FoodHappy

This post is part of a series! Read the other two installments of Eating in the Rockies here: 

Eating in the Rockies: Part 1 (Introduction)

Eating in the Rockies: Part 2 (Essential Cooking Gear)  

In last week’s installment of Eating in the Rockies, I shared with you the contents of our camp kitchen – what essentials and little luxuries we were happy to have toted around mountain campgrounds. 

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for good eating, we can (finally!) get to the food. In this week’s post – the last of this little series – I’ll share our strategy for choosing ingredients that kept us well-fed and away from grocery stores for seven days, without requiring that we pack the entire contents of my pantry or rely on canned chili and hot dogs. 

I’ll also share our favourite recipes from the week, plus a few handy tips that saved us from soggy sandwiches and other mealtime tribulations. Ready? Let’s get to it!

In general, we tried to bring ingredients that were:

1. Relatively hardy. Choosing ingredients that will stand up to a week in a cooler means you won’t have to constantly design your dinner menu around stuff that’s about to spoil. Cabbage was great, spinach not so much. 
    
2. Multipurpose. When you’re away from a grocery store for a week, it’s helpful to have ingredients on hand that work in multiple kinds of dishes. For example, things like crushed tomatoes, chickpeas and thai basil will come in handy whether you’re having pasta or a curry. 
    
3. Staples, with variety. We opted to bring a few kinds of starches (rice, pasta, potatoes and tortillas) and proteins (canned chickpeas and beans, dried red lentils, eggs). It’s more work than packing giant quantities of a single type of starch or protein, but when your options are already limited by what you’ve stashed in your car, it’s worth the extra bit of effort to give yourself some variety. 

When camping, my general strategy is to keep the cooking mess to a minimum in the morning, so that we don’t start our day off doing a giant pile of dishes. At the same time, part of the idea behind going camping was to go on vacation and break from the normal routine, so we snuck a few nicer morning meals in there too. Here’s what worked well:

• Emergency cereal: Most mornings, we ate muesli with fresh fruit, but when the muesli ran out, we topped a box of crunchy cereal brought along for snacking with a handful of nut-and-dried-fruit trail mix. Heartier than cereal alone, and tasty too!
   
• Pancakes: Before we left home, I tossed all of the dry ingredients from this recipe into a large reusable container. At the campsite, I added to the container the wet ingredients (melting the required butter in the same frying pan I’d be cooking the pancakes in). We topped ours with chocolate chips and bananas that we warmed up in tinfoil over a morning campfire. 
   
• Scrambled eggs: We added a bit of chopped cheddar (no grater on hand) to the frying pan while the eggs were cooking and served the finished eggs with sliced tomatoes and store-bought tortillas warmed in a dry frying pan. This was especially nice on chilly mornings!

Most of our lunches were eaten on the go – either on a hike, or at a roadside pullout as we made our way from one destination to the next – so convenience was key. And so: Sandwiches. We prepped our fillings in the morning and kept them in a container separate from our bread/tortillas, then assembled everything at lunch time. Sogginess, averted! 

While I’d be happy roasting veggie dogs on a stick over a campfire, my travelling companion takes great pride in making a good meal while camping, so I had no choice but to eat well. These were some of our favourite dinners:

• This lentil recipe, tomato paste omitted (didn’t bring any) and fresh tomatoes swapped with whatever veggies needed using up. We served ours with rice.
   
• A simple, flavourful coconut green curry, made as follows: 1) Heat a big spoonful of prepared green curry paste in a pot with a bit of oil for 30 seconds; 2) Add 1 can of drained chickpeas and 1 can of coconut milk, along with a big handful of fresh vegetables (we used sliced purple cabbage, spinach and diced zucchini); 3) Simmer until the veggies are tender, salting it along the way; 4) Serve atop hot rice and sprinkling with a big handful of thai basil. Serves 2-3. 
   
