I have been eating so much fruit, tinned fish and Pita and it has been great for my health but I am starting to crave variety. What can I eat?
Nut butters on bread/crackers, PBJ. Cheddar cheese in block form lasts a long time unrefrigerated, cured meats like pepperoni. Carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes all keep pretty well unrefrigerated.
Oatmeal
Tahini (you can dip your pita in there)
Beans, canned or dried if you’re able to cook. Lentils also.
Chia seeds - some bags say to refrigerate them but as long as you’re not letting them sit there for a long time you’ll be fine. Same goes for tahini actually.
Nuts and seeds
Could also get other breads or maybe corn tortillas or something
Edit: I suppose by no heating element you mean you can’t cook. So with the oats you’d probably have to get old fashioned oats and do overnight oats or something just using water. Canned beans don’t need to be cooked so you can use those.
Edit 2: ugh I actually don’t know if the overnight oats would work. Everyone I know who makes them uses a fridge. You can eat old fashioned oats “raw” though, since they’re not actually raw but they’ve been steamed. A little weird though. Though you could make a cereal with them or something, like muesli. Actually they sell packaged muesli in the store, that might be a good thing to try, and you could get oats that way. I love getting a box of Alpen.
I’ll sound like a broken record on this site, but rice and beans can be made in small enough portions that you usually don’t need to consider FATTOM.
they’ve still gotta be cooked though, don’t they?
I missed the “heating element” part. Whoopsies.
Do you eat raw rice and beans?
raw rice
Just douse that shit in milk and eat it like cereal. How bad could it be?
milk that hasn’t been in the fridge bc they don’t have access to one
Okay maybe it will be a little bad
They can be made somewhat edible with prolonged soaking, especially rice
pretty sure that will make you hella sick. at least for beans, not sure about rice. don’t do this. you can cold soak instant rice because its actually pre-cooked and then dehydrated.
Other than what you’ve mentioned. When I go hiking for long periods of time away from facilities I often go to these staples:
Breakfast: premix portions of dried milk powder and oats to use as instant porridge, add in some salt some sugar and some freeze dried raspberries for taste.
Lunch: a hard tack / cake thing made with flour, oats and suet flavoured with dried fruit. Keep forever and very energy dense and quite tasty.
Dinners: (other than dehydrated meals which are always good for expeditions) couscous. Bulgar wheat. Rice, pasta, noodles. Dried meats and fish. If you’ve got a dehydrator you can make things like dehydrated roast peppers or other veggies. Things like butternut squash, potatoes, onions etc don’t actually need refrigeration, just to be kept cool and dark. Also if you’re not travelling anything you can grow - herbs like parsley, chives etc add so much to a meal.
Snacks: flapjack, nuts, chocolate, dried fruit (dried mango is my all time favourite) fresh fruits etc.
Just seen you don’t have access to a heating element - sorry! That makes much of the above void. Can you make use of an alcohol stove? Buy some denatured alcohol (meths, bio ethanol, methylated spirits etc) and a drinks can, with which you can make an alcohol stove that can be used to boil water and make other simple meals. But be very careful with alcohol stoves they burn with a very dim flame which can make it very hard to see, which can be very dangerous if you spill lit fuel. Take adequate precautions. Also usual notes about burning things - try not to do it indoors, make sure you have adequate ventilation, keep away from children, have plan for extinguishing the flame in an emergency etc.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Is buying a rice cooker a possibility?
If that is doable then it opens up a whole world of possibilities for cooking - with the button pressed down you are able to fry small quantities of food and with the button up it’s basically a slow cooker.
Bean salad with nachos
you can make Hiyayakko. also olives, nuts, and pickles, especially the asian pickles that come in small retort pouches. maybe you have a way to make yogurt or sour cream. there are also a ton of cold soak backpacking recipes, though many use expensive dehydrated stuff, but a few are done with normal stuff like grits or oats: https://andrewskurka.com/section/food-nutrition/
