Aimee is the baker. Mai-yan and I like to bake for Aimee as a joke. You should’ve seen the soggy granola-crusted cheesecake we attempted for her birthday last year. (“Water bath? Springform pan? Wait-what? We have to chill it for 4 hours? It’s 10pm now and we are ready to sing Happy Birthday!”). So it was an equally funny joke when my friend from work brought me some sourdough starter. I kept it alive because I couldn’t let him down.

Aimee lent me her book, Josey Baker Bread, and I spent a day off following the rules and baking some bread. It came out “great.” Brown, sour flavored, bread shaped. I didn’t love it, though. There wasn’t anything special about it. So I gave it away.

I tried again when I visited my parents in Las Vegas a few weeks later. We were at the stage when you let it sit on the counter for 3 hours before shaping the loaf, and after 1 hour, it had blown up like a balloon and oozed out of the bowl all over the counter. My mom made me bake it anyway, and it turned out like bread again, and everyone ate it (I told them I was testing their politeness threshold).

It took me months to want to try again, and by that time, it was last week, and it was 100 degrees outside. I did NOT want to turn on my oven. I decided it was time to test this thing out as a Dirty Gourmet recipe, so I set up my backyard fire pit and got out some charcoal and a dutch oven. I followed the recipe for a “hearth loaf,” which is free form and you get to slash the top of the bread with a scalpel, leaving that beautiful crack in the top. I followed the Dutch Oven Temperature Chart we often use, but it doesn’t go high enough in temperature so I added a few extra coals. The first loaf baked quickly and burned all across the bottom, but I’ve never seen such color and texture on a homemade crust before! The coals had died down significantly by the second loaf’s turn to bake (have an extra batch ready), so it took longer, but it still baked up crusty and sour like I wanted.

This is how I’ll be baking my bread from now on, and I’m going to be baking a lot more often now that I can avoid turning on my oven.

Camping and baking can be more tricky. I recommend doing the whole process at camp, rather than trying to travel with shaped loaves. Start with your backyard. That still counts as getting outside in my book!

The hardest part of planning a backpacking trip is planning your meals. There are specialty retailers out there that provide some wonderful options for backpacking food, but those aren’t always convenient when you’re planning a last minute escape. Whether you’re trying to accommodate specific dietary needs or you’re leaving early tomorrow morning, it would be nice to be able to get what you need at your local market. Regular markets can provide an array of options to get you what you need for a trip full of personalized good eatin’. Food should never be the limiting factor for whether you can take off into the wild and nurture your soul.

The Base

We generally like one pot meals backpacking, which are quick to cook and usually limit the amount of dishes to wash at the end of the day. Start with something that will take on whatever flavor you have in mind, and provides you with a lot of energy. Best options for this part of your meal that can be easily found at your local market are:

• Instant mashed potato flakes
• Parboiled rice
• Instant grits or oatmeal
• Quick cooking pastas like ramen, angel hair, couscous, and soba noodles
• Pancake or biscuit mix

The Bulk

All kinds of delicious things can be added into your one pot masterpiece. Build depth and interest with dehydrated or freeze-dried veggies and meats. As these absorb water and sauce, they’ll come right back to normal and melt into your meal:

• Dried mushrooms
• Freeze-dried mixed vegetables
• Sundried tomatoes
• Cured meats and jerky
• Canned tuna and chicken
• Smoked salmon
• Silken tofu

The Flavor

You can go any direction with what you’ve built so far, and the spice department is going to help you get where you want to go. The downside of buying pre-constructed backpacking meals is your inability to customize spice and salt levels in your food. Start slow, and build up to perfection. You can also create a sauce at this point with creamy thickening additions.
Our favorite choices are:

• Bouillon cubes
• Curry pastes
• Soup mixes
• Spice mixes that you buy pre-mixed or make yourself, like our Secret Weapon Spice Rub
• Powdered milk
• Peanut butter powder
• Instant bean flakes

The Toppings

To ensure that you’ll get variation in texture, add some crunchy toppings as a garnish. These can be daytime snacks that serve a dual purpose, or you could keep special toppings aside for a special element to each meal.

• Nuts (crushed smoked almonds)
• Seeds (chia, sunflower, hemp, millet)
• Crushed chips or crackers
• Bacon bits
• Shelf-stable cheese
• Freeze dried fruit
• Chocolate

Here are some of our favorite recipes that rely mainly on finds from our market.

Cheesy Mountain Ramen

Loaded Mashed Potatoes

Oatmeal Pancakes with Dried Fruit Compote

Everyone knows kale is a superfood, filled with with tons of nutrients. It’s also sturdy, ultralight, and goes with just about any type of meal you would like to make. There’s still a chance that fresh kale could be ruined in your pack on a hot day, but once it’s dehydrated, it becomes invincible.

