"Saturated fat" and "problem" don't go together in a paleo diet. Unless you are talking about not getting enough!

"Coconut oil melts at 76F, and can get a bit messy if it's not bound with other ingredients."

I either drink it or eat it out of the container with a spoon, depending on whether it's liquid or solid. Yum!

No muss, no fuss, no bother.

Tom, good call.

The liquid/solid thing can go both ways depending on use. Sometimes I wish it remained liquid at lower temps to lower the viscosity of roll-your-own cold weather fuel bars. When the coconut oil is solid and the almond butter is frozen, things can get ugly.

Good paleo(ish) breakfast bar ingredients
*Dates
*Raisins
*Shredded Coconut
*Coconut Oil
*Dried pineapple
*Almonds (cashews, etc.)
*Almond (cashew, sun) butter

Riffing on Larabar ingredients can be a good approach.

Stephen's suggestion on pemmican is also a great way to go... particularly from an energy density standpoint.

Side-note:A current scientific understanding of saturated fat

Edited by 77Zero on 10/18/2011 19:53:35 MDT.

If you do eat coconut oil, please get organic raw! Get it as unprocessed as you can - much of what is sold is highly refined and not what you want in your body. Where as virgin raw is the good stuff.

I'd go as far as saying consume organic raw virgin coconut butter - it is oil with pulp so has fiber as well. It spreads like butter and is very tasty.

I recently found the coconut butter at my health food store. I can't wait to try it out. It looks like it will be pretty tasty. I was thinking of using it to make different kind of bars, perhaps also add coconut oil as well. Maybe make a nut bar and a pemmican bar using it instead of suet. My only unknown is how messy it might get on the trail. In which case, maybe it would be better to just eat it with a spoon with the nuts or jerky.

"My only unknown is how messy it might get on the trail. In which case, maybe it would be better to just eat it with a spoon with the nuts or jerky."

A spoon is by far the most reliable option, IMO.

Be wary though - remember it will get soft and melt at pretty low temps. So plan for that. This applies to both the oil and the butters.

I eat paleo on trail. I did pemmican, i dried meat, wild berries and rendered suet myself. It tasted awesome but only because the quality of ingredients was exceptional. Dried wild berries were to die for and even dried meat on it's own was delicious. I also made power bars from nuts, berries, seeds and coconut oil. I added just a little raw honey, they were delicious as well.

I'm getting ready for a through hike and am making over 100lbs of trail food, including trail mixes, dried tubers, lots of dark chocolate etc. I hear there is some dried shredded meat readily available in Asian food stores, will check that. Thanks for the dried egg suggestions! I wish i could track down dried "pasture raised" eggs and dried "raw" milk. Also looking for what they call in Germany "speck", cured pork. Any tips appreciated.

PS: Diane, quinoa is not paleo (sorry, i had to mention it...)

"Any tips appreciated."

Branko,

If you have trouble locating dried, shredded meat in Asian stores, try Mexican stores. Ask for Machaca'(stress on the last syllable). It is dried, shredded beef, Mexican style.

I finally broke open the coconut butter. It's quite tasty. I melted it approx. 50-50 with coconut oil and poured it into paper-lined muffin cups. For some, I poured it over bee pollen (for a honey flavor). I can't say these are super delicious, but they are not bad. I made some others where I added a little 87% dark chocolate and poured it over macadamias and brazil nuts. Very tasty. Not breakfast, though, or maybe it is if you don't care what you eat for breakfast.

I've got a bunch of stuff I plan to take on my next trip. Not all paleo, though.
- rice noodles
- creamed coconut (looks like a brick, add spices and make curry)
- dried mushrooms (I should get some other dried veggies for the curry)
- Miso Cup soup (the seaweed and salt help me a lot and I like it better than bullion)
- dried tomatos (one of my favorite dried fruits, actually)
- aged gouda
- pepperoni sausage
- rice crackers
- almond butter
- nuts
- coconut butter and my coconut-butter muffin cup "candy"

Thanks, Branko, I was pretty sure it wasn't, but if you have to have a grain, quinoa's probably better than most due to its protein content. The seed/grain line is rather hard to figure sometimes for me.