• Speedy pasta with spicy tomato sauce, made as follows: 1) Cook capellini (angel hair) pasta in salted boiling water until nearly done – it takes only 2-3 minutes!; 2) Pour off the cooking water, then toss into the pasta some crushed tomatoes, hot chilies, salt, a bit of red wine (if you’re already drinking it) and a can of chickpeas, drained – quantities will depend on how many servings you’re after; 3) Heat for a couple minutes, until the sauce is hot and the pasta is cooked; 4) We served ours with some of the leftover thai basil, but it would also be tasty with some crumbled feta or grated hard cheese, or a bit of extra virgin olive oil, if you’ve brought things like that on your trip!
   
• Pseudo chana masala, made with the extra crushed tomatoes from the pasta and the same spice mix we used to make the lentils (we premixed the spices at home and brought along enough for a couple meals), plus some cayenne from one of these handy gadgets.

• We brought bagged tea and a little container of homemade cocoa mix (just cocoa powder and sugar, essentially) for chilly nights and mornings. 
   
• We pre-washed all of our fruits and veggies before leaving home (except for tricky stuff, like cabbage). It’s a little time consuming, but it makes it a whole lot easier to snack/cook at a moment’s notice and lets you save precious drinking water should you find yourself without other sources of potable water. 
   
• We found it worked well to chill our cooler with consumable icepacks, like frozen cartons of milk and bottles of water. It saved precious cooler space, and let us take ice-cold water on long day hikes. Just over halfway through our trip, we refilled the cooler with a block of ice, which lasted us until we got home (admittedly some of our campgrounds still had snow on the ground, so it wasn’t too difficult to keep food cool). 
   
• There are few disappointments greater than getting a nice fire going and being unable to crack into your corked bottle of wine. When you’re camping, choose screwtop! 

This post is part of a series! Read the other two installments of Eating in the Rockies here: 

Eating in the Rockies: Part 1 (Introduction)

Eating in the Rockies: Part 3 (Recipes, Tips, Extras)  

Picking up where we left off yesterday, today I’m giving you a closer look at what we did to ensure tasty times on our 8-day camping trip in the mountains, in hopes that you too can eat well even when electricity is nowhere to be found.

I’ll start by sharing the bits and pieces of our portable kitchen, with the help of some of cellphone photos (my proper camera was often tucked away at mealtime, alas).

As I mentioned yesterday, we were car camping, so we had the luxury of not having to limit our kitchen gear to what we could carry on our backs. That being said, we still tried to keep it relatively light (more space for snacks that way!). 

Here’s what were glad to have with us:

Two cooking pots: You could probably get by with a single pot, but having a second on hand means that you can cook your rice and curry (or beans and mashed potatoes, or whatever you’re having for dinner) at the same time. If you plan to cook atop your campfire, make sure to leave your good pots at home. 

One frying pan: An essential if you’re planning pancakes or scrambled eggs. 

A cookstove: The previous time we went camping, we managed well with one of these super-portable methyl alcohol cookstoves. This time around, we borrowed my sister’s propane two-burner stove. It takes up considerably more space that the little stove and isn’t as easy to tote around, but it does let you cook two things at once, which is awfully nice when it’s pouring rain and you just want to get your eating over with and climb into your sleeping bag. Don’t forget the matches and the gas! 

Now, all that being said, we saw several people make good use of the cast iron stoves that you’ll find in the national park cooksheds (one group fired up the stove and made fresh-cut french fries!), so if you’re clever about where you camp you can probably get by without bringing a stove or grill from home. If you go that route, remember to pack matches and an axe or a hatchet for chopping firewood.

Basic cooking utensils: Our little kit included a cutting board, kitchen knife, vegetable peeler, can opener, spatula, wooden spoon and scissors. If you’re planning to have a drink with dinner, you’ll want to pack a corkscrew and bottle opener as well (or keep it easy and stick to screwtop!). 

Dishware (per person): A plate, a bowl, a mug or thermos, and a set of cutlery (or one of these gadgets, if you’re short on space). Our favourite non-essentials were these plastic collapsible wine glasses. 

Reusable storage containers: We brought along a few containers, in part for food storage but more for use in food prep – as a mixing bowl, or to hold piles of chopped veggies awaiting their turn in the pot. 

Tinfoil: For wrapping around anything you want to roast in the fire (we went for chocolate-filled bananas). 

