Spring Break 2017: 9-Day Menu (Car & Backpacking)

A post from last spring that I just finished up...
It’s been seven years since I’ve graduated college and I’m still not ready to give up my spring break. This time of year, when it’s been raining for about five months straight in the PNW, the dry and dust of the desert really call me. Also, Max and I conveniently still have some friends living in Salt Lake who love to adventure. We decided to meet up and do some backpacking, but they weren’t available until later in the week, so Max and I took the Nevada route from Eugene down to Utah and made a stop at Great Basin National Park. There we toured the Lehman Caves. I hadn’t been in a cave since I was little so it was a pretty cool experience. Seeing all of the elaborate stalactites, stalagmites, columns, shields, “cave bacon,” and “cave popcorn,” it was so hard to comprehend just how slowly they all grow. It was also a trip when the guide turned out the lights and the darkness was so heavy it felt like it was pushing on my eyes, and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was pretty shocked to learn that visitors in the 1800’s would throw parties deep in the caves, with music and food and dancing.

After the cave tour, we tried our hardest to get up to the Bristlecone Pine trail, but since the road to that trailhead is closed until a little later in the season, we had to start at the Upper Lehman campground, which added 3.6 miles to the trip, most of it post-holing in soft snow. We hadn’t brought snowshoes or even micro-spikes, so it was a laborious 3.6 miles. We made it to the campground but decided to turn around, since the snow had been getting unpassably deep for us without snowshoes.

My favorite part of the trail was the rose hips we found. We collected some for tea later and nibbled on the bright, sun-warmed red flesh as a little trail treat. They tasted like a fruit roll-up.
   
Then we headed to Ibex, Utah for some rock climbing. The first day of climbing outside after a winter of only gym climbing is always humbling. But that’s part of why I climb because the rock can really cut through your ego and teach you some real lessons. Essentially I climbed nothing beyond a V1 the first day, and even failed on some V0’s. The familiar discouragement set in, threatening to ruin the trip for me.

But the next morning we grabbed our rope and headed up to the Scorpion Slab for some 5.8/5.9 sport climbs. We started to figure out the rock a little more on these climbs, a little more comfortable experimenting with the safety of a rope. The rock in Ibex is quartzite, which I really liked. It took a while to trust my feet, but I finally realized that my shoes were gripping even the tiniest of ledges, and I didn’t have a foot fail the entire time. The sun baked us by noon, so we headed down to siesta in the shade of the boulders for a couple hours and then broke out the crash pads for another afternoon session once the sun had gone behind the cliffs. We chose a boulder that had about eight solid V0’s and V1’s all around and just really enjoyed the routes. It’s true when they say that you have to ignore the grades and just climb.

The first half of our trip was car camping, so we had the luxury of a cooler. Breakfasts were Soft-Boiled Eggs with Butter & Mustard, a hot dog, and a Morning Glory Muffin. Lunches were various takes on sandwich-style “Bowls” (which are really more like salads without the lettuce). On this trip we alternated between sardines or pepperoni, and added bell pepper, apple, carrot, avocado, and of course mustard. We didn’t bring enough olive oil to use some for lunch, but usually we douse it in some good extra virgin for a little extra fat. We always buy sardines packed in olive oil, so that helped a little, but the pepperoni definitely needed a little something to bring it together. Just to highlight how much we love mustard: we used an entire bottle in the first three days and ran out by Thursday breakfast. That was rough.

Sunday - Drive from Eugene, OR to Spring Valley, NV
(meals were mostly a bunch of leftovers or pre-cooked foods we brought in our cooler)
Breakfast - hard boiled eggs, avocado, yogurt & carrot radiccio salad
Lunch - grass-fed burgers, steamed carrots with olive oil, green salad
Dinner - grass-fed meat, onions, and mushrooms cooked in tallow, delicata squash, green salad

Chicken Pesto Broccoli

Monday - Great Basin National Park: Lehman Caves, Lehman Creek Trail
Breakfast - Soft-Boiled Eggs with Butter & Mustard, hot dog, Morning Glory Muffin
Lunch - Sandwich “Bowls”
Dinner - Chicken Pesto Broccoli, delicata squash (leftover from home), Theo chocolate

