https://www.epicbar.com/

Following on after the thread on Quest bars - anyone tried the Epic bars? I learned about these a few months ago (maybe from this forum?), but couldn't find any local source. Earlier this month I made a sudden trip to the east coast (packing cheese and jerky to eat on the plane), and while I was there I found that these Epic bars were at Whole foods. I bought two of each (except the bison, as they didn't have those). I wasn't keen on the lamb (though normally I love lamb; I'll need to try that one again), haven't tried the turkey yet, but the beef was quite palatable. Also relatively easily reverse engineered.

Once home I bought a pound of lean ground beef (lean because fat doesn't dehydrate well, or really, at all). Loosely following the ingredient list on the wrapper I mixed it up with some powdered celery (a natural source of nitrates, found in "nitrate free" bacon and sausage), some cayenne pepper (original has habanero), some chopped blueberries (instead of cherries, as it is blueberry season in Oregon), chopped walnuts, a bit of salt, and (because the original has lactic acid in it - though non-dairy) I added some dried buttermilk culture powder that I had on hand. I don't know if that was in any way necessary, but I do know that traditional hard sausages, like salami, are fermented with lactic acid, so I figured it couldn't hurt (not recommended if one is avoiding dairy, of course). I spread the resulting mixture out on one of the solid sheets of my dehydrator, scored the mass with a knife, to make dividing it later easier, and set it to dry. Any dehydration book has instructions for making jerky from ground meat, and this is essentially what the Epic bars are.
The end result was very much like the original - though thinner; next time I'll leave it thicker, and dry it longer. Easier to eat than jerky, as it was pre-ground. Nice mixture of flavors and textures - more than "just meat". I've made a note to add more hot pepper,more nuts, and more blueberries than I originally did; I was winging it, and erred on the side of caution.
This strikes me as an ideal LC travel food. It has rather more "heft" than plain jerky, but doesn't take up any more room. Kind of like pemmican, but easier to carry (no worries about melting fat), and, I would imagine (not having actually tried pemmican) rather more palatable.
Even if you don't want to make your own I would recommend checking out the Epic bars themselves. Meat, fruit and spices, and no unpronounceable ingredients.

Wow! What an awesome idea! I just got some drying sheets for my dryer too. I will give it a shot. The timing is really good because I'm going on a week long vacation to Indianapolis and I'm not sure what sort of GF food I will be able to find.