Category Archives: snacks

Savory Raw Zucchini Chip

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 Harpo & I get tired of sweet food on trail – even thinking about all the processed sugar stacked on convinience store shelves in trail towns is making my teeth hurt – so we’ve been experimenting with various homemade savory snacks. Our latest most successful venture iz zucchini chips.

These are light and crispy. They dehydrate better without oil – salting the zucchini first and sweating it for a few minutes helps to bind the yeast. Although they’re not super calorie dense, they are tasty and super easy to prepare. They make an awesome vehicle for hummus or refried beans, or crumbled on soup. It’s kindof a bummer that zucchini are mostly water, so you lose a lot of weight in dehydrating – but they’re cheaper by weight to produce than kale chips soooo…

INGREDIENTS:

  • 6 large zucchini
  • 2 cups nutritional yeast
  • Coarse sea salt
  • Fresh ground black pepper
  • Smoked paprika (optional)

PREPERATION:

  • Thinly slice the zucchini. You can use a mandoline if you like.
  • Toss with nut yeast, salt & pepper
  • Add smoked paprika for BBQ flavor if desired. Also maybe garlic powder.
  • Place in single layers on dehydrator trays.
  • Dehydrate on 105 degrees for about 8-12 hours depending on the thickness of the slices. Keeping the temperature at or below 105 is important to keep the chips “raw.”

 

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Trays of chips ready to go in the dehydrator.

 

Pika Love

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ack! Pikas! It’s been 2 months and 2 states since I’ve spied or heard one of these buddies. Pikas are my most adored and most beloved mountain creatures.   They collect and dry grasses in high mountain tallus fields. They make loud peeping sounds when they feel alarmed. They look like bunnies with round ears. 
In the high Sierra, approaching Donahue Pass this little guy took time out of his busy schedule to model for me. 

Gathering Grass:

  
Transporting Grass:

  

Looking Hella Majestic:

  

Plant-based Power

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This is Bug, our new hiking buddy who we met coming into the Sierra at Donor Pass. She thru hiked last year and wanted to redo the sections she had to skip due to fire closures last season.  She knocked out 33 miles her first day back on trail and quickly became a valued part of our SOBO crew. 

Bug also believes in plant power. Her masters in nutrition left her more commited than ever to the values of a vegan diet and we’ve enjoyed geeking out about trail food, real food, and the recognition of the consciousness of all sentient beings, dude…

Check out her excellent blog about hiking and nutrition 

Trail Recipes: the Crackaccino

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Trying to name this without infringing on Starbucks’ Frappachino copyright was tough, because it tastes too good to be a Crapaccino, and isn’t heavy enough to be a Snackaccino, so…

Trail Crackaccino:

-1 Starbucks Via packet

-1 tablespoon Nature’s Garden vegan powdered coconut milk

-1 tablespoon organic cacao pow

-1 tablespoon HARPOMAX protein pow (1/2 chocolate protein pow, 1/2 Ramón/Maya nut – a foraged Centeal American superfood)

-1 long squirt organic agave syrup

-6 oz filtered water

Put ingredients in a empty peanut butter jar & shake the shit out of it. Prolly 1 minute hard shake, so the coconut milk foams. Enjoy!

Trail Snacks: PCT First 500 Miles

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Store bought dehydrated split pea soup with spinach powder, soy sauce, nutritional yeast,tabasco,pepper and potato flakes. Topped with sprouts and Scoop crumbles…

Harpo and I are always tinkering with our food systems. As any hiker knows, a major topic of discussion is ALWAYS food – how heavy it is, do you have enough, when you get to eat again, food fantasies and of course TOWN FOOD.
Our approach for the first 500 miles of our PCT theu has been a hybrid of our AT food system (we still had a few homemade dehydrated meals so we used them to cut costs) and some experimentation.

We  included a stove (we’re using a canister stove due to extreme fire danger, rather than the alcohol stove we used on the AT) so we can utilize our dehydrated meals, which has also helped speed up rehydrating ramen, miso, and dehydrated beans. We have hot food once a day, usually during our afternoon break. Breakfasts are a bar and some homemade HARPOW – a powder mix made of 1/3 coconut milk, 1/3 vegan chocolate protein powder, and 1/3 ramon (a Central American foraged superfood – we picked up a bunch when we were in Guatemala for yoga teacher training – it tastes kinda mocha like). Dinner is trail mix. During the day we have dried fruit & trail mix and maybe a bar for snacks.

