OMG!

In general, I have found this a pretty interesting book.
OK, sometimes I have doubted the author's sanity (fruit "leather" made with cottage cheese? Do you really want to see that stuff dehydrated????), and have certainly wondered if anyone visited her house for dinner more than once (dried pickles??????), but today our relationship reached a new level.

Dehydrated bacon.

Bananas, our Appalachian Trail hiker, has discovered that some of her problems early-on in the hike were due to not consuming enough calories (yeah, when was the last time most of us had THAT problem?). So, I was flipping through Mary Bell's book and found a section on dehydrating bacon. Perfect! What food packs more calories than bacon?

Her instructions call for cooking the bacon until crisp, draining it on a paper towel, then dehydrating it until it crumbles easily, making sure to regularly wipe the excess grease off of it. Alrighty.

You know how things sound much better in theory? Well, as I was cooking the first pound of bacon, I realized I wouldn't even fill one tray in the dehydrator, so I sent Andy to the store for 5 more pounds of bacon. That's right--6 pounds of bacon. Enough to make 12 ounces of dehydrated bacon bits. Know what happens to the remaining 5 pounds 4 ounces? Part of it becomes hickory scented grease vapor that permeates every inch of a house, leaving it smelling like a greasy-spoon out of one of those 70's trucker flicks. Another part of it solidifies onto the poor sap cooking it--I left an oil slick in the pool at my gym this afternoon--even after a pre-swim shower. Part of it coats every single surface in the kitchen, and the remainder forms an oily substance that can't go down the drain, into the ground, and can't go in the garbage until it solidifies into an even more disgusting substance.

7 hours later, it's still in the dehydrator because since the instructions said to cook until crisp, the bacon actually crumbled easily BEFORE it went in the dehydrator, and as that was our only "doneness" test, we have no way of knowing when it's actually dried long enough.

I just know there's a way to make 12 ounces of dried bacon last the remaining 4 1/2 months of her hike, or at least long enough for us to forget enough of this little episode to try it again.......

Last night I filled, and I mean FILLED our dehydrator with green peas--4 pounds of them (which tells you what kind of wild night we had). Tonight I thought I'd bag them up for Bananas...


2 not-actually-filled Ziploc sandwich bags. I realize that the whole size thing is why dehydrated foods are great for backpackers, but it's a little demoralizing for those who send food packages to the backpackers.

It's hard to know how much to send to our little Appalachian Trail hiker, so I contacted her husband, Ground Control, to see what he thought, and he said she appreciates anything as he is sending her mostly Pop Tarts, energy bars, and candy bars. My little no-processed-foods-soul shudders at the very thought, so we are dehydrating veggies like fiends. Now we just need to figure out how many pounds of dehydrated peas mitigates 2 frosted Pop Tarts. Rats, I always hated story problems in school.

Preparation Part Two

Still in the grips of the mind-numbing prescription drugs (and dragging Andy along with me), the garden plots now have dirt
and what we think will work for a cold frame.

Sunday we got a few sprinklings of snow, so obviously this year isn't going to be a straight shot into spring, so an unprotected garden before May might be tempting Mother Nature a bit too far.

We have no intention of trying to grow all our own food--being adventurous but stopping just short of stupid--but we are hoping for large harvests of tomatoes and peppers to roast/dry/freeze/can as we head into 2009. Andy is also hoping for large amounts of pea pods and cucumbers--mostly so he'll get some of them. If he can steal covers every night, I feel no remorse at all over eating all the pea pods. Sharing can only go so far.