Cleaning supplies: Unless you’re lugging a ton of disposable dishware from home, you’ll have to wash dishes. RV parks may be well stocked for dish-doing, but if you’re staying in national parks you’ll need to bring your own soap, scrubbing brush and dish towels.   

This is getting awfully long, friends, so I’ll leave it here for today. Tune in next time to find out what we ate (with lots of recipes and tips!). 

This post is part of a series! Read the other two installments of Eating in the Rockies here: 

Eating in the Rockies: Part 1 (Introduction)

Eating in the Rockies: Part 3 (Recipes, Tips, Extras)  

This post is part of a series! Read the other two installments of Eating in the Rockies here: 

Eating in the Rockies: Part 2 (Essential Cooking Gear)

Eating in the Rockies: Part 3 (Recipes, Tips, Extras)  

Growing up, my family and I did a ton of camping. You know, the sort where you and the friend you’ve brought along could, say, make a batch of cupcakes in your trailer’s tiny oven or end a hot day with a couple scoops of ice cream from the ample freezer. A quick stop-off at the pool and the showers, followed by a night reading the newest Harry Potter novel in your bunk bed by electricity-powered interior lights, and your day of camping was complete.

My recent camping trip to the Rockies was a bit different. 

This time, I packed my car and headed off with a seasoned hiker who considers tenting in an unserviced site in the middle of nowhere more of a vacation than an adventure. So you can guess that cupcakes were off the menu.

As I’ve already made clear, my expertise when it comes to packing for an 8-day car camping trip in the mountains is minimal. But (likely in no small part due to input from my travelling companion), we managed to eat exceptionally well, stopping for groceries just once to grab an extra litre of milk to feed our hot cocoa needs, otherwise using only what we brought in one standard cooler and one similarly-sized container of non-perishables. 

And so, in the event that there are any other novice car campers out there, tomorrow I’ll be sharing our general strategy, what kind of cooking gear we brought, and which recipes were particularly delicious when taken with a side of mountain views, so that you too can enjoy your next cupcake-free camping adventure.  

Tune in tomorrow to get the lowdown on eating well in the mountains, even when you leave the oven at home. 

This post is part of a series! Read the other two installments of Eating in the Rockies here: 

Eating in the Rockies: Part 2 (Essential Cooking Gear)

Eating in the Rockies: Part 3 (Recipes, Tips, Extras)  

Hey friends! I just returned from a week-long adventure in the mountains (also known as bear-avoidance training) – I’ll be getting to sharing photos, stories and recipes just as soon as I’ve finished getting the campfire smell out of my clothes. 

In the mean time, here are a few shots from my week away. (For more from the mountains, and the occasional behind-the-scenes look at other FoodHappy posts, you’re welcome to check out my shiny new Instagram feed!)

See you soon, with camping recipes! 

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to make fruit popsicles.

I guess I thought it was somehow tricky, even though we all know that popsicles are just frozen juice on a stick (translation: they’re easier to make than they are to mess up). 

Anyway, I got it into my head on Sunday that I should spend the night blending tiny batches of fruit and freezing it, with the goal of creating a set of rainbow-coloured popsicles. This, despite the fact that I’d never before made a fruit popsicle, and that it’s virtually impossible to create the colour blue from fruit. 

But, likely to no one’s surprise (remember that bit about frozen juice on a stick?), it worked. Turns out fruit popsicles aren’t only super-flavourful and refreshing  – they’re also exceedingly simple to make. Blend, decant, freeze, wait – and that’s it. You won’t make blue, but you will make something good. 

My guess is that you’d be totally fine winging it and inventing popsicle varieties of your own. But if you want a little guidance, here’s how I made mine. 

Step 1: Drop your fruit into the bowl of a food processor or blender and pulse until it’s totally smooth. Fresh fruit is easiest to blend, but soft frozen fruits (like raspberries, blackblerries and blueberries) will work too. 