We were happy with our AT food system, and ate well for sure, but wanted more flexibility as the hike evolved. We dropping the stove with Harpo’s parents who are visiting us at Cascade Locks and are moving to cold hydration, which should suit the hot days ahead. We’ll keep eating ramen (with Edwards & Sons powders miso packets rather than the msg heavy and culturally insensitive ‘oriental flavor’ packets) and add in powdered hummus, beans, and soups. Also, we need to eat 2 jars of chocolate peanut butter in the first 2 days – these are our new ‘cook pots’ as our aluminum pot & cozy goes with the stove.

Overall we’re following our original plan for PCT meals, and we haven’t starved yet! 

i tried to get a shot of the full bag, but forgot and Harpo and I ate it. HIKER HUNGER IS SETTING IN…..🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕


Also, Can I give a shout out to whoever engineered Fritos Scoops? They’re the perfect scooping solution for rehydrated beans and soup. Like any chip they crumble in the pack (the crumble topping reminds me of the vegan Frito pie my friend Pol fed the entire artist population of Pioneer Square when we worked at Elliot Bay Cafe)  but when they’re good, they’re great.

Berry Season

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A few days of gorging ourselves on sun ripened wild dusty blueberries and red black huckleberries left us wondering if they were the same species. Same leaf structure, same perferred environment and similar season. As it turns out Huckleberry is a name used in North America for several plants in the family Ericaceae, in two closely related genera: Vaccinium and Gaylussacia. In fact, wild huckleberries are called blueberries in Appalachia and England. So now we know… Happy foraging!

Farm to Table

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Harpo and i have been fortunate for the last couple of months running into work-for-stay opportunities where almost all of the food consumed is grown on the property. Out at MAHA Farm & Forest in Whidbey Island, we also get to check out the local farmer’s market scene. MAHA works the South Whidbey TILTH market, which is one of many small farmers markets that pop up around the island during spring and summer. It’s a pleasure to see people so exited about food grown by small local producers – to get exited about food at all, especially pesticide-free, non GMO crops that are grown a resonate driving distance from where they are consumed. And it encourages MAHA and other small producers to keep up the good fight through the community support and money they garner at these events…
It’s cluing us into another way of living. One that was always below the surface during our time in the city. Better food, less stress, and communities that feed and support their members. It’s something Harpo and I have worked towards through secret cafes and giving and sharing food and celebrating our lives together. But it’s interesting too move ever closer to the source…

Snacks: Trail Sprouting

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IMG_9698Sprouting is one of the easiest ways to get fresh food on trail without worrying about the water weight and fragility of fruit, or the rapid decay of greens. Harpo & I sprouted all along the AT and have continued the practice on our more recent trip to the Olympics. Trail sprouting is really effective on trips longer than 2 nights – it takes an overnight soak and 2-3 days rinsing twice per day (using about 1/4 cup of treated water) to get the seeds to an edible state – right about the time you’re craving some fresh, non-dehydrated food. We repackage sprouts ordered from Sprout House into 2oz increments, and use a hemp sprouting bag from Outdoor Herbivore on trail.

Sprouts combine well with oats, or can be thrown in with ramen. One of our favorite AT trail recipies was a flour tortilla filled with instant hummus and sprouts…

Sprouts after 3 days in the Outdoor Herbivore hemp sprouting bag

Sprouts after 3 days in the Outdoor Herbivore hemp sprouting bag

Snacks: Grouchy Mix

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Grouchy Mix

Grouchy Mix

– Uncle Bud’s deep fried garlic peanuts
– dehydrated okra & green beans
– raw cashews
– tamari almonds
– roasted & salted soy nuts
– spicy roasted pepitas

The Uncle Bud’s are the winner here… Harpo and I have been buying them down at Uwajimaya for a minute. You can get the rest of the ingredients at any well stocked store with a bulk department. The key is offsetting the expense of the raw cashews with other cheap ingredients like the spicy pepitas, or sesame seeds if you prefer. Basically, Groucy Mix is salty & mouthy, with some crisp moments and a creamy finish. Them little chipmunks, with their bandit mascara, love it… positive reviews all around.

On the first night out a squirrel brought down our bear hang and ate some snacks. On our last night, a chipmunk ran up a bear wire and broke into Harpo's snack bag ... and on returning to the trailhead for resupply, we found out a lil dude had climbed up inside the locked car and busted into Harpo's snacks AGAIN!

On the first night out a squirrel brought down our bear hang and ate some snacks. On our last night, a chipmunk ran up a bear wire and broke into Harpo’s snack bag … and on returning to the trailhead for resupply, we found out a lil dude had climbed up inside the locked car and busted into Harpo’s snacks AGAIN!