The location was findable by GPS coordinates only (and no phone service), about 40 miles down a washboardy single lane dirt road. We packed our rented rear-wheel drive Sprinter van full of gear, food and about 200 gallons of water and headed out. Luckily we made it to within 1/2 mile of camp before we got stuck. Even more luckily, a few magical helpers saved us from a $4000 towing fee- but not before dinner was supposed to be ready. We decided to unpack and start cooking while we worked on digging the van out, and got a lot of practice packing/unpacking it by the end of the weekend (which is good news because we’ll probably buy one soon).

The rest of the weekend went smoothly for us, and we enjoyed wowing the event’s participants with the possibilities of incredible food in the backcountry.

Breakfast included our signature Cheddar Bacon Pancakes, but we made this caramelized banana topping for those that preferred a sweeter option. We recommend this for your trip, but we especially love how it tastes in oatmeal, which is how we’re presenting it here.

The recipe here uses rolled oats because they cook quickly on a camp stove. If you have the forethought, try making steel cut oats using our Overnight Steel Cut Oatmeal recipe. The slightly chewy texture is great with the soft bananas.

One thing I’ve learned while on a plant-based diet is that in order to feel satiated, I’ve really had to fill up on healthy foods like fruits and veggies, beans, nuts and seeds. This seems obvious, but it’s easy to be a junk food vegan. Before I would reach for things like cheese and crackers when I got hungry and that would be enough. Without the cheese, I’ve had to retrain my brain to make these other healthier foods my go-to. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s getting easier.

Breakfast feels like an opportunity to cram in as many nutrients as possible in order to start the day feeling satiated. My breakfast of choice lately has been oatmeal and I’ve been making it on a timer in my rice cooker, so it’s ready to eat when we get up in the morning. I always mix in some flaxseeds and top it with homemade almond milk, but the other toppings vary depending on what we’ve got in the house.

One of my favorite combinations has been raspberry, almond butter and cacao nibs. I love this combo so much that when I ran out of fresh raspberries I even started reaching for the freeze-dried ones in the back of my pantry that I had purchased for a backpacking trip. After I did this a couple of days in a row, it occurred to me that this is perfect backpacking food. It’s filling, but still energizing, and it tastes delicious.

I would use regular rolled oats for this because I don’t care for gluey instant oats and I don’t mind the bite of slightly undercooked oatmeal. If you are concerned about fuel use and don’t mind the stickier instant oats, then you can certainly use those. This recipe serves two, but can easily be scaled up or down.

Making pancakes while backpacking is easy and just what you need to fuel you up for another day on the trail. We made these Cornmeal Blueberry Pancakes on our last day of a short 2-night trip. It was perfect for a leisurely morning while enjoying the tranquility and immensity of White Chief Dome in Mineral King, Sequoia National Park.

All the batter ingredients where pre-measured at home and put into a gallon-size zip-top bag. At camp, the only thing left to do was to add water directly in the bag and mix. Tip: write how much water to add on the bag before you leave.

The Trader Joe’s dried blueberries we used are moist and naturally sweet. They melted in the batter and made for delicious sweet and tart bites against the earthiness of the cornmeal. If you don’t care for a sweet breakfast or want to save the weight of maple syrup, these pancakes are perfectly good without syrup as well.

I’ve been baking with brown rice syrup recently, with great results. It’s not as sweet as honey or maple syrup, so I thought I’d try it instead of the honey in our granola. I’m so happy with the results! Win!

For Fall, I switched out the almonds for toasty pecans and pepitas, and added some golden raisins for some chewy bits. We took a double batch of this on our recent trip to Cuyamaca and it was devoured on the first morning.

We started planning last winter. Everyone had grand ideas of the activities we should include in our week. Climbing in the Bugaboos, backpacking, peak bagging, and paddleboard camping in Banff National Park, roadtripping up to Jasper National Park on the Icefields Parkway, and hot springs of course! Planning as a group of 4 (our husbands got to come) ain’t usually easy, because people aren’t often on the same page. It was only hard for us because we were all into cramming in everything!

When the trip finally happened, we decided officially on “the no plan plan,” which worked out very well. Though some of our activities were thwarted or cut short due to constant rainstorms or long drives, we did mostly everything on the list! Except see a moose. Still waiting for that one…

I was responsible for all the camping food for the trip, so I spent a month or so dehydrating things. Probably the best thing we ate was this Backpacking French Toast. I dehydrated my own eggs at home (here’s how), and we simply dipped fresh Canadian bread in them, fried the bread up, and smothered it with local Canadian maple syrup. It was a perfect mix of lightweight, hearty, locally sourced, and rustic.

It was wonderful to finally get to spend a whole week with my Anne and Drew, especially in such an incredible place. It’s rare to find people you get along with so easily that you can all truly go where the adventure is, but these people are those people for us. I can’t wait to plan another adventure in another new amazing location. The world has a lot of them!

Eggs can be tricky both car camping and backpacking. They are perishable and fragile. However, they offer so much versatility to camping recipes that they are often worth the effort. They are an excellent source of protein for either a quick or a lavish camping breakfast, and can also be used to bind dishes like baked pastas, or coat things like french toast (recipe coming shortly).

Here are some tips for dealing with them in both contexts:

• REI sells egg holders for carrying whole eggs, but they don’t hold very large ones. I like to use them for holding hard-boiled eggs.
• Another great way to transport eggs is to crack them together into a jar. You can squash the jar into a cooler this way without worrying about breaking them, and just shake the jar when you’re ready to scramble them.
• Backpacking is obviously the most difficult scenario to bring eggs into, unless they are dehydrated. You can buy them dehydrated, or try making your own.

