Potassium and Tomatoes

By now everyone knows Potassium is arguably the most important mineral a hiker can have.  Anyone doing any sort of physical exertion such as running or even working outdoors in the hot sun, knows that Potassium really makes a difference.  Heck, that was the whole "schtick" behind Gatorade.  But if you look at the nutrition label on a Gatorade or similar sports drink, you realize how little potassium there is in one of those overpriced bottles of sugar water. An eight ounce serving of Gatorade typically contains perhaps 25 milligrams of Potassium.

No take a Lookie at Sun Dried Tomatoes.  The nutrition facts below are for a 100 gram serving so it's easy to divide any of the values by 100 to get the content per gram.  ONE GRAM of sun dried tomato has about 40% more Potassium that eight ounces of Gatorade!  That's incredible.

We've always known cooked tomatoes contain mind-boggling amounts of Potassium.  Ditto with canned tomato juice.  One V-8 each day when we're car camping pretty well takes care of my potassium needs for a full 24 hours.  Carrying sun dried tomatoes on a backpack trip is the next best thing to having canned stewed tomatoes or canned V-8 juice.

We bought a package of California-produced sun dried tomatoes and split it four ways.  One fourth of the dried tomatoes was chopped and cut up to use in our dinner recipes.  The other three portions will be used each day of our hike.  Each of those portions will provide about 650 milligrams of Potassium each day.

Coupled with the other potassium-rich food we bought for this trip, we're going to be fine as far as this important mineral goes.
xxx

Nutrition Facts Tomatoes Sun-Dried Serving Size 100g Calories 258 % Daily Value* Total Fat 2.97g 5%     Saturated Fat 0.426g 2% Cholesterol 0mg 0% Sodium 247mg 10% Total Carbohydrate 55.8g 19%     Dietary Fiber 12.3g 49%     Sugar 37.6g ~ Protein 14.1g ~ Vitamin A 17% • Vitamin C 65% Calcium 11% • Iron 51% *Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

Vitamins   %DV Vitamin A 874IU 17%     Retinol equivalents 44μg ~     Retinol 0μg ~     Alpha-carotene 0μg ~     Beta-carotene 524μg ~     Beta-cryptoxanthin 0μg ~ Vitamin C 39.2mg 65% Vitamin E 0.01mg 0% Vitamin K 43μg 54% Vitamin B12 0μg 0% Thiamin 0.528mg 35% Riboflavin 0.489mg 29% Niacin 9.05mg 45% Pantothenic acid 2.087mg 21% Vitamin B6 0.332mg 17% Folate 68μg 17%     Folic Acid 0μg ~     Food Folate 68μg ~     Dietary Folate Equivalents 68μg ~ Choline 104.6mg ~ Lycopene 45902μg ~ Lutein+zeazanthin 1419μg ~

Minerals   %DV Calcium 110mg 11% Iron 9.09mg 51% Magnesium 194mg 49% Phosphorus 356mg 36% Sodium 247mg 10% Potassium 3427mg 98% Zinc 1.99mg 13% Copper 1.423mg 71% Manganese 1.846mg 92% Selenium 5.5μg 8% Water 14.56g ~ Ash 12.6g ~

Stats Percent of Daily Calorie Target (2000 calories) 12.9% Percent Water Composition 14.6% Protein to Carb Ratio (g/g) 0.25

Nutrition Facts Tomatoes Sun-Dried Serving Size 54g Calories 139 % Daily Value* Total Fat 1.6g 2%     Saturated Fat 0.23g 1% Cholesterol 0mg 0% Sodium 133mg 6% Total Carbohydrate 30.1g 10%     Dietary Fiber 6.6g 26%     Sugar 20.3g ~ Protein 7.6g ~ Vitamin A 9% • Vitamin C 35% Calcium 6% • Iron 27% *Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

Vitamins   %DV Vitamin A 471.96IU 9%     Retinol equivalents 23.76μg ~     Retinol 0μg ~     Alpha-carotene 0μg ~     Beta-carotene 282.96μg ~     Beta-cryptoxanthin 0μg ~ Vitamin C 21.17mg 35% Vitamin E 0.01mg 0% Vitamin K 23.22μg 29% Vitamin B12 0μg 0% Thiamin 0.285mg 19% Riboflavin 0.264mg 16% Niacin 4.887mg 24% Pantothenic acid 1.127mg 11% Vitamin B6 0.179mg 9% Folate 36.72μg 9%     Folic Acid 0μg ~     Food Folate 36.72μg ~     Dietary Folate Equivalents 36.72μg ~ Choline 56.48mg ~ Lycopene 24787.08μg ~ Lutein+zeazanthin 766.26μg ~

