Sunday, July 11, 2010

36 hr adventure race meal planning - vegetarian

This spreadsheet is the calorie counter I made up to help plan for the Race the Phantom adventure race. It is based on an estimation of burning 250 calories per hour. If that estimation is high I'll be carrying extra weight, if it's low I'll be a little hungry at the end...

Definition: Ass factor

Ass factor [as] [fak-ter]
-Noun
  1. a measurement of taste as it relates to ass. Ass factors range in severity from 0 to 10 where 0 is tasty and 10 is absolutely nasty. An ass factor of 5 is generally considered to be the transition from palatable to unpalatable.

Origin: The term "ass factor" originated from a hiking trip in Fundy National Park in 2009. The term was adopted by the group to describe the edible wild plants being collected and tasted.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Fruit (flavoured) Smoothy

I tried to make the Groovie Smoothie from Lip Smackin' Vegetarian Backpackin' but the orange crystals that I bought had an ass factor of about 13. The stuff tasted horrible.

Anyways, I modified the recipe to use juice crystals (kool-aid stuff). It tastes pretty good now.

0.4 cups of Vanilla pudding powder
1/2 cup soy milk powder
1 pouch (75 ml) juice crystals (peach is good)

Mix together.

Use 3 tbsp per 1 cup water. Shake and drink.

Calorie count: Approx. 150

Friday, July 2, 2010

Homemade Energy Gel

I found a great recipe for homemade energy gel. I was looking for an energy gel recipe because the stuff is pretty expensive and generally tastes terrible. There really isn't much to them either. So, I figure, with my own recipe I can tweak it to my liking, save some money and even buy organic ingredients!

The original recipe was for a 5 ounce batch. Since I'll need a whole lot more for Race the Phantom I quadrupled the recipe. Luckily I liked the taste! Actually, it really tastes VERY good. Also, I do like the taste of molasses so I added more molasses.

Here is the 20 serving recipe:

12 oz brown rice syrup
6 oz honey
6 oz blackstrap molasses
1 teaspoon sea salt


Just mix all of the ingredients together until smooth. It doesn't get much easier. Place the finished product in a squeeze bottle appropriately sized for the activity. I'm using 250ml bottles for the adventure race.

I am going to experiment with a couple of variations as well this weekend. My plan is to add 1/2 of instant cafe mocha to half of the batch. That will give a bit of a caffeine boost in the middle of the night to keep me awake.