The fruit will decrease in volume slightly when you blend it, so it’s best to start with slightly more than will fit in your popsicle tray. My 8-popsicle tray holds about 2 cups of liquid, so I’ve written the recipes (loosely speaking) accordingly. Adjust as you see fit! And don’t be afraid to make a little extra – it’ll give you room to taste test freely and adjust the flavours. 

Step 2: Immediately after blending, pour your fruit mixture into the trays and pop them into the freezer. Out of the freezer, the sweet fruit juice will start separating from the bland pulp, making for a popsicle that’s only half tasty. 

Step 3: Wait until the popsicles are totally frozen through. Remove from the freezer a couple minutes before you want to serve them. And that’s it! 

Below you’ll fnd the rough proportions I used to make the rainbow flavours, scaled to make about 2 cups each. 

Watermelon + Raspberry
2 cups of chopped fresh watermelon + 1/4 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

Mango + Coconut
1 1/2 cups sweetened mango puree + 1/2 cup coconut milk 
Notes: I could barely taste the coconut in my popsicle, likely in part because I was using light coconut milk. For a more coconutty flavour, try mixing equal parts of mango puree and coconut milk. If you can’t find mango puree, give this recipe a try (scaling it to make 1 1/2 cups). 

Pineapple + Lime
2 slightly heaping cups of chopped fresh pineapple + 1 1/4 tsp lime juice + 3/4 tsp honey

Honeydew + Cream
2 slightly heaping cups of chopped fresh honeydew + 2-4 tbsp whipping cream (to taste)

Blueberry + Raspeberry
1 cup of fruit juice (I used blueberry, but apple or raspberry would work too) + 1 slightly heaping cup of mixed fresh or frozen raspberries and blueberries

Blueberry + Blackberry
1 cup of fruit juice (again, I went for blueberry) + 1 slightly heaping cup of mixed or fresh blueberries and blackberries 

• For a less icy popsicle, add a couple tablespoons of yogurt to your fruit mixture before blending. 
• If you find your popsicle mixture too thick or rich, thin it with water, 1-2 tablespoons at a time, tasting after each addition. 
• Other fruits that would work well: Strawberries, kiwis, papayas and stonefruit. Freshly-squeezed orange juice would be delicious too (try mixing it with a bit of lemon, lime or grapefruit juice).
• Raspberries and blackberries are delicious when frozen whole. Try dropping a couple of whole berries into your filled popsicle tray before it hits the freezer.
• Not big on fruit flavours? Try making popsicles from cold-brewed iced tea! 

Homemade rainbow(ish) fruit popsicles!

If the sight of bikes strapped to cars is anything to go by, camping season is well upon us. I myself cannot confirm this – the closest I’ve come to communing with nature this year was when I hiked (walked) to Washington’s Snoqualmie Falls from the Snoqualmie Falls parking lot (observed difficulty level: barefoot toddlers and women in kitten heels welcome). 

Anyway, camping season means camping snacks. And I’ve been holding out on you.

I made these pecans for the same Washington adventure (most of which was spent in Seattle, eating pastry, at which I’m much more adept). And somehow, I forgot to share them for four weeks. Which you might take to mean that they were forgettable. And for this I would forgive you because, if I’m honest with myself, even I, lover of all things oat, don’t think that oat-crusted pecans sound that exciting. 

But these are no dusty, last-resort, after-all-the-cosmic-cookies-are-gone sort of snack. These are the kind of thing you want to split into two containers, keeping the slightly larger of the two a secret from your fellow campers. They’re rich, crunchy, and that combination of sweet and salty that makes you want to keep snacking. 

In an airtight container, they’ll stay crisp for days – perfect for a weekend away from a fridge. I’ve thrown in some suggestions of how to turn them into the base for a tasty trail mix, but they’re delicious all by themselves (perhaps with a can of bearspray within reach?). Now don’t wait for four weeks to make them!

