Primitive and modern outdoor skills

food

2013-07-11

What have I been eating since I've been on the road?

Well, a lot of things. When I'm in an Urban environment I'm largely stuck eating purchased food of one form or another. Cooking makes me look pretty odd and looking odd is what you most want to avoid when living out of your car. You don't want to be noticed.

But, when in the woods I can eat all sorts of delicious things. My last post talked about wild foods, but here's some of the more normal foods I've been eating. I should note that below is what I eat when I have time and materials. When doing SAR work for instance I eat WAY more boring of food (stuff I qualify as "backpacking food).

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This is a spam chili. I just took some canned beans, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and a few spices and threw them in a pot. It came it pretty good.

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It's mostly broccoli and yellow squash in a soup. I think I made this using some rice and lintels I'd started that morning in the thermos
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Here's an old classic of Jess' with a slight twist. I had a lot of olives and some artichoke hearts left over from my previous life to use up (I'm trying to get my food to take up less of my space). I also had some refried beans, some instant rice, salt, and cumin, so I made up some delicious burritos.

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This is brussel sprouts some root vegetable and mullein tea. A light dinner one evening. I'd found the mullein while on a hike that day.

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Here's a classic simple meal. This is Spam spaghetti. I'll use all sorts of things for protein in spaghetti, jess likes lintels a lot... it happened this time Spam was what I had. I don't actually eat spam all of the time, I Just happen to have more photos of those meals it seems :P.

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Another stir fry. I find that I buy a lot of broccoli because it's one of the few vegetables commonly sold that seems like it'll really have the flavours I want when I'm standing in the store. Basically, I keep craving it. I suspect my desire for broccoli will drop as I get better at gathering. I spent a good chunk of time in the Sierra in an area where there weren't many edible greens because it was too early in the season - now the good greens are out in force so I can hopefully start replacing more of the purchased veggies with gathered.

What I tend to make usually follows approximately these lines. I like soups and stir fries a lot. I'm currently in Washington with a friend and on our way up we stopped for the night and among other things had broccoli, peaches, kale, and some other vegetable I forget now. I used better than bullion (a huge staple for me in spicing food) and vinegar, the peaches lent a little sweetness. At the last second I threw in some soy sauce 'cause it just wasn't tasting right, that did it and it came out pretty rich and tasty.