Progress Report

Big milestone, you guys. I'm halfway done preparing my dehydrated food! Want to see what three months' worth of food looks like?

It sounds like this.

Four shopping bags. That looks almost... sad.

But this is, in fact, happy news. When I first began dehydrating food, 180 dishes was an unimaginable amount. Filling the first shopping bag seemed to make a negligible dent in the total, and I despaired of ever having enough room to store the stuff, even in the nifty chest freezer I bought. And how would I ever get it where I'm going, and then carry it around with me? But fitting 6 months' worth of dinners into 8 neatly tied shopping bags seems totally doable. That wouldn't top off the trunk of a sedan, much less the bed of a pickup. It'll also make it easier to enlist someone to store the stuff and ship it to me in installments.

I'm very glad I bought the dehydrator and went the route of making my own meals.

Goo Goo ga Choo

Even though it's currently mild in Moab, Utah, near where I plan to be a year from now, a bike ride in the cold and wind got me thinking about winter camping. (I'm also filling space on this blog, because there's not much going on right now.) As winter sets in, I'm trying to note how my body reacts to temperatures and conditions, to anticipate the cold-weather gear I'll want.

What I've observed is that I have the body of a walrus. This isn't about body dysmorphic disorder. Walruses live in the Arctic, and spend most of their time in the very cold water. A layer of blubber keeps them warm. Unlike other pinnipeds, they don't have thick fur as a final layer of insulation; instead, they have special skin. In the water, the blood vessels of a walrus's skin contract, drawing its warm blood down below the blubber layer. They look pale and clammy, like brining roasters.

But when they come out of the water and bask in the warm sun, their skin blood vessels dilate, and the blood rushes back to the surface, turning them pink.

Tyra says: Walrus brings it it H to T!

I can be out in the cold for a really long time before my trunk or especially my legs feel cold--I've got a pretty well distributed layer of body fat, and I seem to radiate almost no heat from my skin. It's not unusual for my skin to feel truly corpse-cold to the touch after coming in from winter activities, yet I don't feel uncomfortable.

The huge exception to this is hands and feet. I sleep in wool socks. My fingers quickly numb. The lesson of the walrus is: invest in mittens and those warmy packets.

Random Updates

Things, good and bad. Which first?

The bad: I somehow misplaced my backpacking cookbook, with all the dehydrateable recipes. This isn't too terrible: many of the recipes were sort of meh, I'm having great luck winging it, and the book is always available at the library.

The problem is that with the book went all my notes on how to un-meh the recipes. I bought a couple of key anti-meh ingredients (perishable ones) before I realized I'd misplaced the book. And I can't remember which vaguely Asian recipe was so improved by lemongrass, or which pasta dish tasted so surprisingly delightful with a handful of pomegranate seeds.

The good: I have a backpack! Hilton's Tent City finally called saying it was in. I picked it up, brought it home, and shoved the heaviest thing I had into it. It turns out that my new backpack is excellent at hauling around 22-lb. buckets of kitty litter. I'll have to test it on a long ramble sometime soon.

Intermediate news: I've acquired some apparel, including some good fleecy base-layer stuff, a nice wind shell, and a few other things. My dilemma is this: I sort of want to save all my expensive, fancy stuff so it's in pristine shape when I start, but some of it is just so damn nice that I can't resist the temptation to use it now. For instance, my wind shell (which is also good in light rain) is just too awesome for biking to keep stored in a closet. It's just so trim and toasty! And my fuzzy underlayers--hey, they're perfect for running in the cold! My worry is that I'll get them all funkynasty before I even leave. Some problem, right? My stuff is just too nice! Wah!

Invented Recipe 2

People I know who are better cooks than I already have food blogs, but I'm chowing on this right now, and it tastes so autumnal that I feel like sharing. And besides, will the above food blogs provide dehydratable/indefinitely storable recipes for the inevitable zombie apocalypse? I think not.

