Backcountry Fare
This past weekend Reuben and I decided to backpack into the Pine Valley Mountain Wilderness on a 16-mile overnight. We like to think of our backpacking trips not just as a way for us to get out and be active while exploring nature, but as a cleanse for our systems mentally and physically. There are SO many food temptations in our society and living in SW Utah is no different. Every day after work I pass by all sorts of restaurants in Springdale advertising cold ice cream, pizza, and beer but the biggest temptation of them all is the Maverick Gas Station in LaVerking. These stations are basically the go-to for locals in the area and people actually eat meals here every day. With options like taquitos, burritos, cookies, sweetened coffee drinks, candy, fresh Krispy Kremes and 64 ounce sodas galore, I really have to work to tell myself not to get a sweet treat on the way home. Even so, junk food slips into our diet or the long days of work leave us not getting enough excercise so I really look forward to heading into the wilderness for some time away from all of these food temptations thrown in our faces every day.
We packed pretty light for the journey and tossed in lots of high-energy food items like apples & grapes, KIND Granola bars, Clif Kids Fruit Ropes (I love these- SO juicy!), Almond Nut-Thins,
and homemade trail mix with raw cashews, almonds, Brazil nuts, walnuts,
macadamia nuts, dried cherries and dried blueberries (totally over the
standard peanut and raisins, plus this mix is loaded with superfoods & antioxidants!). Before we embarked on our journey we filled our bellies with delicious salads from a local cafe packed with spinach, nuts, berries, fruits, salmon, and other veggies plus we scarfed down Naked Green Machine Smoothies at the trailhead. I can hear my mom now saying that we didn't pack enough protein, but we felt that we had a nice balanced diet for our trip and like I said, we like to think of these trips as a sort of cleanse. We push our bodies physically and only supply high-energy foods back into our systems and find that we are never really hungry or full, just perfectly balanced, which is a hard thing to come by these days right? Think about how often after a meal you feel "too full" compared to the amount of energy you have expended in exercise that day. Not very often in our society are people exercising appropriate amounts to keep up with their level of food intake which is why we have such a problem with obesity! You cannot expect to eat at Maverick everyday and maintain a healthy weight if you work in an office and go home at night and watch television until bed. Which leads me to my next point....I have recently started to try and re-integrate cooking and baking back into my life. While I have worked very hard the past year or two, I certainly was spoiled living on farms and working part-time jobs at Co-ops that allowed me the time, energy, and fresh produce to cook with. Since moving to Utah I have found that after long, strenuous days it is easy to pick up take-out on the way home or just have sandwiches and snacks for dinner, because it is so hard to motivate yourself to prepare, cook and clean-up when you are just mentally drained from working full-time. I can imagine it is espcially hard for families with kids to find the motivation to feed and clean for a crowd every night because lets be honest- it is a lot of work!! Cooking tasty, fresh meals can involve a lot from figuring out what you want to cook, to food preparation, chopping, and dishes- but it CAN also be easier than you think. I have found that meal planning is essential to eating healthy and having the time and energy to prepare quality meals. I have been following some food blogs (Food Babe & 100 Days of Real Food) that often stress the importance of meal planning and have helped rekindle my love of cooking and remind me that cooking things yourself with fresh, natural ingredients is absolutely the way to go!
Sunday Brunch
After returning from our backpacking cleanse Saturday night, Reuben and I were ready to have a lazy day around the house and decided to utilize our free time (possibly the only day this summer where we have both stayed home the entire day) by making some delicious meals! Reuben decided that he would scratch up a garden-fresh brunch while I took on a baking project. Having a garden this summer has been such a blessing and we are so happy that our housemate Kara has a the greenest of thumbs and planted a wonderful garden! She is gone every weekend and Reuben takes over care of the garden in her absence so I have especially enjoyed getting to share in the fruits of their labor. In addition to the garden, the property we live on has 15-20 different types of fruit trees that have been showering us with deliciousness since May. When we first arrived the mulberries were in full swing, in June the apricots, July brought the yummiest of grapes, and now we have arrived at peach season!! There are a couple of peach trees on the property that (literally) have branches snapping off of the tree because they are so loaded with fruit. We had a bucketful in the laundry room that needed to be used and since I was not in a canning mood, I decided to utilize a Vegan Muffin recipe that I had been working on the week before. I had previously had a bunch of quickly deteriorating bananas but no eggs or dairy products so I wanted to try a Vegan banana bread/muffin recipe which ended up turning out fantastic! Our house is equipped with ZERO measuring cups or spoons and so it was kind of an "on the fly" baking session which turned out wonderfully! I forgot how much my baking skills had really been honed this winter while I was working at the Bozeman Co-op as a Bread Baker and Pastry Chef. What a wonderful and useful experience that was!!
So this time around I wrote down the approximate amounts of ingredients that I added to make my very own Peach Pocket Muffins using tons of fresh orchard peaches, coconut oil as my butter replacement, and flax meal as my egg replacement so that I could share the recipe on this blog. If you are not used to baking Vegan options then I think you will be surprised at how moist your baked goods turn out. The texture of the batter will be much different than you are used to but I think it is pretty cool to bake items using no dairy ingredients (although we all know I am a Dairy Queen) and see them "rise" to the occasion just like their dairy counterparts. My recipe has been tailored to fit our needs and palates and I would recommend adding more sugar if you are making these for a crowd or for kids. My intention was to make a bunch of hearty muffins for Reuben to be able to take to work with him (hence the name "Pocket Muffins") and provide him the energy he needs to get through his long days of trail work. I wanted a flexible recipe that I could add whatever fruit was in season to or whatever dry goods I have in the pantry. Maybe you like shredded coconut, or maybe you prefer oats. I had oat bran on hand, but maybe you have buckwheat. Reuben doesn't have a big sweet tooth and prefers stuff like this to actually be less sweet (unlike me!) so I designed this recipe around that as well. Also, the peach flavor doesn't shine through like you might want it to, but you can use any fruit that you have seasonally available. It is more about using what products you have that are fresh and available in large quantities than having a sweet treat. I recommend wrapping 2 muffins in plastic wrap and putting them in the freezer so that every morning you have a healthy, energy providing grab and go snack to get you through the day. Here is the recipe for Pocket Muffins.
While I was baking, Reuben rounded up some green bell peppers, jalepinos, onions, Thai basil and summer squash from the garden. He chopped up all of those yummies in addition to some garlic from the local market and let the veggies simmer in coconut oil (our favorite!!) until they were nice and tender. The summer squash usually gets tossed in last because we like it crunchy still. To the veggies he added delicious Chicken, Mozzarella, & Spinach Sausage and let that all brown together. Once the sausages were nice and cooked, he cracked local eggs right into the skillet and sauteed that all together. For a finishing touch he added some Pepperjack cheese at the last minute! We enjoyed our Skillet Brunch with fresh Pocket Muffins and Naked Mango Smoothie with a dash of Sprite- yum!!
~Mary Lane~
Toquerville, UT
8.23.13
No comments:
Post a Comment