared and some dryed..

[Ugly Dougly]

Brainstorming here.
Soy milk (sneaking in some protein), instant coffee, ginger, sugar, salt, other electrolytes, B vitamins, some vitamin C too.

Would that taste too awful?

[mojo]

The Costco here now stocks tasty bites - I don't use them at BM because I feed too many and don't need single serving sizes but I eat them at my office sometimes for lunch - excellent. The madras lentil tastes like chili. Easy heat packet in hot water and serve.

[phil]

Louise and I have a page with hints for quick meals on the playa:
http://www.cieux.com/bm/quickMeals.html

We've used HeaterMeals for years; they have a magnesium powder thing that you add water too for heat - warms the food up for you without a stove. Datrex and Mainstay are survival rations for sailors - no cooking, just huge amounts of calories in a very dense cookie or cakey thing. We've tried those, too. Not as bad as I expected, but I wouldn't want to live off them. No stove needed to prepare those and similar items on that page.

Several of the suggestions on the page are boil-in-the-bag, so you would need a stove to prepare them, but there are gluten-free, animal-free, lactose-free, kosher, and more special diet entrees you can buy already prepared.

There are also products called Sizzle Sack (some guys I know have their own sizzle sacks, but that's different) and Zesto Therm. These products are the magnesium powder that you add water to for heat. Add your own food to the Sizzle Sack or Zesto Therm and heat your meal. I haven't tried it. I will assure you, though, that it won't boil water. HeaterMeals has the same thing, and it will heat your food, but it's not going to be boiled or scalding hot.

See also the link to Minimus. Minimus sells small, individual serving packs of everything: hand lotion, mustard, salt, salad dressing, toothpaste, wipes, and more. There's a trade off between having single-serving sizes that won't spoil and MOOP. If you're backpacking in, single serving sizes of mustard or soy sauce may be the difference between having it and not having it. You get to choose; Burners know they pack it in, they pack it out. Minimus has lots of travel items that gets you in under TSA limits for toothpaste, sanitizers, and such.

Louise and I don't eat MREs because each meal gives us our full daily dose of calories, salt, fat, etc. I'm sure this is great for guys in combat and great for those at Burning Man that eat one meal a day. We do three squares because one of us has hypoglycemia, requiring regular meals.

This brings me to -- all the advice is offered in good faith by people that the advice works for. They expect their advice to work for everybody. It won't. It's up to each person getting the advice to determine whether it will work for them. You know your needs, and we don't, so use your judgment and either ignore some suggestions completely or warp the advice so that it fits your special needs.

[C.f.M.]

Tasty Bites are one thing I'd pack more of. It was the best thing I most enjoyed, that I brought to eat.

Plus, no fuss, easy to take on the go.

[unjonharley]

Brainstorming here.
Soy milk (sneaking in some protein), instant coffee, ginger, sugar, salt, other electrolytes, B vitamins, some vitamin C too.

Would that taste too awful?

Soy milk over breakfast rice..250 calories 12g proten. Add a tbs of olive oil 100 calories. taste good and good for you. Top it with 1/2 cup mixed fruit 100 cal.. +450 cal and 25% pro.

Dry soy milk.. 4 table spoon to a pint of cold water.. 1/4 tsp. stevia (sweetner). Use 8oz over rice.

Rice for the playa

Prepare rice. Drain and dry+ instance rice..


Use extra milk and sweetner with soy proteen. 30g pro.

[Ugly Dougly]

One of my tenants was throwing away a whole shitload of this:

[Blurt]

Ensure! Gold if you can pack them all out again. I found I was never hungry during the day, and Ensure was something I could choke down in the heat, and it would give me enough energy to do stuff.

Heatermeals..... they look great, but $88 per meal? Not a chance. I like the other ideas of making your own stews or curries, throwing them in a freezer bag and boiling that up. Assuming you have the stove, cooler, water to spare, etc.

[Ugly Dougly]

Hell for that price you could bring a caterer!

[Blurt]

I just ordered a crapload of Tasty Bite curries. FOr the $88 for one Heatermeal, I got 18 tasty bite meals. Saag Paneer and Coconut Chicken on the playa. Yum! Being in Canada, I couldn't find them up here, but the ordering on line process worked great. 'Course, it could be disgusting, I will let you know when I test one out.

[phil]

> Heatermeals..... they look great, but $88 per meal? Not a chance.

It's eighty-eight bucks a CASE of HeaterMeal Plus kits.

From their Web site:

Each case has 12 HeaterMeals Plus Full Course Self-Heating Meal Kits

Every HeaterMeals Plus Meal Kit Includes:
Tasty 3/4 lb. HeaterMeals Self-Heating Entree
1-Musselman’s Cinnamon Applesauce
4-Bread Sticks
1-Squeezers Chocolate Peanut Butter
2-Stauffer’s Snicker Doodle Cookies
1-Pack of California Raisins
1-JB's Iced Tea with Lemon Drink
Cutlery Pack with Spoon, Napkin, Moist Towelette, Salt & Pepper, Salt Free Seasoning, and Crushed Red Pepper to Season to your Taste!
Patented TrueTech Food Heater Pouch
2 ounce packet of water to start heater

and that's eighty-eight bucks for a dozen of those kits itemized above. That's about $7.50 per meal.

The price for a dozen entrees is shown as $53 bucks for a case of 12. If my math is correct (it's often not), that's 53/12=$4.50 per meal, more or less. We get a case of assorted entrees, since we don't want all the crap that's included in the Plus kit.

[epic_elite]

im seein a lot of redundancies. but, i think that just shows that simple is better.

i don't eat much red meat, but after not eating all day a steak tastes really good....

simple stuff like potatoes for carbs, meat slabs for protein. sausages are awsome for this and don't necessarily need to be cooked as many are cured as is. kielbasa is cheap and goes with just about anything. dried fruit. cheese blocks/easy cheese.

i love:

macaroni and cheese. <-- par boil the noodles at home and finish them off on the playa. bring the packets of cheese to squeeze over.

pb and J <--- the best MRE ever.

on a recent back packing trip, a freind taught us to premake burritoes. the bon fires at night kept the sand hot enough so in the morning you could burry your burrito wrapped in tin foil in the sand and the residual heat would cook it for you.


i think a key principle is to either bring items that require little to no prep. or, just do all the prep at home.

your not gonna wanna eat it if you have to work for it.

[epic_elite]

[quote="Blurt"] I like the other ideas of making your own stews or curries, throwing them in a freezer bag and boiling that up. Assuming you have the stove, cooler, water to spare, etc.[/quote]

you could boil down the stew too so your not dealing with the volume of frozen water. then you could reconstitute as necessary.