Butternut Squash Pasta
The butternut squash at the store were huge this week, so this method of preparing them two ways works well.

1 large butternut squash, divided into slightly unequal halves
1 lb small pasta
about 1 lb/4 links chicken sausage with apple
1 onion, minced
4 tbls olive oil
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 tbls dried sage
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Cut the smaller "half" of the squash, plus the sausage, into 1/2 inch cubes. Toss on a baking sheet with 2 tbls olive oil and the brown sugar, plus salt to season. Roast in a 375 oven until the squash is tender and beginning to caramelize, and the sausage is starting to crisp.

Cook and drain the pasta, preserving about 1 cup of liquid.

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, saute the onion in the remaining 2 tbsp olive oil. Finely chop the larger "half" of the squash in a food processor, and add it to the onion. Add the pasta water, sage, and salt to taste, bring to a simmer, and cover. Simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the squash starts to fall apart.

Add the heavy cream and the Parmesan, and use a food processor or immersion blender to puree everything until it forms a smooth sauce. Add the pasta, sausage, and roasted squash, and toss everything to cover with the sauce.

I also added a bit of cayenne, but I didn't add quite enough to notice (I have pretty tolerant tastebuds), but I also don't miss it.

The food dehydrator usually takes about 6 hours to do a 4-serving meal like this. To rehydrate pasta dishes, most recipes call to just cover the dehydrated food with water, bring to a boil, and cook until the ingredients are as tender as you want them. This allows for one-pot, no-prep meals. I can imagine myself reanimating this particular recipe on a chilly evening somewhere in Utah and thinking of New England autumn.

... And You Spend a Night in the Box

I took the opportunity of a lingering coastal storm to test my tent and sleeping bag in the back yard. It was windy, rainy, and in the low 40s F, so chilly but not really cold.

With vestibule. Overexposure is for the protection of copyrighted logos. And 'cause I have a new camera app and don't know how to use it.

Featherworm is awesome. I'm really glad I got the slightly heavier bag with the nifty features, rather than the super-elite ultra-light, because the features really make the thing. My favorite is a little extra flap that snaps closed around your shoulders, with a drawstring to cinch it. This keeps the bag closed and warm when it's cold enough to snuggle down, but not cold enough for the hood (and I don't like using the hoods--even when it's straight-up cold, I like having my face and ears free). And when it's a bit warmer, closing the snap-flap allows you to unzip the bag for a bit of ventilation without the bag flopping open and leaving you totally uncovered. The bag also has this little zip pocket near the opening that's so tiny that I can't imagine what I might put in there. It's too small for my glasses--the thing I really want to have safe and accessible while I sleep. Batteries? Nips? I'll think of something.

The tent, from a construction standpoint, did just fine. It was fairly windy, and rained quite a bit last night (though never particularly hard) and everything stayed in-place and dry. It was also a cinch to set up, even with the adjustments I had to make in the dark . . .

Vestibule open. This morning, I realized the footprint was backwards, causing the wrinkling under the door. The tent is very slightly asymmetrical front-to-back; just enough so if you do it wrong, everything assembles just fine, but then doesn't quite work.

One of the selling points of the tent was that it has a convertible door on the rain fly. You can go with the vestibule if you need more room, or you can zip it out and exchange it for a flat door if you want to save weight. I was thinking the door was the way to go, since I'm only one person, and I'll have space to store stuff inside the tent. But the door isn't designed particularly well. It ends a couple inches from the ground, and it lies close over the tent wall--there's no way to stake it out, barring poking a hole in the fabric. So when it rains, water drips from the fly  onto the wall of the tent below the door, where it eventually ends up dribbling between the tent and the footprint. While the bottom of the tent doesn't leak, this just doesn't seem like a good policy.

