Cold Mush: an honest review
When I watched Wild, a movie based on Cheryl Strayed’s book, one small experience really stood out to me. Her cold mush. She ate cold mush the first few days on the trail because she had a problem with her stove.
I am no stranger to dehydrated food. I have always heated the water to rehydrate it. When I saw her eat cold mush, I had a light bulb moment. I don’t have to heat up the water?!
I have had so many problems heating water for our food while adventuring. Well, that all changed during our recent bike packing trip around Yoron island (in Japan). It took loads of convincing, but my family agreed to give cold mush a try. (My husband preferred to call it sun cooked meals, branding is everything!)
The basic recipes are all the same (I googled it). Instant rice, ramen noodles, instant oatmeal, or dehydrated potatoes with added seasonings. You put one serving in a sandwich sized ziploc bag**. Approximately four hours before you want to eat it, you add cold water to the bag and seal it. Adventure away. When you’re hungry, unzip and eat.
It works. And, it’s not bad. We all ate our “sun cooked meals” and liked it.
Here’s exactly what I did:
1 cup minute rice with 1 tablespoon of rice seasoning (salmon and seaweed from my local Japanese grocery store) in a sandwich bag. 4 hours before eating, I filled the bag halfway with cold water. After biking and snorkeling for 4 hours, I unzipped my bag and ate my rice. Delicious. Easy. Portable. Filling.
I also tried instant ramen using the same method (a little more water) with equally great results.
I tried one more thing. I added a foil pouch of salmon in olive oil to a bag of rice before eating, even better! A protein and calorie boost that is also easy and requires no fuel.
Thank you Cheryl Strayed for sharing your cold mush mistake. I am now converted to cold mush, I mean, “sun cooked meals.” Forget the stove and the fuel, it’s unnecessary weight and headaches. Adventuring just got a whole lot easier.
**plastic ziploc bags disclaimer: the reusable silicone bags I have don’t seal properly, so I couldn’t use them for this experiment. Now that I know this method works and my family will eat it, I’ll find reusable bags that seal for future trips.
