Fishing Turned to Foraging

Hey Everyone,

Well yesterday was supposed to be a nice day on the river with the fly rod. I was hoping to catch a few small mouth since I haven't done that in a while. Well, when we got to the river I immediately saw that the fishing may not be as I had hoped. The river wasn't very high but because of recent rains it was quite murky. I decided to try for a bit anyhow but quite quickly found that even the bream weren't biting. On my way back to the jeep to grab a snack I saw some Hickory nuts laying on the trail. I picked up a few and then decided I would turn a bad day of fishing into a great day for gathering wild edibles. So for the rest of the day Kayla and I tromped through the forest looking for more nuts, acorns, and wild ginger. It was on our way out that we hit the jackpot, muscadine grapes! We gathered enough to fill my ball cap quite quickly. We continued to find more and more vines and soon had two ball caps, a nalgene bottle, and whatever else we had on us to fill up. We headed home excited to get to cooking with our gathered forage. After giving the dog a bath (which she needed) we spent the rest of the night skinning and de-seeding the grapes for muscadine jam. I would have photos of the process but my hands were busy. I have to say that this morning it was awesome on some whole wheat toast. We still have to crack the nuts and I believe Kayla is going to make acorn tortillas. We're also going to give ginger beer a try, and I plan on using the rest of the grapes to make some wine. It just goes to show that if you know what you are doing you can turn a bad day of fishing into a homemade jar of jam.

See you on the trail,
Lance

Cold Weather Num-Nums!

Hey everyone,

With the weather cooled down a bit its time to change the menu for backpacking. I usually carry cereal in a ziploc with 2/3 cup of Nido dried milk (add one cup water and shake...cold cereal). However, in the colder months, it sure is nice to have a hot breakfast to get the day started right. I usually carry oatmeal or cream of wheat which is good but... the other day I came across a ten grain cereal (www.bobsredmill.com/cereals/) in the grocery store. When I read how easy it is to make, it screamed backpacking food. I took it home and just added some brown sugar and WOW! I have played with it with my backpacking cook set and have come up with a good portion (the bag directions make way to much). Here it is.

At home put this into a ziploc bag.
1/2 cup cereal
1tbsp brown sugar

On the trail
boil 1 1/4 cup water (or just boil 2 cups and make some coffee or cocoa)
turn stove down to simmer or like me, take pot off stove and place in cozy.
pour in cereal and let sit for about five minutes.

I like to put milk in so here is an addition...
put 2/3 cup Nido in a snack sized ziploc and place it in the other ziploc with the cereal.
mix this with one cup of water in your Nalgene bottle (while your waiting)
add to pot and there you go hot cereal with milk on the trail.

Feel free to add some nuts or dried berries to spice it up (oooh blueberries!)

There are a tone of different types on the web site. If you have already tried some of these let me know your recipes or favorite kind.

See you on the trail,
Lance

Ultralight Trail Mix

Here is the recipe for my trail mix. Don’t get me wrong, nut based trail mixes are great, but I wanted to make a light weight version that still tasted good. If you find something else that is good or beneficial in it let me know. The nice thing about trail mix is you can customize it to your personal taste and needs. I’ll leave the quantity of each ingredient up to you.

Here’s how I do it

Cheerios - (I used Honey Nut because, surprisingly, they have more potassium than Banana Cheerios).
Dried Cranberry / Blueberry mix
Blueberry granola clusters
Shaved Almonds
Reese’s Pieces – (I used these instead of M&M’s for the peanut butter).

I package this into the small snack size Ziploc bags.

See you on the trail,
Lance

Foothills Trail Food