Yes, you can dehydrate just about every vegetable (great news!), but kale and other dark leafy greens are what to choose before everything else. They dehydrate quickly, but also rehydrate quickly, which is more important. If you’re looking for a side of creamed greens to go with your dehydrated mac n’ cheese, no problem!

This recipe takes dried kale a step further, though, by crumbling it into super versatile flakes. No more worrying about it breaking up in your pack- it’s already broken! No need to worry about a separate pot, or the disgusted faces on the picky eaters of the group. Throw some of this into every meal, and it will melt right in. If you’re short on time, try roasting your greens instead of dehydrating them.
The flavor deepens and you can eat them sprinkled right on top of your food instead of cooking the greens into it. Here’s a great recipe for how to roast them.

Some of our favorite options:

• Roasted kale flakes as a popcorn topping
• Green mac n’ cheese
• Quinoa and eggs with kale crumbles

Try this recipe out for your next trip (which will hopefully involve some snow!) and let us know what recipes you put your dehydrated kale flakes into!

This weekend, we wanted to focus on the holiday season while camping at Leo Carrillo (our favorite standby local spot- especially in the winter). We decorated camp in festive lights and centerpieces, and played Christmas music that we’d downloaded onto our phone before the trip. We’ve been doing mostly homemade gifts for each other this year, and wanted to start a tradition of homemade ornaments as well.

I wasn’t sure about this salt dough ornament recipe, but it worked out great on the campfire!

Salt dough is a quick and easy dough that you can easily make at camp with kids. It becomes the consistency of Play Dough, and you can shape it into whatever you want. We made one in Ravi’s favorite shape- an ‘O’- and another in Asha’s favorite shape- a rocketship.

A few notes:

• When forming your ornaments, don’t forget to poke a hole for a string to feed through later. We used a glow stick bracelet as our hole poker, but a stick would work just fine.
• The children tried to eat the ornaments as soon as I handed them over. They do resemble cookies, but they do not taste like them. Don’t worry- there’s nothing toxic or dangerous in the dough if this happens to you.
• Cookie cutters work great for this project, but I just cut out freehand shapes with a knife.
• The original recipe for these suggested to bake them in a low oven for 2 hours. I tried baking one in a pie iron directly in the fire, and the rest were done in a cast iron skillet on the grate. All dried out well. The one baked in the pie iron turned a lovely golden brown.

Decorate your ornaments with markers or paint after they dry. Then hang them all over camp, or on your Christmas tree back at home. Happy Holidays!

We had planned to paddleboard camp on Lake Minnewanka while we were in Banff, but the cold rain just kept coming. It had been raining all week, but Thursday was supposed to be the worst of it. We’d already made reservations, but called the very nice lady in charge at Bow Valley SUP, who helped us switch to a half day on Friday.We drove out to Canmore that morning, and the clouds parted. It became a perfect day.

They suggested we just drive up the road to the reservoir instead of heading back into Banff, since we now only had 3 hours. I was pretty disappointed when I heard that, but couldn’t believe how gorgeous just the little town reservoir was! A backdrop of the incredible Canadian Rockies and the glacial blue color of the water were still with us.

Paddleboarding was much easier and more relaxing than I expected. We rented inflatables, which were very stable, and took them up to a nice pullover point to have delicious falafel sandwiches for lunch. I wouldn’t recommend the chopping methods you see here, unless you’re desperate. Knives and inflatables usually don’t mix well. I had a LOT of supervision. You’d really “falafel” if you popped a rental board.

These are delicious and spicy. Taco meat and puff pastry- what could be better? Just don’t forget the hot sauce! (I learned my lesson on this trip).

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.

Adan is a pro fly fisherman (we’ll be demanding lessons soon), and he doesn’t just cook his trout- he smokes it. When I was growing up in Florida, I had a few lucky New Year’s parties where my best friend would show up with her family’s smoked mackerel. That was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. I haven’t even had Adan’s smoked trout, but I’m sure it’s just as delicious.

Where are you going to camp with your ENTIRE family and all your friends next year? Now’s the time to start planning (especially since the planning process requires a BBQ!) Let us know so we can be your neighbors!

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.

We take a lot of climbing day trips or quick overnighters whenever we can get away with them. These are usually not well-planned (“Oh hey, we both get off of work early today and go into work late tomorrow- let’s go!”) so it’s hard to plan our meals very well. The idea behind portable packet meals is that you can whip up a batch of rice or grits or mashed potatoes (or just use leftovers from last night), stuff them with cheese, sausage, vegetables, or anything delicious that you have in your house, and you’re good to go. If you want to take it a step further, wrap that whole thing in some sort of dough and bake it for 20 minutes.

I don’t have muffin tins in my house, or I’d probably have used them for this. I used individual ramekins, so the serving sizes were on the large side. We’re planning to make empanadas in this style for our backpacking trip this weekend. Do you have another idea I could try? I still need a lunch for the second day.