PIONEER POCKET FOOD

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ALL-NATURAL ENERGY BARS

Dried meat provides you with protein in a lightweight, chewy package. However, for quick energy the body requires carbohydrates ...which I get from an updated version of pemmican.

This food, as eaten by native Americans more than 100 years ago, usually consisted of jerky, powdered dried berries, and lard ...combined in equal parts and shaped into a roll. Frankly, that recipe produces a trail food that's a bit Spartan for my taste.

I favor a fruit-and-nut variety of pemmican. To make it, first run 1 cup each of dried peaches, dried apples, raisins, coconut, chopped peanuts, and 1/2 cup of prunes through a food grinder. Then give the mixture a second grinding, and blend it well in a large bowl. Add 1/2 cup of margarine, 1/2 cup of peanut butter, and 1/2 cup of honey to bind the ingredients together. Press your pemmican mixture into bars (or balls) and roll each one in powdered sugar. (Of course, you can omit the processed sweetener if you desire.) Wrap each of the bars in aluminum foil and store them in the freezer. When you're ready to head for the outback, simply take along as many as you need for the time you plan to spend (up to several days) afield.

TOOTHSOME HARDTACK

Pemmican is tasty, and jerky stays with me ...but I confess to a real partiality for breads. Biscuits, rolls, scones, muffins: I love all of them. In fact, I've been known to save extra pancakes from breakfast and take them with me for a midday snack. So I naturally poked around until I found a recipe for a good trail bread.

Traditional hardtack is made from little more than flour and water ...it's filling, but something short of delicious. My version of the old-time military fare is off-limits to anyone trying to trim away pounds, but it does stoke my fires when I'm chasing native brook trout, fast-running pheasants, a frisky colt, or lost cattle.

In a large bowl combine 3 cups of unbleached flour, 1-1/2 cups of graham flour, 1/2 cup of cornmeal, 1 tablespoon of sea salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar (or honey), 1/2 cup of shortening, and 1-1/2 cups of milk. Then lightly grease and flour a 14" X 16" cookie tin, put an egg-sized piece of dough on it, and roll the raw hardtack out with a sock-covered rolling pin until it's very thin (1/4" or less). Bake the sheet at 400°F until its edges are brown, turn it over, and bake until it's stiff. Then flop the round again, and return it to the oven once more until the other side is also about the consistency of cardboard. Take the sheet of hardtack out, put it somewhere to cool, and repeat the process until you've used up all the dough. Store your "working (wo)man's wafers" in an airtight container.

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