And in a very surrealistic turn--or maybe it's that decongestant again--I actually bought this

tonight. Corn syrup--that bane of my existence all of February. This weekend after making more Rice Krispie treats for our Appalachian Trail hiker, "Bananas," I just couldn't stand it any longer and decided to invent a healthy trail snack using the theory behind Rice Krispie treats. Believe me, the pictures would have been SERIOUSLY blog-worthy, but sometimes disasters happen a little too quickly for pictures. Let's just say, Sunday was very educational. I now know

* Even if you have successfully melted them in the past, marshmallows may decide to toast in the pan instead of melting

* Butter and peanut butter are NOT interchangeable

* There is a limit to how much wheat bran you can add to something before altering the taste

* Boiling a pan with a little soapy water can remove scorch marks

* Add enough peanut butter, and almost anything will taste good

* If I'm ever going to publish a cookbook, I'll have to start coming up with better names than "Toni's Peanut Butter Blobs"
* I am not above saving the more questionable foods for the times when Bananas will be on the trail for longer periods between breaks.

* Corn syrup really does help keep foods stable & stuck together, though it still doesn't explain what it is doing in diced tomatoes.

* It really is okay if someone ELSE eats Pop Tarts and candy bars every day--let it go.

Now if this isn't the oddest thing...

I know Bananas is excited about the pudding rollups, and I know that variety is the spice of life, but tonight I am trying to dehydrate cookies & cream pudding.


The toffee chips were bad enough, but I have no idea what the cookies will do. Would it be possible for Oreos to get any harder???

The text-message updates

There hasn't been much in the way of internet access for our AT hiker, Bananas, but we had a brief text-message exchange last night:

Bananas: Those rice crisy treats made my day! And that beef jerky is SO good!
Natasha: Yay! More beef jerky waiting in Gatlinburg, and I'll send more rice krispie treats. The package in Gatlinburg has pudding rollups as well!
Bananas: PUDDING ROLLUPS?!? Must hike faster!

We'll be dehydrating more rollups this weekend. :)

Natasha hard at work

Andy is away for the weekend, so I am getting things done. I don't know what it is about having the house to myself, but it is not yet noon on Saturday and I have gotten more done than I generally do all weekend. I love him dearly, but obviously, I need to send him away for a weekend once in a while--at this rate I could even get caught up on "dem fischer sin fru!"

Our next food drop for Bananas will be in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, somewhere around April 2. We send the packages to general delivery with an ETA, and I usually let her know ahead of time where we are sending packages. Since I have a little extra time on this, I have branched out a little. I still have the taco-flavored black beans to package up

To be fair, they didn't look much more appetizing before they were dehydrated. Still, starving+wilderness = EDIBLE!

I have red beans soaking right now


which tonight will be thrown into a crock pot with spaghetti sauce and pureed mixed vegetables. ( And for those of you wondering if I've finally mastered the crock pot, not at all--I'm just really optimistic.)

I read somewhere that you could make "leather" (ala fruit rollups) from pudding, so I have this


in the dehydrator now, along with 3 trays of bananas. I'm slightly bothered that I can't find where I read about pudding rollups, but I'm always the optimist!

The first results are in!

The third package to "Bananas" went out yesterday--the two week mark for her through-hike of the Appalachian trail. If she makes it all the way, it will take roughly 6 months & she'll travel over 2000 miles. Not exactly my idea of a good time, but then again, if you want to experiment with food dehydration, there's no one better to practice on than someone stuck in the wilderness!

We received a letter today with the first "results" of our packages. Andy's "calorie bars" (known as breakfast bars in the backpacking cookbook but sporting 170 calories per 1-inch square!) are really messy and crumble everywhere, Andy's Jambalaya is fabulous--we're going to have to try it ourselves now--and backpacking stoves aren't hot enough for pancakes but produce a slow-cooked gluey mess pretty nicely. The bean-cooking experiments started with the second or third packages, so we'll see how my first attempts at beans as food turn out. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with beans--it's just that I don't like how people generally cook them. Just the smell of ham hocks & beans used to send me fleeing from the house when I was a kid--still would, but it's my house now and they are strictly forbidden--and the three-bean salad my mother used to make was only short of liver as a culinary experience designed to curtail my appetite. And whether it is the taste of cumin or the fact that it's generally fiery enough to leave my taste buds gasping on the floor, I have never liked chili. So, I am cheerfully fixing large pots of food I know nothing about, dehydrating them, and sending them off to a friend stuck in the wilderness. And I'll be she thought the indoor plumbing thing would be the REAL deprivation......