Tuesday - Bouldering in Ibex, UT
Breakfast & Lunch - same as above
Dinner - Salmon-Apple Bake (same as the Onion Apple Tuna Bake, but with salmon), delicata squash, carrot radicchio salad, Theo chocolate

Wednesday - A few sport climbs and some more bouldering in Ibex
Breakfast & Lunch - same as above
Dinner - Salmon Coconut Curry, Theo chocolate

Thursday - Headed to SLC to meet up with some friends and prep for the second half of our trip
Breakfast - same as above
Lunch & Dinner - city food

The second half of our trip we planned to do a little backpacking in Southern Utah. We had picked out Lower Muley Twist Canyon, but when we showed up at the ranger station to get our permit, the ranger on duty told us that they limit the number of parties in the canyons for each night, and that Lower Muley had already hit the limit of three. But she was really kind and pointed out a few other options for us, and we decided to hike Lower Spring Canyon. Because they limit the number of groups in the canyon per night, we didn’t see or hear a single person once we arrived at our campsite and we felt like we had the canyon to ourselves. We took some time to just lie and soak in the beauty of the sandstone walls, played some cards, ate some delicious food, and watched the bats swoop over our heads in our sleeping bags while we stargazed. The next day, we day-hiked Upper Spring Canyon, then returned to our campsite and moved down canyon for the night. On Sunday, we hiked Lower Spring Canyon. The ranger had told us that we would notice a difference between the upper and lower part of the canyon and she was right. The sharp, straight lines of the deep red Navajo sandstone gave way to the softer, rounder, lighter walls of the lower canyon. Since we started early enough, most of the canyon was in the shade the whole morning. At the very end we had to ford the Fremont River to get back to the road. I love any trip that ends in cold water, so I was thrilled.

Friday - Backpacking in Capitol Reef National Park: Spring Creek Canyon
Breakfast - eggs & bacon at our friends’ house before leaving
Lunch - Sandwich “Bowls”
Dinner - Cream of Mushroom Chicken Soup, chocolate

Saturday - Backpacking in Capitol Reef National Park: Spring Creek Canyon
Breakfast - Living Intentions Superfood Cereal w/ collagen & coconut milk
Lunch - Sandwich “Bowls”
Dinner - Beefy Spaghetti Squash 'n' Sauce, chocolate

Sunday - Backpacking in Capitol Reef National Park: Spring Creek Canyon
Breakfast & Lunch - same as Saturday
Dinner - Sausages, salad, sweet potatoes, wine, and chocolate back at our friends’ house in SLC

Monday - Drive from SLC to EUG
Breakfast - eggs & bacon at the house
Lunch/Snacks - sardines & oysters, carrots, apple, avocado, trail mix, plantain chips, sweet potato chips, kombucha

Oregon Elk Hunt & True Primal 100% GRASS-FED! Soup Review: 6-Day Menu

I never thought I would want to hunt. I always thought of it as just a recreation activity for people who liked to drive trucks, shoot guns, and wear camo. But the more I've tried to learn about ancestral life ways, the more I've realized that hunting is an inseparable part of life. How else would we be able to nourish ourselves from a wild landscape? Foraged berries and leafy greens contribute essential nutrients and are obviously a very important part of a natural diet, but berries and leaves alone will not give us the protein and fat that our bodies have evolved to require. And so I have come to a point in my life where I want to become a huntress. Deciding to become her was the easy part. Learning to become her is much more difficult.

Most of the hunters I know have grown up hunting. They have been taught by their families, with this knowledge being passed down from many previous generations. Max and I both do not come from hunting families and have very few friends who hunt. Hunting and all the know-how that goes into it is very mysterious to me. How do you find the elk? is the biggest question, but I have many others like, How do you set up so you can get a good shot? How do you read the wind so your scent doesn't give you away? How do you track the elk once they are shot? How do you field dress it? And then there's the matter of being practiced enough with a rifle to take a successful shot. It seems like so many years of knowledge and skill required to make one kill, and I feel discouraged, starting from scratch. A seasoned hunting mentor who lives near us has yet to materialize, so we decided to start on our own this year anyways. We have a friend who has been hunting a couple years and so we planned a trip together to the Umpqua National Forest for Oregon's October elk season.

