Even around the holidays, Brussels sprouts can be hard to sell, but this recipe will do it, and it will be wonderful to have something fresh and crunchy to add to your menu.

No cooking is required for this recipe, making it an easy side or appetizer. We like it best on crackers, hearty bread, or Melba toasts.

Both grandparents lived a long and happy life, and left us with tons of happy memories to cherish for many more years. Memere was the grandmother that Aimee and I shared from our dad’s side, and she passed away this week last January. She and Pepere used to travel across the country from North Carolina to see us every year. They’d sleep in the camper shell on top of their pick up truck, even when that truck was parked in our driveway for the summer. The original #vanlife?

My grandfather on my mom’s side passed away last month. He was known for seeing the most pleasant side of all things, and his puns. Every time I visited my grandparents growing up, there would be a Costco-sized tub of sour cream waiting for me to turn it into as many pound cakes as it would make. I just used Nana’s recipe, but somehow Grandpa would convince me that I made it best.

My parents came to visit me for Christmas, and my mom brought with her a pound cake. We took it with us cross-country skiing last week. It’s really the perfect snack for a day in the snow. It is tough enough to pack well, and goes great with a warm drink. It is by no means a low-calorie food, so an active day outside is a good time to consider it truly justified.

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.

Have you ever tried Kombucha? It is supposed to be extremely healthy, (claiming to cure all sorts of illnesses and even reverse gray hair, according to it’s Wikipedia page), but it’s a rough one flavor-wise. It pretty much tastes like flavored vinegar to me.

So when Aimee suggested making a cocktail out of it over the holidays, I was skeptical. She left the job in the hands of our resident bartender, Wes, though, who made up this truly fabulous drink.

If you’ve ever had a shrub, this is very similar. It’s only slightly sweet, and a little sparkly. It’s a refreshing daytime type of drink. Perfect for an afternoon picnic or an afternoon relaxing in your hammock at camp. It’s a great drink to include in your January activities. You know- because January is when we’re all out there getting healthier.

Cheers! We’ll see you in 2016!

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.

Gunsmoke is an uber-classic bouldering problem in Joshua Tree National Park. It is a 85 foot long V3 traverse that I’ve been playing on for about 7 years, never with any hope or intention of finishing it. But I feel like it’s possible if I really put my mind to it. And train.

During climbing season, our food focus shifts a little. We go outside any chance we get, which may mean running out to the park after work, sleeping outside, and climbing for half a day before work again. It may mean leaving the house at 4am and getting home the same evening. Food doesn’t necessarily have to be nonperishable, but it has to be easy, and preferably ready to eat at whatever time we get off a rock, with little to no prep.

We’ve gotten into loving salads for this purpose. Pasta salads, bean salads, grain salads. This particular one is heavy on the salad portion and lighter on the pasta. It can be eaten cold like a salad or hot like a pasta, which makes it great for lunch or dinner. It’s filled with fresh ingredients that can be swapped with almost anything fresh in your house, and requires very little to make a dressing (just lemon and olive oil).

Wes likes to put pasta in his salad, and I’ve always thought it was weird. But I get it now. Sometimes you need a lot of vegetable bang for your bite, but the comfort and energy from a sprinkling of pasta is always welcome.

Hope to see you out at the crag!

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.