Sunday - Various Updates

Today we learned:

* You can dehydrate cheese, but it needs to be on lower temperature setting:


* Cheese stalactites are REALLY difficult to peel off dehydrating trays:


* It may be the oils from the cheese, or the nonstick cooking spray, but spending 39 minutes peeling hardened melted cheese off a dehydrating tray leaves your skin really soft and smelling faintly of cheddar.

* After a month of no-processed foods, making Rice Krispie treats for a care package feels like a criminal offense.

* A cinnamon bear is worth waiting for.

* Sharing keeps you from eating all the cinnamon bears yourself.


* Dried curried chickpeas make a pretty decent snack.

* If you're making up a recipe for curried chickpeas, it would be a good idea to write things down, just in case it turns out well.

* Ziploc must make a fortune off the friends of Appalachian Trail hikers.


* It's hard to keep your kitchen clean and be supplying regular shipments of backpacking food.


* The most surprising foods can be dehydrated. It doesn't necessarily mean that they will taste good, but they can be dehydrated.

The First Stop

Bananas, our intrepid Appalachian Trail hiker, should reach the first mail stop today & receive the first care package we sent her. The second package has been mailed already, and the food dehydrator is merrily humming away--this time with brown rice and a spicy tomato-bean mixture. Doing all of this, we have learned

* You can make your own Minute Rice by cooking rice, then dehydrating it. The end result takes far less time to cook. Finally!!! A way to work with brown rice that does not involve postponing dinner!

* Always, always, always spray the drying sheets with olive oil or cooking spray before putting anything on them.

* Measure the volume & weight of everything before AND after cooking & dehydrating. There is no other way to figure out how much dehydrated rice really makes 1 cup when rehydrated.

* Wash dryer trays often, especially after anything strongly flavored.

* It's easier to experiment when you're not eating the results yourself.

If she makes it all the way to Maine (from the starting point in Georgia), she'll be done sometime in September and will have hiked 2174 miles. The trail, which was specifically created for hikers, was started in the early 1920s and the first documented "thru-hike" was in 1948 by a gent from Pennsylvania named Earl Shaffer. Admittedly, this would not be my idea of a fun undertaking, but I would support anyone who decided to do something they have always wanted to do. Life is short.

Go Bananas!

You Can't Go Home Again

Today's lesson: You can't switch back to "eating as normal" without penalty.

We survived the pizza last night with no problems, but after reheating the leftovers for us for lunch, I ended up with a really upset stomach. I don't know if it was related to the whole processed-foods experiment, but I have not ventured into the cinnamon bears yet.

Our intrepid Appalachian Trail hiker, "Bananas," hopped on the train yesterday, and we put the first parcel in the mail today. Our kitchen has been turned into the Boris & Natasha Supply Depot:


and the food dehydrator has been going nonstop for the last couple weeks. We've made breakfast bars, several soup variations, jambalaya and Balti rice combinations, instant smoothies, several varieties of pancakes & bannock, several flavors of dried chicken, and variations on that ever-popular crowd pleaser oatmeal. Bananas will be the first AT hiker to be supplied by caterers!

And since the ban is over and we can enjoy them, anyone else who wants to experience white chocolate martinis, the recipe is as follows:

6 oz of vanilla vodka
3 oz of white creme de cacao
3 oz of Godiva white chocolate liqueur

Mix in martini shaker with ice until cold. Serves 2 people or 1 lush

Enjoy!!!

