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| The Final Product! |
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My preferred channel for making time disappear is the Food Network. You have to sit a long time to run out of Bobby Flay Throwdown episodes. The Food Network also airs a show called Dinner Impossible, which provides the inspiration for today's post: Aconcagua food prep.
If you're not familiar with Dinner Impossible, it goes something like this: Company plans large-scale event and needs to prepare food for thousands. Employees aren't up to the task. Food Network master chef arrives to save the day, whips everyone into shape, and prepares delicious food for the masses.
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That's basically how travel food prep works for me, though it's an army of two. My girlfriend Ellen plays master chef and I function as her minion. And that's probably glorifying my role, as I'm far from essential to the operation.
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For example, the goal over the weekend was to prepare three-weeks worth of food for my Aconcagua climb and I'm sad to say my participation often ended up looking like this:
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Food prep for long trips to the middle of nowhere is a bear. There are no restaurants en route to the summit; everything you need has to be in your pack at the outset of the climb. And you can't overpack. At some point during the trip it's inevitable that you'll be overcome with the urge to empty every nonessential item you've brought into your tent mate's bag when he or she is sleeping. They're likely to be upset when they get home, clean out the bottom of their bag, and learn they've carried your half-eaten meals up and down the mountain.
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To make matters worse, most pre-made camping food either contains nuts (read about my deadly allergy here) or too little calories to be of any use. So I need to make my own.
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Unfortunately, Ellen and I are more like Potter than Granger when it comes to Potions, so things tend to turn out like this.
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Breakfast is easy. It's oatmeal everyday laced with some strange mix of raisons, cinnamon, sugar, and evaporated milk.
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Lunch tends to figure OK. Mostly some combination of homemade fruit mix and granola that goes totally stale and I can't stand the thought of eating by the third day coupled with a bunch of candy and junk food to buoy the spirits. (In fact, one of the reasons I climb is it gives me a legitimate excuse to eat Fruit Roll Ups.)
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Dinner is impossible. Each night it's instant rice plus either canned chicken or beef. We give each meal a fancy name like "Cheesy Chicken and Rice," "Spicy Beef," or "Chicken, Ranch, and Rice." But in the end they're all the same: rice plus something else.
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The meals get dehydrated and stuffed in a plastic baggy. When it's time to eat, you stick the bag in an envelope, add hot water, and wait. (High tech stuff.) Then you count the minutes until it's ready, normally undercutting by a few and eating it half raw because that hot meal just may be the best thing you experience that day.
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The final product from this weekend is pictured above. Next task: figuring out how to carry it all.
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That's basically how travel food prep works for me, though it's an army of two. My girlfriend Ellen plays master chef and I function as her minion. And that's probably glorifying my role, as I'm far from essential to the operation.
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| The Ellen. |
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| Technically I'm hard at work here testing out new googles and setting my fantasy football lineup. |
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| No excuse for this one. |
Food prep for long trips to the middle of nowhere is a bear. There are no restaurants en route to the summit; everything you need has to be in your pack at the outset of the climb. And you can't overpack. At some point during the trip it's inevitable that you'll be overcome with the urge to empty every nonessential item you've brought into your tent mate's bag when he or she is sleeping. They're likely to be upset when they get home, clean out the bottom of their bag, and learn they've carried your half-eaten meals up and down the mountain.
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| One of my first climbing lessons: Too much food is no fun. |
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Unfortunately, Ellen and I are more like Potter than Granger when it comes to Potions, so things tend to turn out like this.
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| Sugar-to-Oats Ratio: 1:1 |
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Lunch tends to figure OK. Mostly some combination of homemade fruit mix and granola that goes totally stale and I can't stand the thought of eating by the third day coupled with a bunch of candy and junk food to buoy the spirits. (In fact, one of the reasons I climb is it gives me a legitimate excuse to eat Fruit Roll Ups.)
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Dinner is impossible. Each night it's instant rice plus either canned chicken or beef. We give each meal a fancy name like "Cheesy Chicken and Rice," "Spicy Beef," or "Chicken, Ranch, and Rice." But in the end they're all the same: rice plus something else.
a
The meals get dehydrated and stuffed in a plastic baggy. When it's time to eat, you stick the bag in an envelope, add hot water, and wait. (High tech stuff.) Then you count the minutes until it's ready, normally undercutting by a few and eating it half raw because that hot meal just may be the best thing you experience that day.
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| Cozy dinner. |
The final product from this weekend is pictured above. Next task: figuring out how to carry it all.
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