By: Blonde Two
There is a lot of talk about what you should eat whilst out on the hills. One thing is sure, eight hours up hills, through bogs, over tussocks and across rivers will give you a need for more calories than you are used to consuming.
We Blondes teach our youngsters that a good breakfast, preferably a hot one, can make the difference between a day of success and a day of misery. I would like to say that we always follow our own advice, but sometimes time just doesn’t allow (and we don’t actually like the just-add-water porridges that we both take to every camp).
A full cooked English would obviously be our preference, but that would take a tad more effort than we usually have available after a cold tent night. I know that some Ten Tors leaders manage it; and there are alternatives, for example Blonde One had a cook-in-the-bag brekkie yesterday (she is a very well behaved Blonde).
I however didn’t; but I did have what I thought was a most excellent cold alternative to the full English. I call it the Full Blondish. Think sausage, egg and bacon, and then replace that thought with a Scotch egg and a bag of Frazzles (bacon flavoured wheat snacks). It tastes fine, can be eaten whilst writing route cards, sorting out blisters and striking a tent (all at the same time). If all of that multitasking leaves you no time to eat it, you can shove it in your pocket and munch on the move.
If you think my breakfast sounds disgusting or unsuitable, you are almost certainly right. Please feel free to bring us both up a proper repast next time we are camping out. We really don’t want to eat our porridge.
I love breakfast – mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, veggie bacon, the lot – so backpacking can come as a bit of a shock. But a lot of cooking is out because of the need for drinking water to be conserved; Scotch eggs sound great; but I’m veggie. Tomatoes and eggs travel well in a plastic egg box, but eggs make a horrid mess of the pan. Baked beans tend to be heavy and tiny aluminium cans of peas much lighter, as well as having their own liquid – so that is my standby. Peas and tomatoes. You can mix powdered potato in any spare liquid. Anyone for breakfast? 🙂 I thought not.
Just roll out of bed/bivi/tent wherever – eat a ‘muesli’ bar and go.
Works for us calorie storing oldies, probably not the average teenager or blonde.
The problem is that I really like eating. I appear to be quite good at calorie storing though!
Surely not.
The breakfast fetish. There is an alternative but you may have missed the bus. In my late teens, after I’d started work, I decided I couldn’t be bothered. I trained my metabolism to do without and instead looked forward to brunch. I never knowingly suffered as a result and I enjoyed the enormous benefit of not having to fiddle around with frying pans, etc, at a time of day when I felt disinclined to do so. Didn’t think anything more about it.
Until, that is, I got involved in holidays with Sir Hugh, my brother, much later in life. The discrepancy between us couldn’t have been greater. Whereas I was ready to go he appeared sluggish, weak-kneed, unable to make conversational sense until he’d had his toast and tea. Bad tempered too whereas under normal circumstances he was was the most agreeable of company.
It seems to me I was at an enormous advantage and all this ballyhoo about breakfast being the most important meal (forget the fact that it is often the most unhealthy) was a myth promulgated by those who are unable to do without it.
Sir Hugh excused himself on the grounds that he didn’t do brunch. But on seeing me eat my rather eccentric midday meal he tended to join in. Whether I’d have have changed my habits if I’d gone in for lots of excessive walking I cannot say, but it seems unlikely. I have from time to time exerted myself.
Ah well.
In my head, brunch is what you do when you are wearing girl clothes (you probably didn’t) and go to an establishment with a roof. We manage a Ten Tors leaders’ brunch once every three or so years. Whether it happens or not depends who is in charge of route planning!!
RR seems to have me summed up. When backpacking I depend on finding somewhere to buy breakfast after I have set off, but that can be a matter of hours. If I anticipate there will be nowhere at all I will have provided myself with some biscuits and cheese, but I find I do not perform physically or mentally at my best until I have eaten something. That is all a compromise whose downside is outweighed by the overall enjoyment of backpacking – it just has to be endured.
At home breakfast is sacred – my quality time – toast and marmalade or Philly (with chives) with Bovril added, and four or five cups of tea made in a Thermos jug to keep warm, whilst I look at the news on the Internet, then get my daily fix of Two Blondes and other bloggers I follow, then I read.
Your breakfast sounds most enjoyable. I always carry far too much food when I am walking, it weighs a lot and I have never eaten it all. Something I will have to right if I am going to do a long distance walk.
‘proper’ farmers have the best scheme:
up before dawn before anyone else stirs, quick cup of tea and a slab of wholemeal or oatmeal, then out on the hill/in the byre for a couple of hours hard slog, then, when the cows are milked and the sheep – well, you know what – back to the house where a big breakfast is now awaiting – proper porage from kibbled oats, home cure bacon and an egg or two and bread fried in the bacon fat: no nonsense about tomatoes or baked beans, of course.
Then lunch is a hunk of hard cheese, an apple and tea or beer, under the greenwood tree, followed by ‘high’ tea at dusk.
Built an empire on that, we were told.
Does usually require a traditional farmer’s wife (or daughter) of course, but there are alternatives, as I gathered at an early age.