Granola Pecans 
Adapted, slightly, from smittenkitchen.com
Makes ~2.5 cups and doubles easily

Ingredients

3/4 cups uncooked oats (rolled or quick) (add an extra 2-3 tbsp for more granola clusters)
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup of raw pumpkin seeds and/or sunflower seeds
1/4 cup of brown sugar (light or dark*)
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon or finely grated orange zest
1/8 tsp fine-grained salt
1 large egg white
2 tsp water
2 cups of pecans (or other nuts) 
To make trail mix add up to 2 cups of some mix of the following: Dried fruit (raisins, cherries, coconut flakes, chopped apricots, chopped dates, etc.), raw seeds (pumpkin, sunflower), cereals (plain cheerios, puffed rice or wheat, Chex, etc.). 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a food processor, combine the oats, coconut, nuts, brown sugar, cinnamon/orange zest, and salt.

3. Pulse in spurts until the mixture is fine but not floury. You should still be able to pick out distinct bits of pumpkin seeds and oats. 

4. In a large bowl, beat the egg white and water with a fork until foamy.

5. Gently toss in the pecans and stir until they’re coated in the egg white.

6. Pour the oat mixture over the pecans, and stir again to coat.

7. Spread the nuts on the baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, or until the granola mixture is golden, stirring gently at the 10-minute mark. Let the oats cool completely on the tray. Toss them with the trail mix additions (if you’re using them), then store your mix in an airtight bag or container. 

*In theory, dark brown sugar will give your pecans more of a molassesy flavour than light, but the quantity is so small here that I doubt it’ll matter much. 

Lately, my dinners haven’t really been dinners.

They’ve more been…plates of stuff. Piles of fresh veggies and a few olives, a slice of tasty bread, some shape of cheese (because, as life teaches us, the shape of a serving of cheese depends on its variety, with some best as squares, others as wedges and even others as rounds). Anyway, the general idea is that I’ve stopped cooking standalone dishes.  

I’d guess it’s common, this tendency to eat less elaborately in the spring and summer. Maybe it’s because the produce on offer is fresher and so doesn’t need as much help, or that it’s too warm to cook anything ambitious. Or maybe it’s the romance of feeling slightly Mediterranean even if you’re eating over your computer, or because there are simply better things to do when it’s warm and sunny into the night…like write stories about how there are better things to do when it’s warm and sunny into the night, while eating over your computer. Which is probably what you did last night too, right? 

Whatever the reason, or more probably reasons, it’s easy and kind of fun, and I suspect your doctor would be on board with it so long as you don’t fill your plate with cheese. So, if you haven’t already, you should give it a shot.   

Now, because I don’t eat meat, I feel irresponsible and tired if my only protein comes in the form of cheese. And so every now and then, I make a big pot of these lentils to add to my plate of stuff.

I know this might seem contrary to the idea of not cooking, but these lentils are so straightforward and minimally effortful that I don’t think they quite count. They’re also pretty uniform in taste, which is something I think people don’t strive for when making a standalone dish, but do strive for when they’re making something that’s meant to be eaten mezze-style.

The recipe isn’t the sort that needs to be followed closely, so feel free to swap butter for oil, monkey with the spices, add more or less tahini or lemon, and so on, tasting as you go to get a sense of what you think it needs. Then add a few simple sides and relish in its simplicity while sitting in the evening sun, far far away from your computer. 
 

Green Lentils with Tahini & Lemon
Serves 4-6 as a generous side
Adapted loosely from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Crushed Puy Lentils with Tahini and Cumin

Notes: In the photo, you’ll see I topped my lentils with sliced onion. While this looks nice, it’s a pain to try to eat, so I’d recommend topping yours with diced onion instead. 

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium red onion, diced (a few tablespoons reserved for serving)
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
3 tbsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
2 cups French green lentils (lentilles du Puy), sorted* and rinsed
3-4.5 cups of water
1 tsp sea salt (slightly less if using table salt)
3 tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
3 tbsp lemon juice
For serving: Extra virgin olive oil, black pepper, fresh cilantro, diced onion
Optional extras: Pickled veggies, plain yogurt, soft cheese, fresh tomato, pita, bread, etc.

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, heat your 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat until the oil is hot but not smoking. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until soft, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant but not brown, about 3 minutes more.

