Primitive and modern outdoor skills

How to make Jerky

2012-06-29

I've been making a lot of jerky recently without a dehydrator, and it's super easy. The basic concept with jerky is that you're taking a lean meat, cutting it into thin strips and then drying it out. You want a lean meat so that the fat doesn't go rancid on you. You can add flavoring, but that's mostly a taste thing.

So first step is to pick out the meat. Flank steak is the easiest thing to buy. Sheep jerky is amazing. I bet goat would be even better. As stated before the biggest thing is that you don't want any fat marbled into the cut. (Also cubed is a pain in the butt to slice) Then take a very sharp knife and cut against the grain to make the thinnest slices you can manage. Some people suggest freezing it slightly before hand to make this easier, but I prefer to do it with fresh meat.


If you want to marinate it now's the time. I marinated my last batch using this recipe (without the liquid smoke), but it had too much Worcestershire sauce in it for my tastes. If you marinade let it soak for a few hours, then pull it out, dry it off with a towel and continue from there. In the past I've just sprinkled soy sauce, salt, pepper, and a little hot pepper on the meat strips. It's a bit blander, but way easier.


Okay! Hard part over, now it's just time to hang it up in the backyard to dry. Any dry, warm day should do it. I kind of squish any thick pieces a little thinner as I'm hanging it up, but I don't know how much it matters.

I make sure to pick a sunny spot where the sun hits it full on for the initial part of the drying process. Later on it doesn't mater, but when the meat's wet the flies will be interested in it. Once a crust forms on the outside they can't get at it. I haven't hand any problems with flies ruining the jerky though - only with the neighbor's dog stealing a few pieces.

How long the jerky will have to dry depends on your preferences and your climate. Generally I dry it for two days in the sun (I have to take it in at night so the sprinklers don't get it wet), though this last time I put it up on the balcony after the first day and just left it for three days. I like mine dried to the point where it will snap if you bend it.


That's it! I tend to store mine tied up in a bandana, but a paper bag should also work fine. If your climate is particularly cold or humid this might not work as well, but it works wonders even in May in California.

Notes:

Review: Feathered Friends Lark Sleeping Bag

2012-06-23

Feathered Friends 10F Lark Sleepingbag

Advertised specs

Back Story

In 2008 I'd just moved to CA and after a trip to the desert in a 20F rated REI sub-kilo I decided I wanted a warmer sleepingbag, knowing I'd want to explore the high Sierra. I got a Feathered Friends Lark sleepingbag. I got a custom 5'6" bag (they come in 4" increments, I'm 5'6"). Full-length zipper, epic for the shell, pertex for the inner layer. I had intended to get a half-zipper and eVent shell, but the salesman talked me out of both on the phone. I'm still not sure about the shell, but I'm *really* glad I got the full zipper.

I used it for a while and loved it so much that when Jess and I started dating in 2009 I talked her into getting one. I payed for half of it as a gift. She went to the actual store in Seattle and they spent the time to make sure her 6' bag would zip to my 5'6". After a couple of other trips that year we carried them on the AT. I carried mine for all 1500 miles I did and Jess for her 1000. CIMG0463

I'm writing this because I finally gave up the poor beaten bag as it's lost too much loft. I recently got a down quilt that so far I'm in love with. This seemed like the perfect time to write a review of my old trusty sleepingbag

Things We've done to our bags

Discovered properties

So, what do we think?

Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? That depends. Note my temperature commentary above (good too 0F for me). Now look at the weight of the bag at the top. Now try and name another bag that can do that temperature in < 1 KG and 3 liters. THAT is what this bag is for.

I figure the single piece of gear most likely to save my life is my sleepingbag. For me the weight and volume means there's rarely a reason not to carry this bag. I don't worry where I'm going or what I'm doing. 12,000ft on whitney? used it. A weekend with a tiny little daypack in mendocino? Yup, used it there too.

If that's worth paying double the price of some other bags to you? That's the decision. This is a great bag. It's well made, and absolutely is as warm as advertised. You're getting at least what you think you're paying for. Jess thinks it's like sleeping in a cloud, so there's always that too :). If you don't need it though, there's numerous cheaper solutions.

There are of course other options in this category as well. This is the 3'rd decent sleeping-bag I've owned. All have been down. I've heard great things about several other brands, and so far I'm loving my new overstuffed 10F down quilt. YMMV as always.

New Webstore

2012-06-18

So, we've made several changes to the site that you might have noticed:

  1. We've removed the random and irrelevant ads.
  2. We've added amazon links where relevant from some of our blog posts. We're only putting them at the END of the post, and we're going to make sure they are very obviously advertising.
  3. We've put up a store on amazon, linked from the blog. This contains only gear we've actually used fairly extensively, and liked (or at least gear nearly identical to such). Each product also has a short blurb about what we think of the gear, and links back to our reviews where relevant. Hopefully this will prove useful to our readers as much as helpful to us.
So, the goal is to make the advertising less obnoxious, and more helpful. Please let us know if you think we did otherwise!

