DIY Trail Food: Building a Better Backpacking Meal, Step Three - Veggies

Now that you have your base and protein picked out, we will add some color, flavor, and nutrition with veggies!  Backpackers and survivalists are not interested in counting calories to lose weight.  Just the opposite is true: backpackers count calorie per gram of food in order to get the highest calorie content from the lightest amount of food.  Packing nutrient dense food in your BOB or backpack will give you the most calories but with a pack that weighs less, which is helpful whether you are hiking up a mountain or running away from zombies :)

Fruit and vegetables are often sorely lacking from trail food bags for several reasons; fresh, they are heavy (most fruit is ~80% water weight), they bruise and spoil easily, and they provide few calories per gram of weight.  This article focuses on:

•  why we should include veggies in our trail meals,
•  ideas on easy ways to add them to our meals, and
•  tips for home dehydrating  

Fruits will be touched on, but I will cover fruits more in depth in future articles about breakfasts and snacks.

DIY Trail Food: Building a Better Backpacking Meal, Step Four - Sauces and Fats

While I love to dabble in the kitchen, I continue to be confounded by sauces.  No different for my dehydrated dinners. Perhaps because I am a firm "meat and potatoes" kind of girl who thinks cheddar cheese sauce from a can is the perfect condiment, I have never mastered the talent of good sauce making.  Not to say I haven't been inspired to try; I do make a decent hollandaise from scratch, which methinks is something to brag about.

Homemade Pesto

Using sauce to pull together all the elements of a dish is no different whether eating rehydrated food from a freezer bag in the wilderness or eating fresh ingredients at home. This article is the fifth in a series of posts on making your own dehydrated meals at home, from scratch, using ingredients found in your pantry or grocery store.

Earlier articles covered:

• Why You Should Make Your Own Trail Meals
• The Base of the Meals, or the carbohydrate portion
• Adding Meat and Protein to your Meals
• Using Vegetables to Boost Nutrition

DIY Trail Food: Building a Better Backpacking Meal, Step Five - Spices, Toppings, And Putting it All Together

"He who controls the spice, controls the universe." ~Frank Herbert, Dune

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Bags of Spices in a Market

Now that you have made a new trail dinner masterpiece, it's time to spice it up and top it off!  Herbs and spices can feed the senses as well as the body; changing the flavor profile of a dish in a jiffy, while also adding protective nutrients to food. Toppings can add crunch or texture to any dish that lacks that "something extra."

How to Travel the World in a Freezer Bag

Eat Homemade Dehydrated Food on Vacation to Save Money and Time

This is a post for anyone who likes to enjoy hot beverages or eat hot food on the road but do not enjoy waiting in restaurant lines or paying exorbitant prices for fattening, unhealthy food.  Being a hot tea junkie, I can't stomach paying $2 for a cup of hot water with a 20 cent tea bag when I am away from home.  For short trips, such as a day trip, I carry a thermos of hot water and keep tea bags, sugar, and creamer in my car, along with snacks.

But for longer, overnight trips, I carry a backpacking stove.  That's right!  Those cute little backpacking stoves aren't just for the back woods.  I carry mine just about everywhere.  Instead of stopping at convenience stores for cups coffee or hot chocolate, stop at rest areas and fire up the stove.   Likewise, prepare pre-portioned dinners from dehydrated foods at home in ziploc freezer bags and simply add hot water to rehydrate in the bag.  This method, called "Freezer Bag Cooking," or FBC, has been used by backpackers for years to savor homemade goodness when on the go.

First spring forage hike 2014

I went for my first plant walk of the season this week, and at the last minute decided to record how many wild edible plants I could identify in a few short hours.

I was delighted and surprised to fine 19 of my regular edibles available for foraging, or in fruit and soon to be available! 

This entire video was shot with my S3, so please excuse the shakiness and wind noise while on the approach trail...

