[pct-l] Extra oil that you carry

[Diane Soini]

On my Glacier trip last summer I brought super fancy, super peppery  
olive oil. It was quite good and easy to use with no-cook meals.

On other trips when I have cooked, I have found that beef tallow  
makes a good melted-in fat. If you are paleo you understand already  
that this is a healthy fat, with the added bonus that it's very  
stable at all temperatures.

I made little "pucks" of beef tallow in muffin cups. Some of my beef  
tallow was mixed with dried beef, making pemmican. Some of it was  
mixed with shredded coconut (possibly some coconut manna, too, I  
can't remember). When the pemmican is melted into potatoes, it tastes  
like home-cookin', like stew. When the coconut/tallow concoction is  
mixed into a dish, it provides a good substrate for a curry. I get  
grass-fed beef tallow either online or locally.

I just did not find nuts to be something I wanted to eat on the  
trail. They were never looked forward to and they were hard to  
swallow and left little bits of stuff to get stuck in my throat or  
teeth. I preferred to eat nut butter with a spoon and I liked all  
natural peanut butter. I found almond butter in Ashland and that was  
a real treat.

It seemed like my throat closed up or something on my long hikes so  
that there were many things I literally could not swallow. And being  
solo, I acquired a paranoia for anything with a possibility of  
choking when eating. So no taffy (tootsie rolls, starburst etc), no  
cliff shot blocks, no tortillas, no peanut butter on tortillas, and  
even fig newtons were a struggle to swallow.