3. Add the cumin and black pepper, stir, and cook for 30 seconds.

4. Add the lentils, 3 cups of water and salt, and bring to a boil over high heat.

5. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer for 30-40 minutes, until tender. Check the lentils every 10 minutes or so, giving them a stir and seeing if they need more water. If they start to look dry, add more water, a half a cup at a time. You want enough water in the pot so that they can steam, but not so much that they end up being soupy. Towards the 30 minute mark, start testing the lentils (by eating a few) to see if they’re done. They should be tender, but still hold their shape. 

6. Once the lentils are cooked, turn off the heat and stir in the tahini and lemon juice. Taste and add more tahini, lemon, salt and pepper as you see fit.

7. Serve your lentils hot or at room temperature. Top each serving with 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, an extra sprinkle of black pepper, and a healthy dose of diced onion and cilantro.  

*You’ll often find with lentils that little bits of things that aren’t lentils make it into the mix – the occasional grain of rice or small pebble (really!). I spread my lentils out on a plate before to check for this stuff, but you could easily do it in a sieve right before you give them a rinse.  

Can bread be dessert?

To me, sweet bread – not sweetbreads, but bread that’s flecked with sweet stuff like cinnamon and dried fruit – has always been a treat. Though it’s hardly out of the ordinary or particularly indulgent, when I was growing up it was rarely on the table and so, as with most tasty things that you eat only infrequently, it seemed special.  

But I’ve never thought of bread as having dessert potential, something worth serving at the end of a meal. Or at least not a meal you eat in the company of anyone but your family, who are typically more open to indulging in (or at least not raising their eyebrow to the prospect of) breakfast after dinner, if you really insist. 

Yesterday, I brought this bread – a no-knead variety made with cinnamon, pecans and dates – over to my sister’s place for evaluation. As we stood around the kitchen, finishing off our toasted slices, I asked for the verdict. And then she made the suggestion: It’s like dessert, only it’s bread.

I don’t want you to think that it’s particularly fancy or rich: It’s made of flour, water, salt, yeast, cinnamon, pecans and dates that have been stirred together and baked. But, as is the case with any no-knead, the texture is so much more satisfying than standard bread – with shattering edges and a soft centre. Add in the dates, which become creamy with the slow rise, and the sweetness of the cinnamon, and it definitely fills that sweet, carb-craving dessert niche. 

We had it again last night after a trip to the park, toasted half-slices with smooth coffees – dessert! I can’t guarantee you won’t be met with stares if you choose to serve it that way. But my guess is, with the first bite or two, any skepticism will disappear. 

Pecan & Date Bread
Makes 1 large loaf
Adapted from Jim Lahey’s No-knead Bread

Ingredients
3 cups of flour (some mix of whole wheat, white and bread works)
3/4 cup of dates, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup of pecans, chopped
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 - 1 tsp cinnamon (the smaller quantity for subtly, the larger for a pronounced cinnamon flavour)
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 5/8 cups of cool water

Directions

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, dates, pecans, salt, cinnamon and yeast. 

Add the water and stir with your hands or a wooden spoon until you have a shaggy ball of dough. If the dough is too dry and bits of flour remain in the bottom of the dough, add more water, a few tablespoons at a time (if it’s too wet, add more flour, a tablespoon at a time). 

Cover the bowl with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled in a warm place, 18-24 hours. 

Once the dough has doubled, gently press it down to release any major air bubbles. 

Next, shape it into a loose ball and position it in your bowl, seam-side down. Cover again with plastic wrap or a towel, and let it rise until doubled, 1-2 hours. 

Half an hour before the dough has doubled, place a large cast iron pot, with the lid on, in the oven and preheat the oven to 475°F.

Once the half hour is up, take the pot out of the oven and set it on something heat-proof. Carefully remove the lid (the pot will likely release some steam here), then drop the dough in the pot, seam-side up. Recover and bake for 30 minutes. 

After 30 minutes, carefully remove the lid and bake the bread, uncovered, for another 10-30 minutes, or until the crust is dark brown (but not burnt!). 

Remove the bread from the oven. Carefully remove the bread from the pot and transfer it to a cooling rack to cool completely before eating. 

Here are a couple of your mystery ingredients.

Tune in tomorrow to see what they become!