On T-shirts

2012-06-17

A short story

At some point while in college I got annoyed at dealing with clothing. I played a little with washing things by hand and then decided to try an experiment.

I decided to go with only one set of clothing. That is: one pair of boxers, one pair of shorts, 1 pair of socks, and 1 t-shirt. At the time I never wore long-pants (I used warm tights and/or wind-pants in the winter), so this sufficed for all of my first-layer needs.

Well, it worked, I went a year this way, and I actually *liked* it. Every night I would wash my clothing by hand using Dr Brauners and baking soda, and hang it up to dry. As a bit of a cheat I had a sorong I would wear for the short remainder of the evening. In the morning I'd put the same clothes back on. The only thing that particularly annoyed me was washing socks.

I continued the experiment but with multiple socks for another year. More recently I've switched to having more like 3 shirts and 2 pairs of shorts and boxers - so I don't have to do laundry quite as often. I've gone kinda crazy/lazy, think I own 5 shirts now!

I also hiked the Appalachian trail with Jess, when I did so I used one pair of women's running shorts (for decency), one pair of compression shorts, and 1 t-shirt.
100_0186
(Ice-breaker 200 weight tech-t)

An opportunity

In this time I had a rather unique opportunity to evaluate clothing. Wearing the same shirt every day you become keenly aware of how fast they wear out. It turns out that most t-shirts won't even last a year. In fact, some will barely last a couple of months!

I also got an opportunity to find out exactly how well different clothing dried overnight, and as I softened my initial experiment, how long they took to start to smell. So, here's some of what I learned.

The T-shirts!

First, material:
P1000351
(200 weight icebreaker tech-t)

Further notes:

Notes on wool: I wore smartool marino shirts for a little while, and then stopped. These do NOT last long enough, these would live 3-months or less and then get so full of holes I couldn't wear them in public. For wool t-shirts the best I've found are icebreaker 200 weight shirts. Note that the tech-t is the best looking as a normal t-shirt, but for backpacking it has those shoulders that I tore out on the AT. Icebraeaker makes raglan sleeve shirts, which should help the shoulders last a lot better when under the stress of a backpack.
robinson_lakes_trail_me
(Smartool T-shirt)

Backpacking: For serious backpacking, a discussion of t-shirts is a little silly. A shirt serves to keep bugs and brush off your skin, block sun, and be decent for town. Maybe you might need it occasionally 'til you get calluses on your shoulders. IMHO, if you need it for bugs, brush, or sun, you need a long-sleeve shirt. For the AT you can easily tan enough to just go shirtless whenever you're on the trail for sun purposes. More and more I've been moving towards this model - and thus thinking of t-shirts as something for society. When you think this way things like raglan sleeves are for fashion, since you won't have it on most of the time with a pack anyway. I will say that wool makes a nice base-layer.
100_0127
(really bad gnats while on the AT)

Edit: Sadly, it appears the Tech-T is no longer made, only the Tech-T lite, which is 150 instead of 200 weight - so the wear lifetime will be somewhat shorter, though it is cooler.

Super simple tarp pitch

2012-06-12

This is the fastest and easiest pitch I know. It requires a tarp, a tree, and three stakes (optional) A flat 8'x10' tarp is pictured here, though a 6'x8' would also work.

First find a tree with a nice spot to one side of it. The space needs to extend a fair distance from the tree, about ten feet.

Tie one corner of your tarp to the tree at about head height. Then, grab the diagonally opposed corner and stake it out as far away from the tree as you can. If you don't have any stakes just hold it down with a log or rock, or even tie it to some bushes. This is a low tension pitch so it's fairly forgiving. Then take the two remaining corners and stake or tie them to the ground so everything is taut.

Voila! You have a shelter that will comfortably sleep two. An yes, that's a very car shaped tree... it's just the picture I had laying around.


Note: Your head will be at the tree side of the shelter, so make sure that side is up hill unless you like inversions.

Unfortunately side blown rain will still get you wet in this shelter, and a heavy wind from the tree side of the shelter would put a lot of strain on the pitch and possibly collapse it. I've never had that happen, but I don't use this pitch in storms.

This shelter works best in the same weather where an umbrella would keep you dry. That is to say it's useful for rain in still air, and for keeping off heavy dews. I learned this pitch in Seattle, where the weather is almost always perfect for it. It's also great for dealing with fog coming off the ocean, which is key down in California. In general the openness makes it ideal to cook under and it's tall enough to sit up in, but my favorite thing about this pitch is that almost half the setup time is pulling the supplies out of my pack.