 This hunting trip required the most sustained energy output I have ever had to give for a trip. Up around 4 or 4:30 every morning, followed by 6-8 miles of tiring cross-country travel with packs, interspersed with hours of sitting still in the cold while glassing across valleys or waiting in a clearing for the chance to glimpse an elusive bull. This was all the energy I could muster on our last day in camp:

I was exhausted and bone-tired by the end of the five and a half days, and not a single elk was sighted, but I felt like I gained what I had come for. We found a few signs of elk - hoof prints and droppings - and I'm beginning to learn the type of habitat elk like. I made friends with the dark cold mornings, and learned to appreciate sitting in the cold, waiting for the magic of an elk to appear. These elk introduced me, through their absence, to their favorite times of day - dawn and dusk. Never had I so closely watched the coming and going of the days, and without these elk, I might never have done so.
Like any first time endeavor, this hunting trip surfaced more questions than answers, but it gave me a solid place to start from, on a learning journey that will take a long time. It also helped me decide that I don't want to rifle hunt; I am drawn much more to the backcountry and a bow than roads and rifles. The sound of a rifle, and hours spent at a shooting range to hone the skill is the opposite of the peace and connection I am seeking through learning to be a huntress. I know this will be exponentially more difficult than learning to rifle hunt, but I also feel like I have exponentially more to gain from it.

Oh yea! And I forgot to mention we saw a PACIFIC GIANT SALAMANDER!!! This is us looking at it, but it fled before anyone could get a picture of it, so you'll just have to take my word. It was giant!

A notable addition to our camping food pantry on this trip was True Primal's 100% Grass-Fed Beef & Vegetable Soup. I wrote a review on their original soup a while back, but recently they switched over to 100% grass-fed beef, and changed from cans to pouches. As before, I was impressed with the taste and quality. My favorite part is the absence of the "canned soup" taste...you know what I'm talking about...even Amy's Kitchen soups have it. And each pouch of fully primal/paleo soup has 24 grams of protein, 14 grams of fat, and 300 calories (more than the previous version). There's a substantial amount of vegetables and meat in each serving, and with some sweet potato chips or a coconut flour biscuit on the side, makes a pretty filling meal. Max, of course, always likes to add a scoop of butter, too.

I love companies who go the extra mile and try to make their product the best, and I really appreciate True Primal choosing to go with 100% grass-fed beef. I hate having to compromise quality food while out on adventures, and companies like True Primal make it so I don't have to! I also love that they are now pouches. They are easier to cram into a backpack, and the trash is more packable. We love this soup so much, we brought enough pouches along for 3 of our 5 dinners.

As far as the rest of our food goes...we were in a bit of a time crunch for preparing food, and also discovered last minute that the paleo bread we were trying to bake from Other Foods wouldn't work out because, lo and behold, we don't have a bread pan! So, we had to cut some corners and this isn't a fully paleo menu, but you can easily adapt it to be!

Food lessons from this trip:

• Bring more bars!!!! Waking up at 4am means there's a lot more of the day to be eating! 
• Don't bring breakfast foods (like hard boiled eggs) that require prep at 4 in the morning! Only bring foods you can stuff in your mouth as is. 

Day 1:
Breakfast

• 1 gluten-free blueberry muffin
• 2 Hard Boiled Eggs with Olive Oil & Mustard

Lunch

• roast beef, raw cheese, and mustard on Franz Gluten-Free Bread
• plantain chips
• apple

Snacks

• Chocolate Sea Salt RX Bar
• Chocolate Coconut Skout Bar

Dinner

• Beef & Sweet Potato Chili (cooked at home & kept in cooler)
• 1 Spiced Coconut Flour Biscuit

Homemade Beef & Sweet Potato Chili & Coconut Flour Biscuit

Day 2:
Breakfast

• 1 gluten-free blueberry muffin
• 3 Knee Deep pepperoni beef sticks

Lunch

• roast beef, raw cheese, and mustard on Franz Gluten-Free Bread
• plantain chips
• apple

Snacks

• Chocolate Sea Salt RX Bar
• Chocolate Coconut Skout Bar

Dinner

• 1 pouch True Primal 100% Grass-Fed Paleo Soup
• 1 Spiced Coconut Flour Biscuit

Cooking up a pot of True Primal soup!