I set up the tent, with the flat door, in a break in the rain around dusk. I went out to sleep at my normal bedtime, at which point it was full-on raining. I saw what was going on with the door and switched it out with the vestibule. As with the rest of the tent, this was simple and intuitive and took all of like six seconds, during which I discovered the other slight design flaw with the door/vestibule system. The zipper to exchange the two runs up and over the door of the tent. The door of the tent is mesh. So if you unzip the thing while the rain fly is wet, drips will fall onto--and, of course, through--the mesh door of the tent, sprinkling your sleeping bag and clothes and whatever.

So I've learned a couple things. Vestibule is the way to go--and is a very nice place to put wet shoes, whether there's room in the tent or not. Also, tap all the drips off the rain fly before unzipping anything. Luckily, these issues seem easily solved.

My morning view. The November windstorm cleaned the trees before blowing offshore.

WARNING: This is a pre-coffee photo.

Yes, Please!

A few days ago, I was mentally toying with the trip's schedule. I wondered if it might be better to switch the Southwest and the Colorado Plateau. I could avoid some really serious snow if I head straight for Yosemite after the Grand Canyon trip ends in October, and I'd spend January and February in Utah, where conditions are usually dry, if not mild.

But then I found this. The Ahwahnee Hotel hosts some culinary awesomeness in January and February, and it doesn't cost that much more than the luxury room I was hoping to splurge on anyway. They don't have a schedule for 2012 yet, but I'm willing to nail down a reservation once they do. It sounds like a totally delicious and fun break from camping! Plus it will give me an excuse to pack at least one gala-worthy outfit.

And: I know this is totally ridiculous, but I've named my sleeping bag. Its (his? what gender would a woman's sleeping bag be?) full name is Weatherfirm Featherworm, but I pretty much go with Featherworm for short.

And: I am a nerd.

Invented Recipe 1

I've been cooking almost every day. The recipes from my backpacking cookbook can be hit-or-miss, so recently I've gone trailblazing (GET IT?.) with dishes from my own invention. Tonight's turned out especially tasty, and it abides by the principles I learned for one-pot, dehydratable, nutritious meals:

1. A complete 1-dish meal is usually a carb base, plenty of vegetables, and some form of protein.

2. Don't use too much fat, and the fats you do use should be saturated. Oil won't dehydrate; it just makes things greasy.

3. Small pieces de- and re-hydrate better than large.

4. Cook everything completely to release juices for thorough dehydration and to prevent spoilage.

The above steps, while great for dehydrating, conspire to make dishes look like unappetizing slop. The same is true for the following, but I think es schmeckt! You can certainly change the chop and doneness for at-home eating.

(Note that measurements are approximate; I was adding and adjusting as I went. You'll also notice that there's no salt; this was absent-mindedness, but it tasted seasoned enough from the brats, cheese, and salted butter. I also didn't make a proper roux because I'm lazy. Improv!)

Cheddar Beer-Brat Stew
(I'm tempted to dub it MandelBrats, in honor of the recently late mathematician.)

2 12-oz beers
About 1 lb bratwurst (my package had 5)
1 large onion, finely diced
Enough butter to saute about 1 cup of each:
cauliflower (finely diced)
carrots (finely diced)
peas
1 scant cup whole-wheat cous cous
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons dry mustard
1 cup milk
1/2 lb sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 apple, diced

Puncture the brats so they don't asplode, and lay them along with the diced onion in a large stock pot or Dutch oven. Cover entirely with beer. (I used Long Trail Ale, in honor of the outstanding Cheddar Beer Soup they serve at their Vermont brewery, and in honor of it being in our fridge.) Bring to a boil, and set to simmer until the brats are cooked through and the onions are soft.

Meanwhile, saute the cauliflower, carrot, and peas in butter until they're softened.

Once the brats are cooked, remove them from the beer and set aside until they're cool enough to handle. With the beer still at a brisk simmer, stir in the cous cous. Return to a boil for a few moments, and then remove from heat and cover until the cous cous is soft and has absorbed the liquid.