Minerals   %DV Calcium 59.4mg 6% Iron 4.91mg 27% Magnesium 104.76mg 26% Phosphorus 192.24mg 19% Sodium 133mg 6% Potassium 1850.58mg 53% Zinc 1.07mg 7% Copper 0.768mg 38% Manganese 0.997mg 50% Selenium 2.97μg 4% Water 7.86g ~ Ash 6.8g ~

Stats Percent of Daily Calorie Target (2000 calories) 6.95% Percent Water Composition 14.6% Protein to Carb Ratio (g/g) 0.25

Coffee Cravin'

I drink coffee.  I Love Coffee.  I crave coffee. OK? OK!

So, here we go on a short backpack trip.  What's one of the first things a Coffee Cravin', Coffee Lovin' Coffee Drinker to do, huh?  Why, make certain we can get our Coffee Fix each morning we're in The Canyon.  Each of the photos has a caption below and there is more narrative below all of the photos.

Believe it or not, Wal-Mart sells the best instant coffee at the best price anywhere.  Of course saying it's "the best" is subjective but lookie there at the price--ONE DOLLAR for enough instant coffee to make 32 eight ounce cups!  You may disagree that it's the "the best" but you can't possibly disagree that it's the best price!

This instant coffee is made in Mexico.  The Mexicans have a LONG Love Affair with instant coffee and those people South of The Border really know how to make a potent freeze dried dose-o-caffeine.  When you're looking at instant coffee, you definitely want to see "100% Instant Coffee" on the label.  As everyone knows, the trouble with ALL instant coffees is that taste like, well, instant coffee.  So what to do?

Enter our Dear Swiss Miss.  This Miss has been a mainstay of our Camping Coffee for longer than we can remember.  The best way to mask the instant coffee taste is to mix the granules with Good Ol' Swiss Miss.  Trust me, use the full sugar mix--not the sugar free mix.  You will be amazed at how wonderful instant coffee becomes when mixed properly with hot chocolate.

As most everyone knows, typical hot chocolate is essentially caffeine free.  Bummer.

If you look at the hot chocolate label, there's a lot more than sugar in there.  It's that saturated fat that really is a Game Changer and makes a cuppa camp joe so danged much fun in the morning.  Hot chocolate is also a nice bonus source of potassium, which we consider an essential Hiking Mineral.

So, now it's time for the Mad Coffee Scientist to get to work.  Here are most of the tools of our trade.
The first task is to CAREFULLY cut off the top of a hot chocolate envelope making sure you are at the tippy top of the opening.  Second, pour the powder into a quarter cup measure.  Stainless steel works better than plastic.  Then gently bang the bottom of the steel on the counter top to settle the chocolate powder as much as possible.  Then, top off the quarter cup measure with instant coffee and use a knife to make sure it is a level measure.

Then pour this mix into a bowl.  Imagine using a mortar and pestle to get a better mix that goes into solution easier.  That's the goal here.  Mix thoroughly.

After a VERY thorough mixing of the two ingredients, the coffee should have Become One with the Cocoa.

Next, we carefully spooned the mix from the bowl back into the original envelope, carefully rolled down the top much the way a river runner rolls down the top of a dry bag and sealed with a small piece of transparent tape.  The weight of each package varied slightly.

Finally, we have enough for two cups each of our two mornings.  With a Zip Locl sandwich bag, the net weight calculates out to precisely 4 ounces.  The weight of the waste to hike out with will be 5 grams.

Our trusty 1.7 ounce cup and our little six ounce pot. (Weights--not capacities.)

And, the fruit of our labor!  A steaming cup of really yummy, fully-charged coffee.

We did quite a bit of mathematics on this process.  First, we weighed the unopened packet of hot chocolate.  It calc'd to .80 ounce. (Eight tenths of an ounce.)  Then we weighed each packet afterwards and then weighed all four packets together to get a true average weight.

Then we studied the two websites below.  Basically, without going into farther detail, we will be getting at least 350 milligrams of coffee each morning and that's plenty for us.  We are very pleased with the fruits of our labor.

http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/caffeine-content

http://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-content/coffee-instant

Backpack food

Yeah, there's a lot of chemicals in processed foods.  However, we cut ourself a lot of slack when we are backpacking.

Every camper has her or his own ideas about camp food. Every backpacker has their own ideas about the food they carry.  Camping and backpacker meals are like snowflakes. No two camper's or backpacker's meals are the same.  Sure, some meals may be similar but they are always slightly different--just like snowflakes.

