Camping Snacks

This summer has been filled with breads and pizzas...not ideal camping food. In hopes of getting inspired to leave my computer and go out for a day hike, I made buttermilk crackers last week from Wooden Spoon, my favorite bread book (so far, all hikes have been urban and undeserving of crackers) and granola bars (ditto). But both are incredible snacks for any occasion. The granola bars are sweet, chewy, and relatively healthy. Thank you, Ezra Poundcake.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups quick rolled oats

1/3 cup oat flour (or 1/3 cup oats, processed till finely ground in a food processor or blender)

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 to 3 cups of any mix of dried cranberries, cherries, blueberries, raisins, apricots, pecans, peanuts, walnuts, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, flax seeds, coconut, sesame seeds, dried apples – even chocolate chips

6 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces

1/3 cup peanut butter or any nut butter

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease an 8×8 pan.

In a large bowl, combine the quick rolled oats, oat flour, cinnamon, and your choice of fruits and nuts. Set aside.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the peanut butter, honey, vanilla and water. Heat just until combined. (Do not boil.)

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix well. Transfer to the prepared pan, and press down firmly using wet fingers, a rubber spatula coated in nonstick spray or wax paper.

Bake the bars for 30 to 35 minutes, until they’re brown around the edges. (The center firms as it cools.)

Cool the bars in the pan for 20 to 30 minutes, then place in the refrigerator for a few minutes to finish cooling.

To Serve: Once the bars are cool, use a serrated knife to slice the bars in the pan. They can be wrapped and stored for up to a week. 

Cracker recipe & pictures to come. 

Brentwood Fruit Picking

For two people who love fruit as much as we do, this trip was long overdue. It turns out that going to Brentwood, CA is rather like going to Napa or Sonoma, with fruit subbed in for wine. The orchards have clubbed together just as the wineries have up north, with a free map geared to steer you from orchard to orchard. And if you run out of steam picking, there are fruit stands everywhere -- we brought home mulberries, blueberries, and onions.

Orchards are friendly to pickers who like to eat while they pick (which my parents and most U-Pick strawberry places I've seen certainly are not). So we strolled among the cherry trees at Nunn Family Farms, sampling tree after tree until we found the perfect tree. And then we found another perfect tree, and another, and another. The abundance...of cherries, of trees full of cherries, of toddlers running down fallen cherries...was unbelievable.

Round two was apricots, where we had a few Seinfeld moments ("Not like the risotto, George") as we ate apricots warm from the sun. It was like eating molten jam, and it was good.

On Friday, we went to Kirby Cove, which is one of those places that I see and regret not having known about it before. It is the perfect place to take out-of-towners for stunning views of the Golden Gate, the city, and a taste of the Marin Headlands.

Park at the first lot on the left on Kirby Cove Road, and check out the view from the fort before heading down the track that leads down to the beach. The beach is small, secluded (save for two geese), and has brown-black sand and funny caves all around.
 

And...especially because the walk is short...
be sure to take a picnic to match the view.

Last weekend, we went to Joshua Tree for mind-blowing night skies, desert flowers, bouldering, running, hiking...and eating. Eisha and I are hoping to expand our (somewhat lacking) ability to feed ourselves well while camping, and car-camping in J-Tree was the grand beginning of our culinary quest.

We may have gone overboard in this endeavor. Marinated thin cuts of beef, veggie packets, roasted bananas with marshmallows and chocolate, and (Anson's almost successful experiment) roasted ice cream cones full of marshmallows and chocolate.

Beef Marinade:
3/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup water
1 garlic clove, minced
2 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon Asian (toasted) sesame oil
2 pounds Korean-style short ribs (beef chuck flanken, cut 1/3 to 1/2 inch thickness across bones)

Virginia Woolf said that it's impossible to "think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." All well and good, but one cannot dine well if one has not played well. It was a tall order to get hungry enough to eat all our sensational food -- but we managed. We hiked to an abandoned gold mine closed in the 19th century, our trail sparkling with fools' gold the whole way up; we climbed a brief mile and a half up Mount Ryan to see the world laid out before us, stubby tree after stubby tree. Nick and Eisha and I ran on the road from our campsite (Hidden Valley was a great place to stay), as well as on a few trails. We all scrambled over all the boulders we could muster, including a gleeful sojourn for Eisha in the eye of Skull Rock. 

The flowers we found along the way were lovely -- unexpected, often hidden -- familiar ones like daisies and evening primroses and cactus blooms, but also the truly peculiar -- flamboyant yucca blooms, and a plant with poppable flowers strongly reminiscent of bubble wrap.





Our night skies were stunningly clear....a lovely excuse to stroll and chat after our feasts. The rocks were still warm from the hot day. 

What a lovely way to start our cooking extravaganzas...we have set a high bar for our Yosemite trip in July! 

On Sunday, we went exploring...to Sunol Regional Wilderness in Fremont, where Little Yosemite waterfall is currently roaring, the wildflowers are full-blown and beautiful, but best of all: the hills are covered in lush, green grass -- lolling grass, perfect grass, peppered with tiny purple flowers, pansies, California poppies ... and cows, who are the best lollers of all, arising rather awkwardly should a hiker stray too close. (We did, but there were no casualties.)

We hiked up Indian Joe, a rolling trail that winds creek-side high up the hill through rocks and shady dells, before turning onto Rocks Road to climb further up, and then going back down Cerro Este, which dead-ends at Little Yosemite, the waterfall. It's amazing that the Fremont hills -- looming green and empty above the strip-mall-ish interstate off of 880 -- can create a sense of total isolation...from the top, there's not even a house in sight -- just green hills rolling on forever, punctuated with two tiny barns.

The hike distance was four miles, but the hills were rather strenuous. Hiking is best in the spring, when the hills are still green, and the flowers are out. Plenty of water, and definitely capacity for a weekend-long trip (though not much more). We'll be back for gourmet backpacking sometime next year.