Ginkgo Biloba Nuts (Urban Foraging)

My small city is loaded with Gingko trees.  Sometime in the last century, either a town administrator or the guy in charge of landscaping decided it would be a great idea to beautify the city streets with Gingko trees.  The Gingko is very pretty in the summer, lush with dark green fan-shaped leaves. 

Gourmet Fruit Leather from Leftover Cranberry Sauce

Following the holidays, there is an onslaught of "what to do with leftover turkey" posts, but one thing that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads is what to do with the cranberry relish. Cranberry relish looks great on the table; a pretty, garnet-colored accompaniment to our holiday feasts. But am I the only one that thinks a lot of people don't really like the stuff that much?

Granted, the tart and tangy side dish has such a pungent flavor that a little goes a long way, but maybe the reason so much cranberry sauce is leftover after the holidays is in the presentation. Umm, cranberry jelly log, anyone?

Canned Cranberry Sauce "Log": Is This Appealing? :)

My family ditched the canned cranberry sauce years ago, and I hope that after reading this post you are inspired to do the same thing and make your own relish. It's sooooo easy, all it takes is a food processor and 10 minutes. Once you try it, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner will never be the same!

Homemade Cranberry Relish: A Feast For the Eyes

And once you use the leftover cranberry relish for my "grown up" version of fruit leather, you will want to make a ton of the relish so you can savor this tasty treat when away from home! I can't wait for fresh cranberries to go on sale after the holidays for $1 per bag, so I can dehydrate away :)

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Making Your "Gourmet" Cranberry Relish Fruit Leather

Cranberries, Orange, Sugar make the relish

First, make the Fresh Cranberry Relish from the Recipe Below. Pop it in the blender.  Eyeball the amount of relish, then add about 2/3 the same amount in unsweetened applesauce. This isn't rocket science, so don't sweat the actual amount.  You just need enough applesauce to "bind" the ingredients for the leather.  Otherwise the finished product will be too crunchy.

Cranberry Relish and Applesauce

Now, I like to add my "secret" ingredients, which are totally optional.  Guess it's not such a secret, anymore, haha.  The fruit leather is delicious as is, but adding a few extra things will definitely add some pizzazz.   Add a smidgen of jalapeño and some fresh cilantro, which compliment the tartness of the cranberries beautifully.

Next, spread the mixture out on a solid drying sheet and dehydrate for about 6 hours at 100°F until the mixture is dry and flexible.  The leather will still be slightly tacky due to the sugar and pectin.

Fruit Leather Ready for the Dehydrator

Halfway through the drying, peel the leather from the solid sheet, and flip onto mesh dryer sheet.

Flip over Halfway Through onto Mesh Tray

Cut with pizza cutter or knife, and store in ziploc bags or in Mason jars for longer term.  

Finished Fruit Leather

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Fresh Cranberry Relish Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 - 12 ounce bag fresh whole cranberries
• 1 orange, unpeeled, quartered and seeded
• 1/2 c sugar or evaporated cane juice (add more sugar to taste- I like mine very tart)

Directions:

Place ingredients in half-batches in food processor and pulse until chopped coarse. Serve chilled.

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Now for the good stuff! Use one part of your cranberry relish to 2/3 part unsweeted applesauce. The "surprise" ingredient is jalapeño peppers. The spice of the jalapeño nicely balances the cranberries and sugar, but less is more in this recipe.

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Cranberry Relish Fruit Leather

Ingredients:

• Leftover cranberry relish
• Less than equal measure of applesauce 
• Jalapeño pepper to taste, fresh & seeded or canned, diced finely (optional)
• Fresh Chopped Cilantro (optional)

Directions: 

Place leftover relish in blender or food process. Add just enough unsweetened applesauce to thin cranberry relish and make it easily pourable. Add a small amount of jalapeño pepper (1/2 teaspoon at a time).  Pulse gently until ingredients are blended well.   Add additional applesauce as needed to blend to smooth consistency.

Pour onto solid dehydrator sheets and dry until leathery at ~100°F, about 8 hours.

Remove from sheet and cut with pizza cutter or knife into equal strips for storage.