Campfire Cookin'

A few weeks ago I went camping in Big Sur with some of my cohort buddies. I was pretty impressively unprepared for this trip, since I decided to go the night before. Luckily my cohort is awesome in addition to being awesome cooks. So here's how cooking while car-camping works:

Step 1: Build a fire.

Step 2: Make S'mores.

That's pretty much it. For breakfast we built a fire, then made a feast:

Ben brought some of his super duper amazing homemade marmalade, and there was also brie, which I used to adorn a piece of campfire toast.

While we ate toast, potatoes were fried, followed by beans with nopales and eggs.

In the end we had some pretty fantastic breakfast burritos; potatoes, eggs, ranch-style beans, nopales, avocado!

Basically anything can be cooked over the campfire in a cast-iron skillet. And Vince can cook anything with a pair of chopsticks!

Bliss.

The Other Hiking Bar

Here's my latest attempt at a hiking bar. It came out to be incredibly delicious, but a bit messy (to the benefit of a couple chipmunks on the trail). I started out with one of Alton Brown's recipes, and reworked it into this:

1/2 cup Hazelnuts

1 1/4 cup Cashews

1/4 Shredded Coconut

1 cup Oats

1 cup Flaked Emmer

1/4 cup Camelina Seeds

1/4 cup Hemp Seeds

1/2 cup Honey

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 oz. Unsalted Butter

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

I toasted all the nuts, seeds, oats, and emmer in a 300 degree oven just until they began to brown (about 15-20 minutes). Meanwhile, I melted the butter with the honey, sugar, and vanilla. When the dry things came out of the oven, I turned the heat up to 350 and tossed everything together and then pressed it into a buttered 9-inch square baking dish. I let bake for about 30 minutes. Then I should have let it cool completely before removing it from the pan, but instead I got impatient and it fell apart a little bit.

Gastronomy in the Woods

Alex and I are reluctantly home from our 4-day expedition from Sol Duc to the Seven Lakes Basin and down the Bogachiel River Trail in the Olympic Mountains. We're still adjusting to civilization and cleaning/drying out all of our gear. The bars turned out great and I only wish we had packed more..actually we should have packed more of everything, we just barely had enough food (in contrast to our last backpacking trip when we had WAY too much food). I made 2 more batches of the bars, and took some of both of the final batches with us. Here is an amalgamation of the two recipes:

1/2 # Unsalted Butter
4 Eggs
2 cups Honey
1/2 cup Brown Rice Syrup
1 tsp Vanilla
1 cup Bread Flour
2 cups Oats
1 cup Hemp Seeds
1 handful Date Pieces
2-3 handfuls Almonds
2-3 handfuls Cashews
3 handfuls Raisins
1 handful Chocolate Chips
3 good shakes Cinnamon
1 large dash Nutmeg, grated

*Grind the oats, almonds, and cashews in a food processor
*Thoroughly mix everything together and spread evenly on a half-sheet pan lined with a Silpat (or parchment)
*Bake at 350 for about an hour until it's good and brown. Let cool, then cut into bars.

The Bar in action at Lunch Lake in the Seven Lakes Basin
(Best July 4th Ever!)

In addition to the usual suspects of trail mix, dried fruit, and hiking bars we packed out some amazing cured meats and cheese to munch on for breakfast, second breakfast, first lunch, and second lunch. The cheese was Golden Glen Creamery's Queso Con Salsa - medium cheddar cheese with spicy salsa mixed in, yum!! We also ate Olsen Farm's Summer Sausage which was a tad spicy, not too sweet, and absolutely delicious. The Smoked Ham Nugget from Skagit River Ranch was absolutely incredible; essentially a lump of amazing ham that we gnawed on and savored all day long. A hot meal is always a treat when camping. For two out of three dinners we had PCC's Curry Lentil Soup with some Just Veggies added to the mix, it's all dehydrated of course. The Just Veggies dehydrated carrots, corn, peas, bell peppers and tomatoes is a brilliant find for any back packer! Our second dinner was Annie's Mac 'n Cheese with added Queso Con Salsa and Summer Sausage, as shown below:

As we began to descend into the Bogachiel rain forest on our third day the understory got thick, tall, moist, and eventually completely covered the trail and us as we swam through a sea of leaves and branches . We got drenched from the feet up and despite the sheer beauty of it all, one thing made it worth it: Berries!!

Blueberries!
Vaccinium ovalifolium

Black Raspberries!! -my new favorite berry
Rubus leucodermis

Salmon Berries ..pretty, not so tasty
Rubus spectabilis

We spent our final day on the trail planning out what our first real meal back in civilization was going to be as we began dreaming of cheese burgers, Elysian Brewery beer, fries, and Jameson. To our dismay, the Penninsula is huge and we ended up getting back to Seattle long after everything we were craving was closed. So we went to Jai Thai for a shot and a beer and some acceptable Thai food. Despite our fantastic waiter, it simply did not hit the spot, I was craving the perfect food. So last night we finaly made it to The Elysian Brewery where we found the end of our trail in exceptional cheese burgers and beer-battered french fries. It's good to be home...I've been thinking about pork chops with a savory-herby-carmelized onion bread pudding sort of thing made out of brioche scraps...

The Blob

From my previous entry, I just about doubled the honey, nuts, and dried fruit, while nearly eliminating the flour. I ended up with a Honeylicious blob...I attempted to cut it into bars, but, as you can see, they didn't really hold up. It makes a great ice cream topping and Alex has been enjoying it for breakfast with milk like granola. I asked my pastry chef co-worker what baking magic holds bars together and beyond honey or eggs the only advice she had was to chop everything in a food processor and then physically press the mix into the pan before baking. So, hopefully 3rd times the charm!

The Bar, trial #1

Alex and I are going backpacking across the Olympic Mountains over July4th weekend and I've decided to make our own hiking bars. I LOVE Clif bars, but since they're involvement in the tainted peanut-butter scandal this past year, I've been a bit grossed out by the thought of what exactly goes into all these "high energy" "high protein" hiking-bar type foods...so, I'm making my own. Here's my first try, I basically had no idea what I was doing, I started with the Joy of Cooking's basic oatmeal cookie recipe, and with the magic of a pen and paper turned it into this:

2 cups AP Flour
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Honey
1/4 cup Brown Rice Syrup
2 sticks Butter
4 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
1 tsp Baking Powder
3 cups Oats
1 cup Hemp Seeds
1 handful Almonds, chopped
1 handful Cashews, chopped
2 handfuls Date Pieces
2 handfuls Raisins
1 handful Chocolate Chips
couple good shakes of Cinnamon
large dash of fresh grated Nutmeg

Cream the butter and sugars together, add the rest of the ingredients roughly one at a time.
Spread evenly over a half-sheet-pan with a Silpat on the bottom and bake at 350degrees F for about 35minutes.

So how are they? They're addicting, but not quite what I was going for...they're sort of a glorified cookie, I want something dense that will withstand being forced into a full bear-barrel with maximum nutrients per cubic centimeter (not that I have any way of measuring). In short:

Things to change for the next batch:
-Less flour, more stuff!
-Leave out the baking powder entirely
-Less butter?? (the baking chemistry properties of butter confuse me)

Things that rocked this batch:
-Brown Rice Syrup!! (added a unique nutty/toasty flavor)
-Hemp seeds have hella protein
-One word: Silpat. I would give my soul to the man that invented these things.