So, I'm reading up on hardtack because I've read plenty of Questing Tales where the heroes go off and don't have Elven Lembas to sustain them.

And I'm thinking, what food do you associate with that kind of narrative which involves a long trek?

Cheese, right? Because they can always cut away the mold and it's still lots of protein, and you eat it with stale bread, or soak the bread in something to make it palatable.

And in Lonesome Dove there's a lot of discussion of what Po cooks (including tasty grasshoppers), and in the miniseries that great shot of Gus lifting up the lid on that big skillet on the fire for a pan of biscuits.

And jerky I guess. And what else? Do contemporary fantasy writers spend as much time thinking these things through or do they always lock in a Mighty Hunter who can shoot down a buck a day, or round up a brace of coneys or what?

What's the ration in a Maturin/Aubrey book? Hardtack and rum and lime cordial?

eta: And now I'm reading about "rabbit starvation" which comes from eating only very lean meat without fat or carbs. The human body, apparently, doesn't like the Atkins diet in excess.

I've not heard of "rabbit starvation" - does it mess with your gall bladder?

Jerky is what I think. Hard tack if you can carry flour. Well, they bring the already baked biscuit on ship, don't they?

I am apparently still an Atkins pedant, because I have to point out that it is relatively high-fat.

I've not heard of "rabbit starvation" - does it mess with your gall bladder?

Unsafe levels of protein. It has been observed that human liver cannot metabolise much more than 200-300 g of protein per day, and human kidneys are similarly limited in their capability to remove urea (a byproduct of protein catabolism) from the bloodstream. Exceeding that amount results in excess levels of amino acids, ammonia (hyperammonemia), and/or urea in the bloodstream, with potentially fatal consequences,[1] especially if the person switches to a high-protein diet without giving time for the levels of his hepatic enzymes to upregulate.

I am apparently still an Atkins pedant, because I have to point out that it is relatively high-fat.

Noted! Humans can live on an all-meat diet as long as the meat is fatty.

Well, they bring the already baked biscuit on ship, don't they?

They did. It lasted so long that WWI soldiers got biscuit stamped with "Remember the Maine" on it.

Also, Water Crackers are basically the same thing but not quadruply baked, and much thinner. Also Carr's charges way too much for them. Or at least I find their profit margin excessive, since you can get them from TJ's for ninety-nine cents.

Humans can live on an all-meat diet as long as the meat is fatty.

It also has a lot of vegetables! Sheesh.

And, as the first episode of "Due South" reminded us, there's pemmican (meat, fat and, I believe, berries). um, yum?

Good one, Todd. Pemmican is definitely travel food in narratives set in the frontier.

I always wanted to try some. Yeah, it involved berries.

One of the key foods for sailors in the Age of Sail was salted meat: it's one of the reasons the Portuguese became so powerful, because they cornered the cod fisheries in the North Atlantic, and cod salts up really well.

The enormous reliance on salt cod and salt pork and whatever gave rise to scurvy, hence the use of limes, and hence the term "limey" to refer to a British sailor.

For reasons that I have yet to figure, we always had pilot bread (hardtack) in the house as a kid.

So I'd eat it while pretending to be on a ship, or otherwise adventuring.

Pemmican is actually pretty tasty, IMHO. I mean, I wouldn't want to live off of it, but I would snack on it now and again as a kid.