Dice the brats. Add the brats and sauteed vegetables to the cous cous. Incorporate the flour and dry mustard. With the heat on low, slowly add milk, stirring constantly. Cook until the milk begins to thicken. With heat as low as possible, (or off, if you have an electric stove that takes like 20 minutes to cool, like I do) slowly add the cheese, stirring to incorporate. Add the diced apple before serving.

These Boots Might Be Made For Something.

I threw down 10+ miles on my hiking boots today. BAM. Keep in mind that these are the all-leather, major-breaking-in kind. And you know what? NO blisters. No sore spots, chafing, or other problems. I got some fatigue in my arches from the weight of them, but WHAT EVER. I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to know when they're broken in.

So here's my official shout-out to Scarpa, makers of really sweet hiking boots. They make walking 10 miles feel like nothing, especially after dancing all night in 4-inch heels at my friend's wedding!

Holy Crap Food Math!

I cooked my first backpacking recipe today. Peanut soup, with a bit of ginger and lime added as a personal touch. I ate a sample serving to check its palatability, and the rest is humming away in the dehydrator now.

Then I sat at my lovely color-coded calendar and calculated how much food I'll need to make. I tallied all the days I'll want pre-prepared food. Then I divided by how many servings each recipe provides. I was very generous. I didn't bother subtracting driving, city, and other non-wilderness days, which realistically will take up one or two days a week. I took out only the Grand Canyon trip (catered) and two weeks around the holidays when I hope to be in one friendly city or another, either out west or on a Christmas break back home. I was also generous with the amount of food. The recipes in the book say they make 4 servings (and the author is certainly familiar with the increased caloric demand of backpacking), but I calculated them to make only 3, given my habit of VERY thoroughly taste-testing everything I cook within reach.

174 days. Round up to 180 for easy math. Divide by 3 servings per recipe. 60 RECIPES! Holy crap! And that's only dinner!

I could safely do a lot less, given that I'll both eat on the road and buy at least some fresh and commercially-made foods. But still. 60 recipes! I'm glad I don't have a job. (As for breakfast and lunch: for lunch I'll want no-cook stuff like snacks, sandwiches, bars, and dried fruit. Breakfast TBD, but probably a lot of instant oatmeal or dried eggs, both of which I'll buy rather than make.)

This doesn't mean 60 different recipes, obviously. At home, I subsist on maybe three or four basic recipes for about 80 percent of my cooking. Today's peanut soup is a good approximation of a dish of vegetables, rice noodles, and homemade Thai peanut sauce that's one of my weekday staples. Give me a pasta with red sauce, vegetarian chili, and some sort of tuna noodle casserole, and and you've pretty much described my winter. But I must remember that I'm spoiled living in Boston surrounded by childless, food-loving friends. I go out or grab takeout at least a couple of times a week, and this culinary variety saves my lazy ass.

But I guess 60 is a good number. It's got a lot of factors. Should I make 5 rounds of 12 different recipes? 6 of 10? However the math works out, the point is that I have a lot of cooking to do. And if I want to do it at a reasonable pace (and if I insist on making my own soup stock, as I did for this recipe), I have to get going, and keep going, right now.

Thank God for planning. Thank God for time! Also: mmm, peanuts.

Title.

The trip needs a nickname. I usually call it "my trip," "the big trip," "when I go out West," etc. These are boring. I need something catchy. Flashy. Something that would look good in a logo cut out in chrome and plastered across the grill of a pickup. I need something that evokes this:



In 1983, Journey commissioned NFL Films to make a concert documentary. The epic results are totally worth the substantial difficulty in hunting the thing down. The movie is mostly about Journey roadies, a ragtag gang of rebels with no future but the next town and no lady but the open road. Load up your gear. We're going Frontiers & Beyond.

If that turns out to be just too epic or, alternately, not pretentious enough, the thesaurus suggested "Peregrination," of which I'm rather fond.