Good morning and happy Sunday everyone! I hope you all have had a very memorable Thanksgiving this year and a safe Black Friday shopping spree! Thanksgiving is always a heartwarming opening to the festive months of November and December!
This year, I have decided to opt outside! Every year REI #OptOutside on Thanksgiving and Black Friday! They never have sales on Black Friday; in fact, they pay all of their employees that day to spend it outdoors! REI also partners with other major outdoor brands to close their shops and opt outside too.
Where did I #OptOutside this year? Joshua Tree National Park in SoCal. If you don’t know it already, Joshua Tree is notorious for rock climbing and the beautiful night skies! It is a desert far away enough from the smoggy civilization to see the constellation of stars! <3
This 3-day and 2-night backpacking trip in the desert was a naturistic experience that also taught us many lessons in terms of survival in the mild wild. We parked our cars at a designated spot and hiked out into the dessert for 3 days straight. What did this mean? It meant packing our backpacks with gallons of water that we would be needing for the journey. Oh boy… the hike in the beginning was strenuous trust me. It was a workout for the body and the mind.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
On the very Thanksgiving day marks our first day out into the cold, barren desert. There was nothing around us except for dirt, dried bushes, and very big rocks.
While walking towards very big rocks and away from civilization, we heard baby coyotes in the distance. Coyotes!!!! Yikes! We detoured from the trail and that direction a bit.
So what did we eat on Thanksgiving day? We opted out of the usual turkey dinner for some freeze-dried food. We used a water boiler called the MSR Wind Boiler that has the capabilities of boiling water in 2 minutes! Directions included to pour the boiling water into the desired packages and let it cook for an amount of time.
For dinner, we had chili mac and beef and shepherd’s potato stew with beef. Sounds good right?
Okay, I admit these pictures don’t look as appealing. Looks kind of gross actually, but we had open minds to try them. We were hungry!!
Why were these two meals so watery? They had a thickened soup texture. The chili Mac was al dente and the beef was chewy and soft. The shepherd’s pie was a bit too salty! I think for the future, we will add less water.
It is getting dark! Good thing we made sure to set up our tent before nightfall! We had a cute lantern hanging at the top of our tent in the middle to provide overhead lighting. And you can start to see the stars!
There are so many stars everywhere! If you look closely, you can even make our constellations.
Friday, November 27, 2016
Waking up in a tent is one of my favorite memories as a child. I enjoy breakfast at camp so much! Nothing beats cooking and making hot breakfast in the slightly chilled air and drinking hot coffee to warm your hands and body while being surrounded by nothing but nature.
We cheated and brought a lighter too. Hehe. Not there yet 🙂 Not like the Boy Scouts. Plus, it is forbidden to start campfires due to the dry climate.
For breakfast, we had the breakfast skillet, which encompassed hash browns, scrambled eggs, pork sausage patties, peppers and onions. Wow. I must say that out of all the freeze dried meals, this one was my favorite. It tastes so good! Surprisingly, the texture and consistency of the scrambled eggs and hash browns were on point!!!! Amazing!! It tasted good too!!!! Next time, I am bringing tortillas and tobasco sauce packers to make breakfast burritos with these!
We also had biscuits and gravy with pork party crumbles. This was pretty good too! A bit on the watery side but very creamy like gravy should be and there were bites of biscuits and sausage in there to chew on.
And we were fed well enough to hike on during the day! For lunch, we had a small meal: chicken fried rice.
Looks like it doesn’t it? Just also looks very saucey. It tasted good. The chicken was chewy and the rice was al dente.
Come nightfall, we tried to take a picture with REI’s #OptOutside sign, but I think it was too dark 🙁
For dinner, we decided to eat inside our tent. It was too cold! We sat in our tents and boiled the water right outside our tent doors.
The Italian pepper steak with rice and tomatoes was also very good. Mild tomato flavoring and savory, chewy steak made a good dinner! The tomatoes tasted sweet. The rice was al dente.
The classic marinara with penne actually tasted awful. It was so sour. It was like Chef Boyarde ravioli gone wrong. 🙁 Couldn’t eat this one.
So we made another one..
Pesto salmon with pasta. This seemed promising to make. While we boiled more water, we had to empty it the olive oil and smoked salmon packets onto the pesto and pasta. But it actually tasted and smelled really fishy by the time it was cooked. The pasta was really soft. The entire meal was very watery. 🙁
Neapolitan ice cream. What?! Freeze dried ice cream?? We had to buy this when we saw it at REI. How did it taste? Like chewy, powdery Lucky Charms. It was just A-OK.
Saturday, November 28, 2016
Yay to another morning! We woke up and packed up our tent and backpacks right away because we camped near a major trail. We eventually hid our backpacks behind these big rocks, packed our day packs and rock climbed up one of these big rocks to enjoy our view while eating breakfast.
This breakfast didn’t require boiling water. Just cold water. And not that much cold water either! Only enough to wet the granola pats and blueberries.
It tasted delicious and crunchy and sweet. Loved this one!
After breakfast we decided to make our long journey back to our car. We were going to eat lunch at one of the rocks when we saw one big red ant. We scrambled like you wouldn’t have imagined! Fear for getting bitten by these small monsters, we just kept walking and walking. Eventually we got back to our car with very hungry stomachs so our last meal was at the parking lot. It felt kind of weird to cook these foods in a parking lot.
The pad Thai noodles were like al dente pho noodles. It had a slightly sour and citrus-y taste.
But I loved these beef stroganoff noodles! Sure it looked kind of watery and too saucy, but the taste was on point! The noodles were thick and soft. The beef was chewy in texture. Yummy.
And that sums up the food I ate this weekend! A bunch of freeze dried food at the desert!! Lesson learned; I think next time I need to research other types of food sources to save packing space and provided more variety. Maybe simple sandwiches and more snacks like jerky!
Happy Sunday! I can’t believe the weekend is already almost over 🙁