And so it is that we have begun to dredge up our long lost backpacking recipes.  If we are car camping, weight and space are rarely an issue.  The more food the merrier.  We often take twice as much food as we need just so we can change our menu on a whim when we feel like it.

Well, backpackers don't generally have such a luxury.  Backpackers need to run a tight ship, make a lean and mean menu and stick to it.  No whimsy for them!

It's been years since we hefted on a backpack and took off down the trail.  Luckily, we learned a lesson long, long ago.  All you need to do is walk S-L-O-W-L-Y through some stores and stop and stare at stuff.  Look very closely.  Read labels and directions.  Buy stuff.  Take it home.  Experiment.  Play around with recipes.  Why, it's easy peezy.

A Surprise Find--Dried Okra!

So, that's what we've been doing lately...taking trips down memory lanes (AKA: Grocery Aisles).  Sure enough, just like riding a bicycle, it all comes back.  It didn't take us long to remember all our old staple foods and meals for backpacking.  Once that knowledge is branded into the synapses, that knowledge never leaves.

Right now as we are writing this it's 3:30 pm on a Sunday.  And we're eating grits....and lovin' it.  We forgot all about instant grits.  And we sure forgot just how danged good they taste, even at 3:30 pm on a Sunday!

Why, you just need to boil and hap cup of water, turn off the flame and pour in the grits and let 'em sit.  We remembered the grits while prowling the aisles of a big box grocery in Phoenix today.  Heck, throw in  some oil, some chopped walnuts, chopped apricots, raw sugar, and top it all off with some coconut flakes and we've got a great breakfast going.  After eating it, boil a coup of water to clean the pot, make some hot chocolate and we're good to go.

Sugar, bulgar & fresh peanut butter

Next item I flat forgot is just like the grit, only better and more versatile--Bulgar.  You don't even have to heat water to hydrate bulgar--just put it in the pot the night before and it will be all re-hydrated by morning.  You can pretty much do anything to bulgar, the possibilities are endless.

Another great breakfast staple is powdered potatoes.  The now come in a bewildering array of flavors and our favorite Idahoan brand is made right in our summer home town, Idaho Falls.  In fact, a Dear Neighbor actually helps to make them!

We're going to put some pre-cooked bacon into a pot of those taters and then do a second pot of scrambled eggs made from powered eggs.

Small corn and small wheat tortillas are great for a short backpacking trip.  In recent years, bakeries pioneered stuff called "Sandwich thins."  Sandwich thins are basically a low rent kinda, sorta bagel.  Interestingly, one half a sandwich thin is lighter in weight than most tortillas but is better suited to hold peanut butter.  Peanut Butter is probably the Number One Staple of campers and backpackers worldwide.

Who knows, you might even get a Ticket from the Backpack Police if you left home without peanut butter.
Anyway, we forgot all about sandwich thins until we were walking slowly around the store staring at stuff.  We're going to take maybe two of them on this trip just for the peanut butter.

From top-clockwise-dried apricots, honey-roasted sunflower seeds
Cajun seasoning, dehydrated refried beans and walnut halves.

Then there's instant rice, cous-cous, dehydrated refried beans and Stove Top Stuffing.  Each of these four yummy food simply requires soaking in hot water to come to life.  No fuel-wasting boiling is necessary.

Today we found some dehydrated shrimp, dehydrated okra, edeame beans, sun-dried tomatoes, crystallized ginger and other similar goodies.  Tuna and salmon now come in foil packs that don't have to be drained.  There's there the staple salami and hard cheeses. We might even carry a small can of chicken, too.  They come in such small cans now the empty can surely can't weigh hardly anything.

So many choices, such a short hike!  It sure is fun messing with backpacking food again!

And now we close this post by eating some refried beans, freshly re-hydrated just for this occasion.  Oh, Man, YUM--they are good!

Perking Right Along

Nothing says camping to us like perked coffee made in a genuine percolator.  Although some would say getting gourmet coffee out of a percolator is impossible, we beg to differ.

If you want The Best perked coffee, you have to be prepared to pay your dues and do your diligence.

Let's go through the drill.  Now, bear in mind this is not an exhaustive tutorial on making great perked coffee--it's just the beginning.

First things first--you MUST use a stainless steel percolator.  Do not even THINK of using an aluminum one.  If you insist on using an aluminum percolator then read no farther--this perked coffee primer is NOT for you!

