Food - greatest hits

These were epic meals.

Pizza - Yes, its possible in the wilderness.  Make a dough baby with flour, salt, water and yeast.  Let it sit for 2 hours.  Then fry-bake it with your choice of tomato sauce, salami, cheese, cream cheese, oregano and red pepper.


Chilean Brown Energy Bar - When you can't make coffee every 2 hours... turn your coffee into a chocolate energy bar.  Mix baking chocolate, instant coffee, raisins, butter, milk powder and sugar.  

Mama´s Jambalaya - make some tomato soup, and then add rice, salami, salt, pepper, red pepper, oregano and butter.

Po´Man´s Bread Pudding - boil water and add cocoa powder, sugar, cinnamon, raisins and butter.  Make cream of wheat in the resulting mixture.  Let cool and eat cold as trail food.

Breakfast Bread - make a dough baby with flour, water, yeast, oatmeal, raisins, walnut, sugar and cinnamon and fry-bake on butter.

Three Cheese Couscous - heat up butter and toast couscous for 10 minutes.  Add water until couscous is ready.  Add block cheese, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.  Add dried fruit like figs or dried pears for a savory version. 

Expedition Life: Food

Lots of ingredients in the backcountry and its choose your own adventure.

The equipment: a stove, a frying pan, and a metal bowl.

The food: varies, but mostly grains, cheese, sugar and a few different spices.

It can be delicious or horrifying.

Delicious
Bowtie pasta with sauteed salami, sundried tomatos, mushrooms and a garlic butter sauce

1 bag of pasta
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
100g salami, chopped
Red pepper
Salt
Black pepper
200g block cheese of your choice
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons milk powder
Handful of sundried tomatos 
Handful of dried mushrooms

Heat up frying pan.  Melt butter.  Add garlic and salami.  Saute until garlic golden brown.  Add water and milk powder until sauce a thick consistency.  Take off of heat and set aside.

In seperate  bowl, add water, pinch of salt and pepper, mushrooms and sundried tomatos.  Leave on high heat until it boils.  Add pasta and cook for 12 minutes.  Strain, saving the pasta water as a hot broth to drink (if youd like).  Add cheese, butter sauce, and red pepper to taste and mix until cheese is melty and delicious.  Enjoy.

Less Delicious
Vegetable rice noodle soup with textured vegetable protein. (Also known as the ¨TVP special.¨)

1 bag veggie soup mix
1 bag nice noodles
200g TVP
Vegetable oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Mix TVP and water until TVP soaks up water. It should be firm but not mushy.

Heat oil, add garlic.  Saute TVP for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.


Boil water in seperate bowl, add veggie soup mix.  Mix until thick in consistency - about 10 minutes.  Add rice noodles and mix for 2 minutes, until noodles soften.  Remove from heat.


Serve soup with TVP as topping.  Attempt to eat the resulting sodium stew.


With enough salt to melt a glacier, the first bite is delicious.  Its not until the 7th bite that you realize that your body is being overwhelmed with processed food and industrial chemistry, and the resulting shutdown and rejection of the TVP is... challenging.

As a side note, as this wonderful dish cools it will form a hard gelatinous substance that resembles salty veggie TVP gelato.  Yum.

Making pizza.

Camp food fail. Garbanzos, peanut butter... and couscous?  Unclear.

If all else fails there´s always Nutella.

6 degrees of separation

It´s true.

Ran into an American couple at a hostal yesterday - they work on movies.  Good chance their circle overlaps with Leigh's.  And the guy is doing a NOLS course this winter.

And what are the odds that, in a NOLS group of 13 students, there are Yalies and UPenn alumn on the course?  And someone who lives in Cambridge Mass?  And someone who grew up in the same town as you (well, almost, Libertyville - but close).  And one of the instructors went to college in New Haven?

Ushuaia

Ver mapa más grande

Huge casino in the middle of the town.  Don´t go to Foxwoods - come to Ushuaia!

Puerto Montt

I had the honor of passing through the city that Lonely Planet describes as ¨a giant dive bar¨.

And when Lonely Planet calls something a dive, it catches your attention.

Because it's situated at the very end of Chile's main valley, almost every person, animal or piece of merchandise that goes to or from Chilean Patagonia goes through Puerto Montt.  It's a city of mechanics, sailors and truck drivers.  People with character and tough hands.  Puerto Montt reflects that.  It's gritty, but not down.  If Rocky was Chilean, he would be from Puerto Montt.

Situated like Vancouver...

...with all the charm of Philadelphia.

Patagonian wool

Fisherman.

And Patagonian cheese.