Budget food whilst long term travelling,or how to stay alive and not run out of cash!

[andyr1]

hi,

first of all this is not a "how do i balance my carbohydrate value versus my protein intake" post as if i knew what that meant anyway.. let me explain.. i left london in june 2005 to cycle to nepal. I am now stuck on a farm in northern Austria working for food and board, after spending far too much time messing around in Germany. (I managed to land a job organising pub crawls and it was oktoberfest and i couldnt be bothered cycling..) Bearing in mind that last week the petrol froze in the cars as it hit minus 22 during the day, i should be here for another few weeks before i go back to vienna then carry on cycling south to istanbul which will mark the half way point.
The purpose of this post is that i have been having trouble along the way with food. i have a stove and build fires when i can get away with it and cook my own meals nearly all the time to keep costs down but i am running out of inspiration. i had a book entitled the "one pan gourmet cook book" which was very good but lo and behold it was stolen off me like so much other stuff so i have lost all the recipes and too be honest i have spent most of my meal times eating bread and cheese, bread and jam, bread and sausages, bread and.. you get the point.. occasionaly i will splurge and cook pasta or do what keeps me going which is vegetable stew with flour and water made into rather poor faijtas..
i need meals that have high calorie contents but cost next to nothing. they must also be very easy to prepare and to carry. stuff like butter, 9 times out of ten no matter how carefully you carry it will expode and coat everything.. so does cooking oil, rice and pasta is heavy and unless you put it in a bottle of water a couple of hours before you need to eat it takes fuel and a long time to cook.
also energy foods that are cheap to prepare. i have found that eating a whole pot of jam and pouring half a pound of sugar into a bottle of water gives you an amazing but short lived energy kick when you are stranded in the middle of nowhere.. so, if you can beat drinking sugar and eating jam with your finger when lost and hungry please let me know.

the most important thing is that they must be cheap. i still have rather a long way to nepal and i can only afford to spend 4-5 euros a day on what i eat. the rest of the money is saved for when i am not wild camping and need to pay for accomodation. Digressing slightly may i recommend www.hospitalityclub.org if it is of any use to anyone reading this.

So to summarise, put yourself in the position where everything you own in the world is on rather a decrepit kona, you have to run into a supermarket (amble about and you find that local pikeys have taken rather too keen an intrest in your belongings) and buy food for a day with just 4-5 euros.. that covers breakfast, lunch and dinner, and must be easyto carry and not go off if it is hot (therefore meat is normally a problem unless i cook it straight away).. what would you buy?

please if you have any ideas to stop the diet of 30cent chocolate bars and 89cent instant pasta meals then let me know!!

thanks
andy

 

[Jotjepoes]

Have you thought about peanut butter for breakfast and lucnh? Some brands sell them in a plastic jar.

Not something I would normally recommend, but if you are burning through the joules big time, nut based foods should help. (Fibre, protein and fat - but probably not in the proportions you should generally consume)

For dinner you could use it as a base for a sauce (the Dutch put peanut sauce on their chips!). Here's a simplified versions for cooking on the move: if you have it fry up some chilli or garlic in some oil or water, add a couple of tablespoons and heat till it goes gooey then add some water and cook till it thickens.

Hope this helps.