Camp

A special edition: the camping trip!

We went camping this weekend and traveled to a land outside our weather pattern. We also did pretty well with our food during the trip. We hiked in (ok, only about 3.5 miles) to the backcountry of Henry Coe State Park. But we carried all our food and ate well, even considering that I forgot to bring certain unalienable items, like roasted almonds for our breakfast cereal.

We did eat before we left town so let me catch up. Thursday night was my favorite instant dinner: "refried" pinto beans with miso over rice, with salad mix, shredded carrot, and avocado. Served with chips. I could seriously eat like this almost every night and not have any problems. I think growing up eating Taco Bell did me no favors.





Friday night was a barley lentil soup with rutabaga and carrot. Served with a side of purple broccoli rabe. Saturday night was, lo and behold, the same soup only this time with a side of regular green broccoli and some lovely Acme rye bread.



Sunday night was camping night. We've determined (after much trial and error) that pasta does not work so well when camping. It takes a lot of water and there's the whole straining issue. So for recent trips, including this one, we took polenta. It cooks quickly and doesn't require a lot of water. Probably an even better choice would be quinoa. It cooks super fast, takes almost no water, and is a complete protein. For this dinner we had polenta with some broccoli and garlic thrown in and a little bit of miso for flavor. We also added some packaged baked tofu (which we could only do because it was just one night) and ate it with sauerkraut.



Breakfast was a little less fun because I'd forgotten the almonds. We made our usual breakfast cereal but next time we'll probably add some maple syrup granules to the mix for flavor. This time we ate it with sauerkraut (because- well, why not?) For lunches we had mini whole wheat pitas with a (pre-mixed) almond butter/ jelly combo. We've decided pitas are better than regular bread due to the squish factor. We should have brought some baby carrots and some more fruit (we had a small thing of blackberries) as those things would have helped us get more vegetables as well as water (since I was afraid we would run out).



So, in conclusion, everyone should try vegan backcountry camping. More fun than hand-blended margaritas.