One Pan Wonders

This is the one Warner Springs Monty has been raving about. He hates blackeyed peas and even he likes this.

Black Eyed Pea Stew

About 1 pound (a little more) dried black eyed peas

2 cans diced tomatoes

1 can chicken broth

2 ham hocks

1 jar roasted bell peppers, drained

1 medium onion, chopped

Dump everything in the crock pot and then add enough water to more than cover the beans.

I ran the crock pot on low all night long – about 9 hours.

Allow the stew to cool, remove bones any visible fat and/or skin from the ham hocks (the meat will have fallen off the bones) and discard.

Spread on lined dehydrator trays. Run the dehydrator for about 6 hours at about 150*.

This made enough stew for me to dry 6 trays worth, plus some for 2 lunches and one dinner at home.

Store in zip-lock bags when dry. With added rice, this makes enough for 12 or more backpacking meals. When putting meals together, I do about 2 parts stew to 1 part rice, but adjust to your own tastes.

Hot sauce can be added to final stew (after rehydrating) just before eating for more of a kick.

Cornbread or Hoh Cakes would be excellent with this.

I spent the weekend hocking books, talking food, testing recipes and hanging out with some of my favorite hiker trash at PCT days in Cascade Locs. The kidling insisted on wearing her new Snow White dress. I figured my fellow hiker trash would love that – and they did. Big huge thanks to Nabor J who organized the entire thing.

An awesome time was had by all. There was a keg and music (no band like they had last year though). I was a vendor and had a booth between Six Moon Designs and Trail Designs. It was really fun hanging out with the other vendors, even if I was the only girl.

Next Adventure was also there. I talked to the guys (again) about them carrying my book in their store and also about doing food presentations for them, so hopefully that will be in the works soon.

Saturday was the big day. I spent the day manning my booth, while Hoosierdaddy and the kidling drove hikers around. I had lots of volunteers to test recipes. Lots and lots of recipes. Bunch of moochies! LOL. I did take a ton of notes on what to change to make things “just right”.

Squatch and Lint

Nabor J and Squatch MC’d the raffle, Squatch talking trash as could be expected. I missed most of it because I was at my booth, but he had great things to say about the food I had been feeding him all afternoon. I am not sure who ended up with a copy of my book. Also given away were stoves, packs, tents and more! I think Nabor J said the raffle raised over $5000 for the PCTA. AWESOME!

We had dinner and really good local beers (Walking Man) at the PCT pub, with Suge and Pickles then headed back to see the featured movie, Wizards of the PCT. I had seen the previews, and I know Jester, so I was sure it was going to be good. It was excellent! Buy it now! (I will post a full review when I receive my copy of the movie.) Watching hiker videos is always so much more fun when you are sitting with a bunch of other hikers. They also showed two of Squatch’s movies over the weekend.



I woke up late Sunday morning and stumbled out of bed. I managed to sell a few more books out of the back of my car as I was packing up. I handed out all of my leftover hiker meals to Weather Carrot and Big John, who are currently hiking the PCT. They are supposed to report back to me on how they liked the food.

We went back to the Cascade (with everyone else in town it seemed) for coffee and breakfast. We had ok service, but they were extremely short handed. Food was good, but you had to wait for it.

After breakfast, we headed back to camp to break down and say our goodbyes. Hoosierdaddy was shuttling some hikers down to Barlow Pass before heading home. I took the kidling to the playground to run off some energy before our big drive. We made it home by 3pm.

Yet another crockpot-to-dehydrator entry. Are you guys sick of these yet?

This one  uses a stew kit I got at the (not so) local farmer's market. It had the beans and herbs and spices. I added chicken breasts, some canned tomatoes, diced onion, chicken broth and white wine. It made a ton, so onto the dehydrator trays it goes! Just goes to show you how fast and easy trail food can be.

Two days of almost no work and I have about 12 meals worth of backpacking food. This will be good mixed with instant rice too. YUM!

I was at my local safeway yesterday and noticed (!!) they have Starbucks Via in stock. Both the medium and dark roast. Costco is carrying Via too now.

But then I found something else that I didn't know existed. ICED Starbucks Via. Lightly sweetened and specially designed to be brewed in cold water. I bought some of that to keep at my desk at work. Perfect for the 90 degree days we've been having here lately. I'm confident that I will like it just as much as I like the regular Via.

5 packets (enough to make 5 16 oz drinks) ran about $5, so a little spendy, but good enough for a decent cup of coffee.

When in doubt, throw it out!

I’ve been in my backpacking food bins a lot lately, prepping food for the thru hikers, but I hadn’t taken the time to dig deep and really clean out the old stuff.

I started pulling old ingredients out. There was some scary stuff in there. Anything that smelled funny or powders that had gone clumpy got thrown out.

Things like nuts and coconut flakes that contain a high amount of oil, don’t usually last from one season to the next. I had to toss a little of both.

I found an opened (but in a zip lock bag) pouch of Milk Man. Yikes. That was discontinued awhile ago. There was also a zip lock of marinara leather that looked okay, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember drying it. Out it went!

