Our trips may be transitioning from extended camping trips to shorter, more spontaneous day trips, but including healthy and satisfying meals is still an essential. Wes and I recently became certified foster parents, and we’re excited to include kids in our near-future adventures. We don’t have any kids in the house yet, so we are using this time to do any last minute preparations we can think of. This includes figuring out how to streamline our normal routines so we can spend more free time playing with kids. It also includes figuring out some easy kid-friendly outdoor recipes.

We’ve started leaning back into the idea of portable foods wrapped in baked bready things. Most of our recent trips have included standard pigs in a blanket (hot dogs and cheddar cheese rolled in crescent rolls from the can). I highly recommend these, but if you swap crescent rolls for frozen puff pastry and hot dogs for buffalo chicken, you up your fancy game significantly.

The toughest part of this recipe is remembering to thaw your puff pastry in time to bake it (I prefer to stick it in the fridge the night before if I think of it), and deciding on your favorite shape to form it into. As you can see, I’m not great at picking a favorite shape (they’re all so fun!).

Everyone will love this recipe and it tastes just fine out of a cooler or even at room temperature. Feel free to swap the chicken with veggie chicken strips or baked marinated tofu to make it vegetarian and less perishable.

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!

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.

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.

Non-profit and fundraising sounds fancy, but really it was a wonderful day hiking up to the peak of San Jacinto with a great group of people. Pamela Zoolalian is Aspire2Be‘s founder and the nicest most badass woman I have met. She is the kind of person that is a big deal but you would never guess from their demeanor and personality. I had a lovely time chatting her up and hearing about her recent experience soloing the John Muir Trail.

For the hike, we had our famous Granola Brittle and Goat Milk Gouda Veggie Sandwiches – my favorite sandwich of the moment. The critical ingredient here is really the cheese. It’s a creamy gouda cheese with a little tangy goat-milk goodness on the finish. Pair it with spinach, roasted red peppers, turkey or baked tofu for protein and you have yourself a winning combination.

If you haven’t gone up to San Jacinto yet – we highly recommend it. Start at the Palm Springs Aerial tram and go from sweltering desert heat to breezy mountain air in 10 minutes. The hike itself is a moderate 12 mile round trip with gentle elevation gain and sweeping vistas at the top. You can do this as a day trip or make it a leisurely backpacking trip by staying at the Round Valley Camp (note: campsites can be reserved but only via a mail-in application)

Let me know what kind of yummy sandwich concoctions you’ve been making so we can try them out on our next weekend trip.

Maybe it’s old school, but we have loved making cheese fondue for a while. We’ve made several different variations to one recipe, but it always includes mustard, garlic, beer or wine, and gruyere cheese. This is a recipe that can be made low and slow in a crock pot at home or dutch oven at camp. It can also be made rather quickly in a cast iron skillet for an appetizer or full-on meal.

This is a nice recipe for camping because it really is a one pot meal, with no need for any other dirty dishes. We do basically nothing to the dippers, besides chopping and blanching the vegetables. The dishes they sit in are very easy to clean in the end.

Another bonus is that a cast iron skillet retains heat beautifully, so the fondue actually stays warm for longer than you might think.

Beer Cheese fondue is a fun meal that will bring your whole group together to eat. There are a lot of possibilities for a second round meal with the leftovers as well. We’ve done some awesome grilled cheese sandwiches, but mac ‘n cheese or a broccoli cheese soup would be super easy as well.

Thank you Ryan for the beautiful photos! We learned a lot about food styling and outdoor lighting in one little afternoon in the mountains. Here are some things we learned:

1. Try to even out harsh mottled light by holding a scrim or light diffuser over the subject. We’re thinking a tent may work for this in a backcountry situation, but haven’t tested that out yet.
2. Ryan swears by his apple box as a multipurpose tool to help stand over your subject.
3. The wilderness is full of beautiful background props, so use what you can find (while practicing Leave No Trace techniques, of course), but Ryan brought a few boards with him that were beautiful and natural for times when we couldn’t find something big or flat enough.
4. Slow down, focus, and take your time styling the food on the table. It will make a difference.

All photos by the talented Ryan Robert Miller.

Cleaning out your garden is a perfect time to also clean out your fridge. And cleaning out your fridge usually means making way too much food, so a picnic is a great way to share. We received spring onions and lots of little pink potatoes in our Farm Fresh To You box the past few weeks, so I couldn’t help but make a delicious, grandma-style potato salad. We usually avoid mayonnaise-based salads since we’re always focused on perishability, but we recently discovered egg-free Just Mayo. It works for our vegan family members, and we can worry less about spoilage. I made what looked like a huge vat of potato salad, but it was gone by the end of the evening.

Our picnic was wonderful. We walked down to the park closest to Aimee’s house, and family members showed up as they got off work or got sick of playing basketball. Babies and dogs ate straight from the serving bowls, a bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider exploded all over our (no longer) crispy butternut squash taquitos, and we had no regrets. We’re going to do this much more often.

Whether you got the flu of the year, ate and drank your way through the holidays, or are just excited about the opportunity of a new fresh start, here’s a super easy recipe to start with. Layered Picnic Cabbage Salad is great on it’s own, or as a slaw-style topping to a burger or sausage. Cabbage is hearty enough to take outside with you fresh, which is such a nice treat. You have the choice to keep the dressing separate and add at the time of eating, or add the dressing to a jar first, place the cabbage on top, and shake to combine at the time of eating. It’s mayonnaise free, which reduces it’s perishability.

Make it easy on yourself as you try to implement new habits. Camping recipes like this one will make it more likely that you’ll bring fresh, homemade food on your trip. That, in turn, will make you want to go outside. Hopefully that will get you outside more often!

Have you been on an amazing winter camping trip that we should know about? We’re making plans and looking for advice. Share your winter adventures with us in the comments or in photos on our Facebook page.

Wes and I received one of those over the top picnic baskets filled with glass plates, real silverware and glass wine glasses for our wedding. Most people would have put this thing away at the top of their garage first thing, but I’ve been staring anxiously at it for 7 (wowza) months.

We got complimented right and left about the basket as we walked around looking for the perfect spot, but we were very much not alone. It took until we gave up and started unpacking in a tiny corner before someone let us know they’d just left their space available for us.

Our picnic included a fancy cheese platter of five cheeses, a salad in a jar, potato taquitos with salsa verde, fruit salad, and this simple recipe for blistered garlicky shishito peppers. Mai-yan and I both receive a weekly box of vegetables from Farm Fresh to You, and shishito peppers come in the lucky late summer weeks.

The recipe is extremely easy, flavorful, packable, and great at room temperature. It was a perfect picnic recipe. Let us know if you’ve made these wonderful little peppers any other way. We’d love to hear your recipes.

For the purists out there, I should specify that this Spicy Korean Lentil soup is not really Korean, but rather is influenced by the flavors of this cuisine.

This Spicy Korean Lentil soup has some real heat to it. It’s a peppery-slow-heat-in-the-back-of-the-throat kinda kick that decreases as your meal progresses. One interesting anecdote: I served it with rice and after each bite of rice, the heat factor came back! It’s like the rice cleansed our palates, and resensitized our taste buds to the spiciness.