6/5/2022 Save Your Water, Eat Your Eggs!
I've discovered that I can still get terrific hard-boiled eggs with much less water than submerging the entire egg! I thought I would share photographic proof. I first discovered this when I decided to save time and water by plopping a few eggs in with the pasta I was making. Sure enough...the eggs do not need to be submerged, they just need to be exposed to heat while contained in their shells. Later, I thought I would try a batch of hard-boiled eggs by just filling the pot with water to only halfway up the eggs instead of letting the eggs swim in deep water. It worked, so several months later, I did it again but took pictures!
The procedure is the same as usual: boil water, reduce to simmer for 10 minutes, remove eggs and crack them open. I did discover that I needed a few extra minutes of cooking time, especially when I crowded the pot with so many eggs that a couple of them weren't even in the water. In this case, I simply rotated the eggs so that each one got some time in the water and added 5 minutes to the total cook-time.
On the occasion that I took photos, I was still learning the ropes of our new wood-burning stove, so I think I had the heat a little too high, and a couple of the eggs cracked which leaked some of the whites. I just went with it, and the whites cooked like normal with no problems. We just ate these eggs first.
So to save water, not only can you just use less of it when boiling eggs alone, but also, you can throw a few eggs in with rice or pasta or anything else you'll be simmering for at least 10 minutes. Hooray! 9/8/2021 Root Cause
What we have here is some delicious candied ginger root!! It's one of my favorite treats. I obtained about 2 lbs of ginger root from a local food bank, right at the start of our first triple digit heat wave this past summer. It was in a plastic grocery bag, and the gentleman handling produce offering it to me said, "Here do you want this? It's that..." he couldn't remember the name of it at first, and now I can't remember what he called it, but it was funny. Nor can I remember what I thought it was at first, but it wasn't until I got a look into the bag that I realized what it was: JACKPOT! I love ginger!!
3/5/2021 Canberry Relish
Here's a good one for when you are up to getting fancy with your canned cranberry sauce.
This is cranberry sauce, the canned type that comes out in a delicious solid loaf. That is an empty corn can.
The cranberry log has such a high ratio of sugar to fiber that I felt compelled to divide it (into 2 or 3) and add some diced apple. Cinnamon and its companions are good here too.
Mix it then add more cranberry and more fruit. Why not top it with some crumbled crackers?
If nuts are on hand, crushed in your fist and sprinkled in, they add a nice "chew" and flavor and some fat nutrients and a smidge of protein. So that's that. This was delicious. 7/9/2019 Discuits: Biscuits, 21CN Style5/6/2018 S'mores Pie
Things don't always have to be simple and slapped together while you're camping. This extremely sweet dessert, inspired by classic campfire s'mores, can add something special to the evening if you have the time and resources to make it. It's more complicated than the typical "roast marshmallow, smoosh between two crackers" fare, but it's not quite as complex as you might think. It uses the same ingredients as s'mores with a few additions, and the bit of added effort makes a mighty difference. You just might feel fancy enough to put on your least dirty clothes and eat it with your pinky up.
Regarding the egg: I know it's sometimes hard to keep eggs while you're travelling and camping. I have substituted a mashed banana with great success, but if you don't have a banana (or the egg) (or the milk, powdered or otherwise) on hand, you're better off just having regular old s'mores. The filling ends up being taffy-like, and while delicious, it's hard to get a clean and simple spoonful. 11/11/2017 Pancake Recipe
Most of the time these days, I am using a double boiler to cook my pancakes as 3 larger cakes instead of 12 or so normal sized pancakes. As of this writing, I have not yet mastered "The Pancake" over open flame: cooked the normal way, they stuck like you wouldn't believe, so I started using exorbitant amounts of oil to combat this, and even then, they were difficult to flip. To avoid hassle, I tried cooking them as 1 or 2 large cakes, but cooking directly on the flame scorched the bottoms before the batter had a chance to thoroughly cook.
11/2/2017 Biolite Campstove: Introduction
The BioLite camp stove is probably one of my favorite pieces of gear that we have. I like food, and I love cooking and not just cooking but really delving into flavor and texture combinations. Without a stove, this would still be possible but just very different. We decided to go with a wood burning stove, even though it is heavier and more cumbersome than some of its gas fueled counterparts because in the long run, cost efficiency is necessary for us, and wood is generally everywhere and free. It does present a number of challenges like how to perk a pot of coffee when it's raining, if you didn't collect wood before it rained-how do you work with wet wood, and, one we've not yet encountered: how to cook when no open fires are permitted. Originally, we planned to obtain a small gas burner as a backup which would solve essentially all of these problems. This plan is still in place, however, on the backburner (haha) at the moment.
The campstove is 2 parts: a double-walled aluminum cylinder, which I also refer to as a canister, with some holes spaced along the inner layer and a battery pack. The yellow battery also houses a fan and has a copper rod coming out of it which fits into a hole in the aluminum component and is held in place by one of the three folding legs which are on the bottom of the cylinder. Once you've got a bit of a fire started, you turn on the fan which feeds the flame the necessary oxygen in a vortex pattern through the holes in the inner wall of the cylinder, the flame gets bigger as you add more fuel which heats the copper rod which transfers that heat to a thermoelectric generator where it is converted into electricity to charge the battery and power the fan...which is feeding the flame...that is powering the battery. So you can see by now how this is a brilliant piece of technology. But wait! There's more! |
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