I did a lot of research before attempting my own powdered eggs, and none of it sounded good. Some people dehydrate eggs after already cooking them, and some try raw. Many people have difficulty grinding the eggs into a powder. They complained that the rehydrated texture was grainy, or that the egg clumped up in the food processor from not drying completely or evenly. I had issues with getting the amount of water correct upon rehydration, and they turned out too thick the first time. But since then, I’ve gotten them right. And they are impressive.

I’m including my method for making your own dehydrated powdered eggs here. The recipe I made with the powdered eggs on my last trip is pictured here. I just rehydrated hash browns, eggs, and dehydrated cheese, and scrambled them together in some oil.

Please let us know if you have any of your own great methods for dealing with eggs while camping.

No grinding necessary, just throw a tablespoon of whole chia seeds into 3 tablespoons of water, and you have a perfect egg. Maybe even better than an egg. All of my baked goods (mostly quick breads) have been coming out more moist than anything I’ve ever made.

All three of us dirty girls grabbed our families and went on a beautiful weekend trip to Sheep Camp in the Chumash Wilderness last week for Mai-yan and my joint birthday party. We ate this mountain berry bread for breakfast before heading out.

Aimee’s parents live close to the trailhead in Pine Mountain Club, so I headed up there a day early to prep my food and take advantage of their new jacuzzi! I baked this bread up there, and so I had to adjust the recipe a bit for high altitude. I found this chart to be very helpful, and the bread came out perfect. The posted recipe is the standard, low altitude recipe. Follow the chart in the link above to adjust based on where you are baking.

Model girls of Dirty Gourmet

This was our debut trip with our new friend Adan. It’s not easy to find someone that’s interested in the same type of outdoor activities as you, AND also ends up being fun to be around. We felt him out by letting him be in charge of planning the trip. He booked us a permit for Taboose Pass, because it was really the only place available to go in the Eastern Sierra on short notice. Wes and I looked at some trip reports to prepare ourselves for the hike, and everything we found sounded awful. Huge elevation gain on a long, grinding slog up through the desert. No scenery, full exposure to the elements. I actually read that Taboose Pass was on the list of “top 3 places in the Sierra not to see.” We were scared.

We arrived in Lone Pine at about 10pm on Friday night, and after 3 hours of sleep, drove down the rough dirt road to the trailhead. We figured the best way to deal with this awful trail was to get it over with as early as possible, so we got an alpine start (4:30am). These zucchini carrot walnut muffins were the first thing we ate. I used chia seeds and water as an egg substitute, because I didn’t have any eggs. I historically have hated vegan baking, but not this time. These muffins were the moistest baked goods I’ve ever had. They were dense but fresh, and perfect to nibble on as we began our hike.

As the sun rose, we realized that every step of the desert trail was covered in wildflowers. Just as we were getting warm, we hit a chunk of forest and crossed the rushing cool creek (after first seeing a mama bear and two cubs!). It was steep, for sure, and strenuous, but we kept waiting for the true suffer fest to start. Eventually we pulled away from the creek, but then we got a view of a lovely waterfall, more wildflowers, and started climbing through huge spires rising straight above our heads. By the time we hit the top of the pass, wandering among the many tarns towards Kings Canyon National Park, we decided this was possibly the most scenic pass we’ve ever seen.
The other side of the pass was glorious. Meadows of shooting stars, sweeping views of the Palisades and the Kings river, and plenty of lakes to choose from for camp. We named ours “Earth Baby Lake.”

And Adan passed the test. We got VERY lucky with this guy. We were all able to teach each other things, and have great debates about backpacking methods. He also ate every meal I tested out on him, even when it was barely edible. Our favorite thing about him this trip was that he bragged about being ultralight, but pulled out three tall cans of beer when we got to camp. Some things are worth the weight.

A while back, Emily, Mai-yan and I went out with our friend Ryan to test some recipes we had made at home and photograph them for future blog posts. I’ve been wanting to post a dutch oven cinnamon roll recipe for quite some time, and I was excited to make them on this trip. I made the dough at home so it was all ready to go at camp, but when we got to camp, we found out that campfires weren’t allowed! Without a campfire, it seemed like my dutch oven cinnamon rolls weren’t happening.

I couldn’t let that dough go to waste though, so we got creative. We had a waffle pie iron and decided to try putting the dough in it and cook it over my camp stove. I had a feeling it would work since I’ve successfully made things in my pie iron on my stove at home (yes, I might be a little pie iron obsessed). It did work, and it was perfect!

A spread of cream cheese frosting is essential for the top of these waffles. We made the frosting at camp with just a whisk, but you can make it at home with an electric mixer so you don’t have to work so hard.

All photos by the talented Ryan Robert Miller. Follow him on Instagram @ryanrobertmiller.

Chia seeds are the superfood of the moment. I’ve avoided them mostly because I have a retainer and they always get stuck in it. Then I saw a recipe for chia seed pudding, and I thought it would be a genius idea for backpacking! The recipe is incredibly simple, ultralight, non-perishable until mixed with liquid (and then only slightly more perishable), versatile, and uber-healthy! Genius.

In our initial testing, we tried mixing some chia seeds with almond milk and some with water. The photos show the water option, which is the easiest option in the backcountry. I did end up floating a bit of almond milk for some flavor. Aimee wants to try sweetened condensed milk. Honey packets would be great. I think I’ll send freeze-dried berries and some Honey Almond Granola Brittle with Wes for his trip. Do you have a better idea? I’d love to hear suggestions for this and any other meals you think is worth testing. Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page.