Second, you MUST keep your stainless steel percolator clean and SPOTLESS.  Grime and built-up coffee stains might be a picturesque piece of camping ambiance but they simply murder good coffee.  Keep it cleaned constantly.  Period.

Third, you MUST buy the proper coffee filter.  A normal percolator will make a dark brown liquid that's only one step above the dreaded  so-called "cowboy coffee."  Trust me, we HATE cowboy coffee.  We don't care how many stories people tell about the mystic of cowboy coffee and how you put in egg shells and whatever other disgusting things you do to destroy perfectly good coffee grounds.  Cowboy coffee sux.  That's the bottom line.

So, you buy the correct filter.  It's a square piece of filter paper with five pre-punched holes.  You carefully line the basket with this filter, put in the grounds and then CAREFULLY fold over the corners of the filter until your precious grounds are safe and properly encased.  If you've done this step correctly, there will be NO grounds either in the bottom of the basket or in the coffee itself.  Cleanup is a no-brainer.

Next, you have a fine and delicate chore ahead of you on the road to perfect perked coffee.  It involves genuine scientific research.

A scientific procedure is one that can be replicated again and again based on, well... science.

The science of perfect perked coffee is finding the right grounds, in the right amount, matched with the right amount of water and perked for the right time over the right flame.  Each of these things is a critical variable.

• Type of grounds
• Amount of grounds
• Water quantity
• Time of perk
• BTU of flame

Messing up any one of the above can single-handedly destroy perked coffee.

You will need to keep meticulous, scientific notes and make many batches of coffee to find the right mix of these variables to suit your taste.  For us it is one-third cup of a secret coffee ground to the right grain size filled to a certain mark on the percolator and perked for precisely 5 minutes over a very low flame.

If the perk bubble rate is too fast, the coffee will become bitter.  Too slow and the coffee will taste "thin."

Getting the right perk rate is best determined by using a "perk-o-meter."  You point this laser device at your percolator and it gives you a read out of PPM--That's Perks Per Minute.  You can find a perk-o-meter at any reputable science supply store.

Now, the next trick is INSTANT removal of the coffee from the percolator.  The second it is done, pull it off the stove and immediately decant the percolator contents into a spotlessly clear, high-quality thermos.  Coffee left to sit in a percolator will become rapidly bitter and will taste weird.  The thermos is as much a part of the equation as the percolator itself.

Well, there you go--a primer.  We will eventually post some photos of the filters.

Flame Tender & Stove Cleaner

One thing that's real important for any campstove is what's called The Flame Tender.  These are mostly antiques.  They may still sell them new but I've never seen a new one.  You find them in antique stores.
Their purpose is obvious and basic.  they can tame a tall flame and render it a simmer.  A lot of camp stoves don't simmer well, their flame is far too hot to simmer or "keep warm," as the case may be.  The flame tender is your bridge between a really HOT flame and a perfect simmer.  Sometimes even the left burner won't simmer well.  That's when the vaunted flame tender really shines.  A low flame on the left burner underneath a flame tender becomes the perfect "keep warm" temperature without scorching and ruining your meal.  There are many variations of the flame tender.  Try to get one or more that have a handle.  The ones without a handle are a real hassle and you will eventually get burned.  I guarantee it.

There's really only one chemical we use for keeping the stoves cleaned--it's called Awesome cleaner and it's found almost entirely in "dollar stores."  I once saw it in a regular grocery but I can't remember where or when.  When we run low, we just go to the nearest dollar store, pay a buck and restock on Awesome.  It's the perfect stove grease cutter.  A few paper towels or a rag and some awesome and you're good to go.

Do carry a pair of pretty good gloves to use to move around hot skillets on your stove top.  Also, have at least one decent trivet handy.  Anything can be a trivit, from a flat piece of wood to a ceramic floor tile to a piece of iron cast specifically to be a trivet.  We recently found some great 12 x 12 marble tiles at Lowe's for 50 cents each.  They will make a real nice trivet and are large enough to handle anything.

Typically, we keep all the shims, teflon tape and stove clutter in a stout fabric bag.  Wrap up the bag and stow it in your Coleman.  In our 413D there's now plenty of room for everything with space to spare.  If you just throw the clutter in the stove body, it will bang around and get real annoying.  Also, it's a pain to pull out each piece and the stuff usually makes an unsightly chunk of clutter on the picnic table.  Keep is wrapped up in a stout bag and the cook area looks a lot better.  Also, if you have children, it's less likely they will be attracted to the gadgets and stove widget that you use.  In addition, all those little things can easily get lost.  By keeping them in a bag all is well.

