Here to help is our new cookbook, available now! It’s filled with more practical camping recipes for any type of trip. Here’s a favorite recipe that you can make right now while you’re waiting for your book to arrive!

Some people get cynical about new year’s resolutions, but I still love them. I love thinking about January as a clean slate, and I love looking back on last year. I didn’t finish all my goals last year, but I got a lot more done than if I had made no goals at all.

My goals this year:

• Re-season all my cast iron.
• Learn to use my new camera.
• Learn to be a better trad climber.
• Adopt kids!

Another big thing for me is making it easier to get outside whenever I can. My life got a lot busier last year, and it doesn’t appear to have plans to let up. I need to streamline as much as I can, so that prepping (and thinking about prepping) for trips doesn’t take so long. This recipe fits right into that goal. Puff pastry can live in your freezer, and tastes delicious no matter what you put on it. These little pinwheels were quick to bake, and tasted great at room temperature or reheated. I took them on a climbing trip to Joshua Tree, and then made them again to throw in my pack for a cross country skiing trip yesterday. We like them with mustard, either baked in or squeezed on. Pesto or tapenade would be excellent too.

It’s cold and gray outside in a lot of places right now, but get out there anyway. You’ll never regret it.

This Cherry Pecan Fruit Salad is my favorite version so far. Cherries have been everywhere around here lately, and any kind would do here. It’s worth cutting them in half to avoid having to worry about the pits later while scooping up big bites of this salad. I also added some berries and stone fruits, sticking with tartness over sweetness when possible. The chopped pecans add crunch and depth to the flavor, and even a little protein to make this feel like a nice cold trail mix. I bet chocolate would be good here, too.

I decided not to make a syrup for this salad. It holds together pretty well, and doesn’t need any extra sweetness in my opinion, though I’m not considering this to be a dessert salad. I added chia seeds, which get a little jelly when they mix with moisture. This adds some thickness to the whole thing. If you wanted, you could warm the lavender in a simple syrup ahead of time to give the whole thing more of all of that.

Nuts are a great vegetarian source of protein, so I have lots of them around my house. They can be used in all sorts of dishes, but if you make them flavorful on their own, they are perfect to take with you wherever you may go. These orange sesame almonds are similar to the commonly found tamari almonds I’ve seen around, but offer a more subtle and bright flavor combination. I throw a jar of orange sesame almonds into my backpack and take them to work, to the climbing gym, or even skiing.

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.

This dip is inspired by a recipe on one of my favorite blogs, 101 Cookbooks. It is actually very similar to our Chunky Roasted Red Pepper Dip, but it’s smoother and a little tangier thanks to tomato paste and the pepper varieties. I tried a version with the heirloom bell peppers shown here, and another one with shishito peppers. Both were fabulous.

I recently got this Hydro Flask Food Flask, which is an awesome container for picnics and day trips. It kept the dip cool in 100 degree weather until we were ready to eat it, and is durable and leak proof, compared to the plastic storage containers I usually try to awkwardly jam into backpacks. Stanley and Klean Kanteen both make these in different sizes as well.

The original recipe calls for Pomegranate Molasses, which I didn’t have on hand, so I used a combination of balsamic vinegar and honey instead. Pita chips are my dippable of choice, but crackers or fresh campfire-warmed pitas drizzled with olive oil would also be lovely.

We have been slowly tackling the SoCal six pack summits. The hikes to these peaks are the ones with the most elevation gain and typically are done to train for the John Muir Trail and/or Mount Whitney. So far, we have completed Mt. Wilson, Cucamonga Peak, Mt. Baldy, San Bernardino and San Jacinto. The last and final challenge is the largest one – San Gorgonio which I’m hoping to get to conquer in the next 3 weeks.

With all this hiking under my belt, I’ve learned a few things.

• After years of constant blisters, I finally found a solution that works for my feet – Brooks Cascadia Trail Runners. Taking care of your feet is critical for backpacking, hiking and trail running. It’s such a relief to know that I can now go outside, play hard and go home without destroyed feet.
• I’ve taken for granted the trail experience that I have accumulated. Many of the hikes have been with people that don’t have a lot of hiking experience. That has been really exciting – that is one of the goals of Dirty Gourmet – to get people outside! At the same time, it’s been a little nerve-wracking to see how underprepared some people were for serious all-day long hikes. Here’s a list of the ten essentials you should always have with you when venturing outside.