Day 3:
Breakfast

• 1 gluten-free blueberry muffin
• 2 Hard Boiled Eggs with Olive Oil & Mustard

Lunch

• roast beef, raw cheese, and mustard on Franz Gluten-Free Bread
• plantain chips
• apple

Snacks

• Chocolate Sea Salt RX Bar
• Chocolate Coconut Skout Bar

Dinner

• Beef & Sweet Potato Chili (cooked at home & kept in cooler)
• 1 Spiced Coconut Flour Biscuit

Day 4:
Breakfast

• 1 gluten-free blueberry muffin
• 2 Hard Boiled Eggs with Olive Oil & Mustard

Lunch

• salami, raw cheese, and mustard
• plantain chips
• apple
• trail mix

Snacks

• Chocolate Sea Salt RX Bar
• Chocolate Coconut Skout Bar

Dinner

• 1 pouch True Primal 100% Grass-Fed Paleo Soup
• split a bag of Terra Chips

Day 5:
Breakfast

• From the Fields Gluten-Free Original Granola
• 3 Knee Deep pepperoni beef sticks

Lunch

• salami, raw cheese, and mustard
• plantain chips
• apple
• trail mix

Snacks

• Chocolate Sea Salt RX Bar
• Chocolate Coconut Skout Bar

Dinner

• 1 pouch True Primal 100% Grass-Fed Paleo Soup
• split a bag of Terra Chips

Day 6:
Breakfast

• From the Fields Gluten-Free Original Granola

Lunch

• Tacos & salad at Falling Sky Brewery in Eugene!!

Cream of Mushroom Chicken Soup

I've been trying to experiment with more dehydrated meals lately and I am particularly excited about this one. It turned out really good and I packed SO many vegetables into it. I've been contemplating a lot lately how we in the civilized world have ended up eating just a few vegetables over and over again. Carrots, onions, celery. Carrots, celery, onion. Onion, celery, carrots. But there are so many other foods out there and each one offers a unique energy for your body to use. So in this meal, I tried to use a wide variety of vegetables. Ideally they would be from the wild because there is so much more energy to be drawn from wild places than from a cultivated garden or farm, but this is what I had available. I used two different types of mushrooms, onions AND leeks, cauliflower, garlic, kale, peas, and sweet potato. I think all the different ingredients also give it a much more complex flavor, something that is essential (and often lacking) in backcountry foods.

1 TB cooking fat (I think I used lard)
1 large onion, chopped
1 large head of cauliflower, chopped
2 cups crimini mushrooms, chopped
2 large white sweet potatoes, chopped
1 tsp sea salt
2 quarts chicken broth

1 TB cooking fat
1 large leek, diced
2 large portobello mushrooms, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 TB dried rosemary
1 TB dried thyme
1.5 lb. ground chicken

1 bunch kale, chopped
1 bag frozen peas

In a large soup pot, heat the cooking fat over medium heat. Add onion, cauliflower, crimini mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and sea salt. Stir to coat with the cooking fat, and cook until veggies begin to get tender.
Add chicken broth to the pot, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Simmer veggies in the broth until they are very soft.
Remove pot from heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, heat another tablespoon of cooking fat in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add leek and portobello mushrooms and sauté until veggies are tender. Add the garlic, rosemary, and thyme. Stir for about a minute to release the fragrance, then add ground chicken. Break up the chicken into small pieces with a wooden spoon and cook until chicken is cooked through.
Once broth and veggie mixture is cool, run it in small batches through the blender to puree (I like to put a towel on top of the blender and hold down to make sure splatters are kept to a minimum).

Add the blended broth mixture to the cooked leeks, mushrooms, and chicken. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and let simmer about 20 minutes.
Towards the end of the cooking time, add the kale and frozen peas. Stir to incorporate and cook until kale is wilted and peas are thawed.
Remove pot from heat and let cool.

Dehydrating & rehydrating directions found here.