I was under the impression that tubers weren't considered "paleo" by some, which strikes me as weird, because I know that roots figure prominently in hunter/gatherer type diets. Home-dried butternut squash/pumpkin are definitely nummy, when mixed with maple syrup and pumpkin pie spices. I've stayed away from the sweet potato/yams because of that, but wouldn't mind using them too.

Could someone share their tips/tricks with making Pemmican? I love the Tanka bars, but would rather not have the sugar (in the cranberries). I'd rather be able to use some honey to sweeten instead. Somehow, though, with all my food safety training, the notion of pemmican just bothers me--how can it be safe?

It's used as a thickener for soups and for cooking. Some people eat it as a trail food. I'm not one of them.

Bear Valley makes a fruit bar advertised as Pemmican

I've made pemmican, it's not hard to do but it's time consuming. Smelly too.

You might want to try Pinole. Now, if I'm calling it by the wrong name, correct me.

What I understand to be Pinole is just yellow corn meal browned at medium heat until it's dark brownish. Add brown sugar and honey and you have the consistency of granola. I haven't tried it, but I'm wondering how it would taste with milk.

I have not yet tried making it, but the most thorough guide I've seen is Lex Rooker's PDF that's floating about the Internets (one such link below).

The key to shelf life is to extract all the water; your dried meat should crack instead of bend. The second is not to use vegetable oils or meat that's been marinated. (No water and no sugars leaves little food for growing things.)

http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf

The meat has to be thoroughly dried. The tallow will keep without refridgeration if made properly and if you have extra, it can be taken along to fry bread with. I use it for grilled cheese or bannock.

@Diane: Tubers are totally paleo, albeit regular potato isn't that great. Any other root is great- sweet potatoes, yams, beats etc. Quinoa, i read, has some toxins that could cause problems like leaky gut syndrome etc. Check the internets for more information ;)

This is what i used to make (traditional) pemmican, it's written simple and effective:
http://www.grandpappy.info/rpemmica.htm
Meat has to be very lean before drying, i used <5% fat grassfed fine ground beef. I got wild blueberries in our local farmers market. After drying they were sublime, so good, nothing on market comes close, the worst are freeze dried berries. I used the same amount of dried wild berries and dried meat and just enough tallow to keep it together, which actually was quite more than what i anticipated. I also added just a little of salt at that time, the article talks about it. I'll make some pictures next time i'm doing it.

If youre making tallow, it's actually quite simple. Get some grassfed suet, kidney fat. I freeze it so i can cut it easier. I get about 10lbs and cut it first in 1 inch slices and then in 1" cubes. I then put it all in a turkey roasting pan and put it in the oven on about 215 degrees. Fat should never smoke! Mix the fat few times. I let if "roast" for about 8 hours and then use a soup spoon to pour and force it through a sifter into glass jars that i put in a fridge to cool off. There shouldnt be any debris, just clear jellowish liquid. The more debris the shorter the lifespan. I freeze it but i don't think it's necessary. I use it for all my cooking. You will have to heat it up before using for pemmican, just don't go over 200...

Hope that helps!
Branko

Meats such as emu or venison are great choices for pemmican making as they are much leaner than beef.

They are leaner meats, but they lack the fat calories found beef which you need for energy conversion on the trail.

Just to add my two cents about lean meats: the purpose of rendering the fat is to extract both water and other impurities. Any fat in the "lean meat" component does not go through that step, and is a weak point for spoilage.

Energy calories from fat should come from the rendered fat, which is why a 50/50 ratio of dried meat and fat is traditionally used. (Not to mention that a good chunk of the nutrients are in the fat; I would be concerned about "rabbit starvation" if the mix did not include enough fat.)