• I realized that if someone were to get injured on the trail, I have no clue about first-aid procedures and neither would anyone else in the group. I’m taking care of that by signing up for a Wilderness First Aid class, a 2-day long workshop offered by REI and the Wilderness Medicine Institute. When I finish this class, I will receive a NOLS Wilderness Medicine Institute Wilderness First Aid certification and should be able to make an informed decision should anything ever happen in the backcountry. Check the schedule for a class near you here.

All this hiking has forced me to come up with different fun snacks to share with everyone. Being that I always crave salty crunchy snacks while hiking, I decided to make homemade cheese crackers. I made a regular version and a vegan version using Daiya cheese. Both turned out well – with many even preferring the vegan ones! This recipe comes together really easily and you get to play with cookie cutters. Have fun with the flavors and try your own versions with different herbs and maybe even chopped sun-dried tomatoes. Hiking is not done. I’m all ears for your fave trail snack suggestions.

It’s always motivating to have a trip coming up. We’ve been hiking and running pretty consistently to get in shape for all the activities we plan to cram into one little week. This week, we spent a morning running in the local mountains, and we stumbled upon blackberry bushes growing right up against the trail. We ate a few on the way out, and I focused on finishing my water bottle so I’d have storage for more on the way out. It was a perfect running morning, because it was gray and rainy. We rarely get these, so I was really excited to take advantage of it. It’s amazing how much less whiny I am on cool days.

Though we sacrificed a bit of fitness to stop (for a while!) and pick a whole bunch of blackberries, it was worth it. We got back to the car stained red, scratched up, and quite happy. The day stayed rainy, so we stayed in the kitchen. I taught Dutch Oven Cooking basics at REI the night before, and had overpurchased peaches for the cobbler I made, so I pureed them with the blackberries, and dried the whole thing into a big roll of fruit leather.

It was very easy to make fruit leather, but I did make a small mistake. I wanted to show off the contrast between peaches and blackberries, so I swirled the two purees together without mixing them fully. This turned out beautiful, but created inconsistencies in the thickness of the puree while in the dehydrator. It dried unevenly, so I had to peel chunks out as they dried and leave the rest to continue. I think the swirl would still be pretty if I’d done a bit better job of evenly distributing the puree.

I’m going to try to get this fruit leather to last until Canada (August 1), but I don’t see how that’s going to be possible. If it does, I’ll give you a full report about the perishability of the product.

This time we learned from our mistakes  and planned a casual overnight backpacking trip on Mount Pinos near our Dirty Gourmet outpost in Pine Mountain Club.

I took the lead for lunch on the trail with a very loose idea of a “packet meal” – an all-in-one savory hand-held wrapped item filled with deliciousness. With no real plan or recipe in hand, the experiment yielded a pie crust wrapped pocket filled with a mixture of sweet potatoes, leeks, jalapenos, sausage and goat cheese.

Being the baker that I am not, I struggled with the pie dough rolling and folding. The Sweet Potato and Sausage Savory Pie Bombs started out blobby but eventually found their shape, which is a little reminiscent of Asian dumplings or baos.

The great thing about this kind of snack is that you can use pretty much anything you like for the filling; just make sure the consistency is not too liquid. For the shell, I used store-bought frozen piecrust that you can roll out flat (no pie tin). You can also use puff pastry for the shell as Emily did with her Cheesy Sausage Grits Cakes.

Even though birthday month will be over, the fun will continue! The next big challenge for me is the 8000 meter challenge – Mount Baldy, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto all in one day. Most likely, I will have one of these pie bombs stashed in my pocket.

We’re in a good habit these days of snacking on fresh veggies in that hour of madness before dinner. I’ve also been leaving nuts, fruit, and cherry tomatoes on the counter that they can get to during the day when they’re hungry. But I still wanted to find a treat-like snack that we could bring with us when we go to the park. I’ve made some really delicious granola bars before, but they’re just too sweet for me to feel good about feeding them to my kids on a regular basis.

I happily stumbled upon Angela Liddon’s Glo Bars in her Oh She Glows cookbook, and I’ve been making different versions of them. Using brown rice syrup was a revelation! It’s not as sweet as most things used to bind granola bars together, and the texture is so nice. It makes these bars perfectly chewy. The texture makes me feel like I’m eating a rice crispy treat. They’re a hit with the kids and I don’t feel guilty that they’re eating them.

I wrap these bars in plastic wrap because we usually take them on our adventures, but you could also store them in an airtight container in the fridge (though be aware they’ll stick together if you don’t wrap them).