Day 28 - ONE MORE DAY

First, obviously I didn't get the website access shut down last night--it takes a long time to get all the allowed email addresses typed in, but I am hoping to finish tonight. I will be leaving the knitting blog open to the public--if a snooping exwife who needs to get a job, get a life, and move on wants to read about my knitting....well then she's more pathetic than I thought. My other thought was to start posting our wedding pictures on every single post and writing about things she probably WOULDN'T want to read--like our sex life--but let's say it all together.....EWWWWWW! Don't worry--I didn't take that personally--no matter what the Google search engines think, this is not THAT sort of blog! :)

IF YOU WANT TO KEEP FOLLOWING THIS BLOG, I WILL NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR YOUR BLOGGER USER NAME AND I WILL SEND YOU AN INVITATION. If you do link to this blog, you may want to link directly to my profile page--I'll put instructions for getting an invitation to view the blog. Basically, I'll add anyone to the approved list provided it isn't an obsessed woman who won't leave my husband alone even 4 years after the divorce. The link to email for permission is already in place.

I think I have been extremely patient with this woman--I have tried being nice to her, and met with vicious accusations. I have been kind to her son and done the parenting she does not do, but we finally could no longer deal with her hostility, verbal abuse (quite often in front of her son), and manipulations. Yesterday uncovered people across the country who had been stalked and/or harassed by vicious exwives, and I know several other men who have gone through this, so in my first, and probably only, political post, it is time to really start speaking up about women as harassers and harassment by ex-spouses in general. We have 4 years of hateful & abusive letters and emails--and documentation of calls at work, scenes at dropoffs, spiteful parenting, etc. (not to mention the excessive medical bills and ongoing legal costs for problems she's creating but that we have to pay for), the "parent alienation" (the hostile spouse saying bad things about the other spouse to the child which happens so often that they have a legal term for it but don't do anything about) --all of which has been copied to our attorney and later this month will be sent to several legislators that I know. If you know someone who has had to endure similar treatment--document it and start calling politicians. Not all single moms are in that situation because their husbands left them for younger women--many were driven away by verbal and mental abuse and they deserve to be protected from further abuse.


OK, pardon me while I step off the soapbox........umph

Andy came home from the store with this:


CONTRABAND!!!! It's actually for making the food for Bananas on her hiking trip, but all the same, it was quite strange to find boxes & bags in our kitchen again. Look at these--not a single one looks like recognizable food.

The pi shawl is done and blocked!!!


And furred!

I could barely keep him off the sheet long enough to pin the shawl--

As we say now, he was as obsessed as an ex-wife with a blog line!!!! :)

Day 24 (barely)

Tonight we had friends over for dinner--a very brave undertaking considering this month's experiment. They brought us these:


CHOCOLATE COVERED CINNAMON BEARS!!!! I did not even know such things existed & we will let you know how they are on March 2.

Some fast updates, since it's 11:30 PM:

We have a case of Diet Pepsi chilling in the refrigerator in preparation for March 1.

The Pi shawl is done & will be blocked this week--keeping me ON TRACK for the year so far--truly a record. This is a shot of it in the "almost done" stage:


Still looking a little psychedelic admittedly, but maybe I'm just ahead of my time on the "formal tie-dye" idea. You never know with fashion--who that remembers the 70s would have ever dreamed that ponchos would come back into style?

The new bedding arrived and the cats seem pleased--or can't stand the idea of something in the house without cat hair.


We have our Trail Name!!!!!! "Bananas" and her husband had a send-off party this weekend, and the cops showed up at the non-alcoholic bash because her husband's band played until 8:00 PM. The cops seemed pretty cool about the whole affair--teasing her 71-year-old father about masterminding the whole party--and left after taking down my friend's name & cell phone number, possibly without mentioning the whole disappearing-into-the-wilderness-for-the-next-six-months thing. Since she is now "on the lam" and we are aiding & abetting her, we have chosen "Boris" and "Natasha" as our code names. Now we just need to figure out a way of hiding files in bags of granola............