I found a bag of dried peach slices that I remember drying last summer, but they had developed a funky smell. Ick! Bye bye!

It is more important to eat food that hasn’t gone “off” than it is to save a buck or two and keep the ingredients around. Check your pantry!

Doing this helps me take inventory of my stocks too. I have an over abundance of brown gravy mix, but only a little bit of pesto and Alfredo sauce mixes. And I’m completely out of pre-cooked and dried quinoa and True Orange packets.

 

As I put everything back into the bins, I organized them by food type; pasta, beans, veggies, fruit, soups, sauces etc.

I have a total of three containers. The largest contains all of the basic backpacking food ingredients and a few soup mixes; another contains all the dried sauce mixes and coconut crème powder, and the third stores all my bars and other small ready-to-eat snack foods.

In my main kitchen pantry, I have things like tomato powder, cheese powder, bouillon powder (several kinds) and various flours and powdered milk. Nuts and dried fruit can be found in my regular pantry too. The kidling and I like snacking on them. I have to hide any candied nuts from hubby, though, if I want any for the trail.

Grocery store shopping has been very rewarding lately. I have been finding all kinds of neat hiker friendly foods. Now I have room for them!

Drying Canned Cream of Mushroom Soup

You can make a backpacker friendly version of mushroom soup, so why take the time and energy to dry the canned stuff? A few reasons. One, I usually have several cans of the “cheap stuff” in my pantry. Two, it’s easy. Just dump and dry. Three, some ingredients can be hard to find for some people (powdered milk, dried mushrooms, etc). Frontier food carries a good dried mix if you care to bother with mail order ingredients.

It doesn’t get much easier than drying canned items. Just spread, as thinly as possible, one can per lined dehydrator tray. Set the temperature at 135 and let it run. My machine took about 5-6 hours to dry 2 trays (I had other things on more trays) of soup.

The final product was much oilier than I had expected, but I am pretty convinced that this is largely because I was drying a really cheap product. Higher quality soup will most likely result in a much better final product. Like most everything, the better ingredients you start with, the better the end outcome will be. This theme is true for all cooking.

Dry until leathery enough to flip over, then dry until the soup can be broken up into small pieces.

Two cans of concentrated cream of mushroom soup dried yields about 1 ½ cups of soup crumbles.

Bookmark this!

Ever wonder if that sour cream in your fridge is still edible? How long you can store uncooked fish?

One of the yahoo groups I am in posted this link today. Still Tasty: Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide

The site is divided up by food type (dairy, meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and pasta, beverages, baked goods, snacks and sweets, condiments and oils). Click on the food type and scroll through the fairly extensive list of foods to find the one you are wondering about. Each page also list it's information sources.

For many products and ingredients there is also freezing and other food storage instructions included.

That sour cream? It is good for 10-14 days after the "sell by" date on the package.

I wandered into a Dollar Store last night, looking for hair clips and sidewalk chalk for the kidling (found those). Of course, being me, I had to wander the aisles and see what else was available. There were some cool finds!

First I found jarred roasted red bell peppers. Some no-name brand. I bought one jar. We'll see if they are any good. I also got a jar of marinated mushrooms (same brand).

Then I found Chicken of the Sea Pink Salmon in 2.6 ounce foil pouches. Score!

I also found Hormel pepperoni (shelf stable!) in large slices. 3.5 ounce package.

They had a lot of cool bento-friendly (my other obsession) toys and tools too.

Check your dollar stores people!

And I'm proud to call them my friends!!

Team Climb N' Drive are on a quest to beat the world speed record for reaching the highpoints of each of the lower 48 U.S. States while raising money for The Nature Conservancy. They'll have to drive over 14,000 miles and Ben will have to climb over 100,000 vertical feet and walk/climb roughly 350 miles in under 23 days, 19 hrs. and 31 min. in order to beat Brit Jake Meyer's record.

CRAZY!

The team members are: Ben "Smooth" Newkirk as "The Climber", Kim "S.O.L." Geisreiter as "driver/camera/emotional support", Brian "Tomato" Boshart as "the dude who helps Ben out with the tough early climbs" and Scott "Squatch" Herriott as "The Pain in the ass director/driver"

Join them over on Face Book and follow their crazy journey!

While grocery shopping the other day, I stumbled across a new fruit snack. Squiggles from Sun Rype.  Sun Rype is a Canadian company, but I'm hoping we see more of their products in the near future.

They are 100% real fruit twists. They are made with no added sugar or preservatives, nothing but real fruit juices and purees.

Each twisted stick is 0.63 ounces and 60 calories.

I tried the Strawberry flavor (also bought Raspberry-Citrus). The stick is shiny and very sticky. It looks a bit like rick-rack like you would use in sewing. It smells and tastes like home made strawberry jam. Yum! They are nicely sweet, with only naturally occuring fruit sugars to sweeten them. The kidling inhaled the last half of mine.

The sticks are very chewy and sticky. These are definitely not good for those with braces or other dental work.

On the website it shows that they are sold in a box of 6, but I bought mine individually. They run about 50 cents each.