I think that pretty well covers all of our ideas on stoves and related topics.  It's now time to move onto some other topic.  We've pretty well discussed all there is to mention about stoves.  If there's something we missed, please call it to our attention in the forms of a comment on this blog.  Thanks  & Cheers, jm

The Green Brothers--A Coleman Duet

Hey, this Duo is HOT!  Rock ON! Now that we have two Old Coleman Stoves, it sure didn't take long to find a credible excuse to set up BOTH of them and let the party begin.  What better day to inaugurate a Double Play than July 4th, King of Cookout Holidays.  We have company coming for a 9 am breakfast this morning.  The Green Brothers will have a starring role in making it a memorable meal.  No shuttling stuff back and forth from the inside kitchen.  Nope, most of our grub will be rustled up right on the glowing red hot burner plates courtesy of The Coleman Boys--they came from a green family long before green was chic, hip and cool.   Yeah, we're Green--Coleman Green!

July 3rd, we even unwrapped an artifact.  A NIB Coleman aluminum stove stand.  This rare artifact was purchased as a garage sale in 1999 and had remained unsealed in its original box ever since.  No kidding.  So, yesterday was the perfect Special Day to pop those old-fashioned copper staples and pull this puppy into the light of day.  We leveled up both stove, hooked one to a tank and the other to a green bottle.  We would have used two propane tanks but we have only one adapter hose.  We do keep a spare adapter so that was no problem.

Our friends arriving this morning are Spud Heads--they both are  TNN--Tater Nation Natives.  They were both born with hash brown hair and grew up curly fried.  They've always had a little scallop in their gallop and they can get half baked with the best of them!  So, naturally we HAVE to serve potatoes this morning and they can't be "Sinner Potatoes," as they call dehydrated potatoes.  They have to be the real deal--fresh fried country potatoes.  Heck, that's A LOT of work!

The biggest piece of work involved was cleaning our stainless steel griddle.  This behemoth weighs a blue ton and, over the years, it had become encrusted with a thick patina of cooking residue.  Some people call that "seasoning."  We call it YUCK!  It took about an hour of grinding, sanding, buffing, polishing and oiling but here it is in all its glory--a shaving mirror disguised as a griddle!

Well, it's T Minus Two Hours and counting until Backyard Breakfast is served.  We gotta get cracking, peeling, chopping, boiling, sizzling and just downright hopping to "git 'er dun."  We will photo document this one--it's going to be easily as good as making a meal in a real campground campsite--only it's in our backyard without all the gear hassle.

More stove tips

Perhaps one of the msot fun things about an old Coleman stove is the blank palette top.  It's like an artist's canvas waiting for your creativity--something to make Crafters smile.  Years ago (perhaps 1999) it dawned on us to stencil the top of the Coleman with something that would look good when seen at any angle.  I wish we had a dollar for every smile this has sparked.  The added design really gives the stove a touch of Camp Class. It's a cheery thing to see first thing in the morning, too.  It brings a smile to our faces every time we glance at it. We haven't yet figured out what to put on the 413D.  We've sure been thinking about it a LOT, though.  We doubt it will be the same motif.  There are so many possibilities.

OK, another tip is about New Age picnic tables and Old Coleman Stoves.  You may have noticed that some public agencies are using picnic tables made from recycled milk jugs or other "green" plastic material.  This is a nice idea but the tables don't mix with Old Coleman stoves.  Nope, like oil and water.  The heat coming from the bottom of the stove can melt one of those table tops faster than a New York Minute.  That's why we always carry a piece of wood larger than the bottom of the stove.  It's in case we need to protect the picnic table top.  Besides looking really ugly, the melted plastic really STINKS and it's probably emitting toxic fumes, too. 

Keep the stove clean.  It's a really good idea to keep the grease and cooking splatter off your stove.  A dirty stove attracts flies, mice and other vermin.  It might even attract bears in Bear Country, too.  Once a year, we take the stove body to the car wash and blast the heck out of it.  Then we turn it upside down and let it thoroughly dry out.  we also use a caustic cleaner to remove grease and oil.  We're pretty Type A about keeping the stove clean.  Luckily, Old Coleman's are easy to clean.

There's one other tip about those old stove.  Use a fine (REALLY fine) piece of wire to periodically poke into the small holes that rim the circumference of the burner plates.  They do get clogged and keeping them clean will give you an even flame and a much hotter burner.

Well, that's about it for Coleman stoves.  I will take one last look in my stove bag and see if I forgot anything.