I tried out the Chickpea Sesame Penne:

The packaging is very minimal – just a thin outer bag. If you like no excessive packaging this is a good choice. It reminds me of Packlite’s packaging. The bag is a shy 6×4″ and 6.5 ounces in weight. Fair warning: the bag is extremely thin. It is thinner than name brand sandwich bags. If you abuse your food in your bear bag/Ursack you could have a fail. So treat them carefully.

The meal prep is very straightforward: boil water, add dry ingredients and included organic oil  to pot, stir well, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.

Suggestions: Let it sit for 15 minutes. The whole wheat pasta was a bit chewy still at 10 minutes but at 15 was perfect and still piping hot. If you are in cooler weather or above a couple thousand feet use a pot cozy. You could also speed it up by adding everything to the pot and bringing it to a boil, then following the directions for sit time. Or personally? Dump it into a quart freezer bag or a bag from PackitGourmet and do it FBC style. Everything in the meal is dehydrated so it works fine. Just give it 15 minutes sit time in the cozy at minimum.

The meal makes a lot. This is a “fill you up” meal, big enough even for a thru-hiker’s appetite.

Taste? Texture? The whole wheat pasta is nice, it doesn’t have the strong flavor that some types get (which I call the ‘cardboard’ flavor). It is pleasant and has a firm texture. The sauce is plentiful, covering the pasta in a creamy glaze. You won’t miss it not having dairy in it. The sauce for me tasted great but a warning: this may be a little too “granola” for some. If you enjoy salads and other dishes at say Whole Foods deli’s you will love it. If not…well this may not be the company for you. The side bonus is the majority of the ingredients are organic and they do not contain any artificial coloring/flavors or preservatives. I am looking forward to trying out the Basil Walnut Penne next!

~Sarah

Opening up the package I did notice that they used a shredded style chicken instead of small squares. That was an interesting touch. The aroma coming up was hot sauce and cream cheese (no surprise!).

As with all Mt. House meals simplicity is the name of the game. It was “add 1 1/2 cups boiling water, stir, seal and let sit for 9 minutes”. I stirred it up well after it sat and I will be blunt: I couldn’t try it. I don’t know, it was the smell. I just couldn’t get past it. So I called over Ford “for lunch”. He on the other hand was excited for something different. So there you go……

I was using soft taco sized tortillas. There was enough filling to make 4 of those – and plenty overfilled. With dinner plate sized burrito tortillas you would get 2. This is a large meal. Ford set off to eat what I had prepared and gave up after the 2 of them. He couldn’t eat anymore, he was stuffed. Ford is pretty much has a bottomless stomach so it shows how much was in the bag. I would recommend this as a 1 person meal if eaten as an entree but as wraps it will serve 2 adults.

Ford liked the wraps, mentioning that they were mildly spicy and they didn’t need anything added, such as cheese. Would I buy it again? Not for me but if Ford wanted something like that I might for him. On the other hand something similar could be made easily enough with pouched chicken, Tabasco sauce packets, cream cheese packets and other items – and not need any hot water.

Edit: I knew there was a recipe somewhere on our website for something similar! Here you go, homemade Buffalo Chicken Wraps.

~Sarah

One of the bigger changes was an actual bridge over Ipsut Creek – in 2007 it was a log, planed on the top with a hand rail. The other thing I am now picking my brain about is did the old ranger station cabin get removed? I remember it being there in 2007, it had barely escaped the floods but I don’t remember seeing it this trip?

We went through the old car campground and headed up the Wonderland Trail (or also called the Carbon Glacier Trail) and took the side to Ipsut Falls. It had provided water to the car CG for many years. The old building that housed the pump-house that I had last seen in 2003 – with a tiny Ford hiking behind me – is nearly gone now with a couple trees through it (you can see the trail in the shadows to the left):

Ipsut Falls is a sweet treat to see. I can actually say that it is a worthwhile hike to just go there. My photo sadly does not show it well. The falls sit at the end of short gorge of sorts. It is shaded and about 10° cooler than 200 feet away on the WT. The waterfall takes a couple turns and drops around 60 feet in total. The other significance is that the creek is clear till here. Just s a few yards down a section of the glacial till full Carbon River jumped its channel at some point. It ripped through the WT and now dumps into the Ipsut. At the CG the creek runs milky in color, not clear like it did in 2007. Definitely worth the extra 1/5th of a mile or so to walk up there for water if one is camping at Ipsut (which has been a backcountry camp since 2007).

We got water – while it wasn’t as hot as this past week was (we had a mini heatwave last week where it topped 95° at our house. Yech. No like. Today it was 55° – more my idea of nice.) and headed up the WT. About a mile in you come to the end of the trail and a series of bridges built over a channel of the Carbon, 3 bridges in total. They cross the river twice and once over a snagged pile of trees. It is actually quite inventive of the rangers in “fixing” the issue. The river has eaten that section of trail clean off  the wall.

We went as far as the Northern Loop Junction. The trail on this side of the river is closed not far beyond, one of the after effects of the 2006 floods was the trail was wiped away clean. It was on the bottom of an unstable slope. Now to go to the Carbon Glacier you must cross the Carbon River on a couple channels (2 shown below), go through the island of trees and cross more. It varies by the year on how many crossings! Jared and I had not seen anyone until this point when a couple groups of young guys caught up to us.

Looking upriver:

Keen trail runners, OR low gaiters and a seat along one of the wildest rivers I love:

Heading back down – the trail varies from deep forest to many open (scoured) avy slopes that are full of thick vegetation – including enough blooming Cow-parsnips for the summer (I have never been a fan of the sickly sweet perfume they let off on hot days but I am sure many others love it…..)

Very low growing Cloudberry that caught my eye near the junction to Ipsut Falls. It would be very easy to not see it but what a loss to not see it!

The section where the Carbon sent a small channel through, near the junction with Ipsut Falls. It is now a massive tree graveyard. You can see the WT on the right.

Unalaska Bunchberry (Canadian Dogwood) flowering about 6 feet up on this cedar tree (An Alaska Yellow?):

As we came back through the Ipsut Creek campground what caught my eye was this food bag hanging from a bear pole. While the bear pole provided safety for the food….said picnic table being right under it didn’t bode well – all a bear would have had to do is step up on it and have a free snack with no sweating. Doh!

We stopped in the CG and had lunch and a break knowing we had another shy 5 miles to do.Jared had started rehydrating his lunch back at our turnaround – his mix of beans and chicken:

He made it into a sammie – since he found out he had no tortillas upon getting his pack ready:

My lunch was…well….different to say the least. I had some leftover commercial meals from the late spring presentations and wanted to clean them out. I grabbed one without quite reading it – it was the new Mary Janes Farm Tex Mex Organic Beef Casserole. I put my MSR Quick 1 Ti pot into service this trip with my Snowpeak Giga stove.

Upon opening it was a normal MJF meal with the addition of a very large plastic bag inside, I found that odd – considering that the company prides itself on more enviro choices.

The beef was in the plastic bag, which being plastic was covered in the dry sauce mix. So after flicking off as much as I could back into the bag I opened up the bag…only to find that the beef was…..JERKY! It wasn’t that it was bad but frankly I had envisioned ground beef, not jerky. It is from eyeballing it about 2 Tablespoons of meat in a diced/shred size. For $13.50 (yes, I paid that much) the bulk of the meal is pasta and lentils with a few vegetables and a little beef. You would do better to buy the vegetarian Chili Mac and stop at a sketchy truck stop on the way to the trailhead and buy a container of jerky snuff (it looks like a plastic tub of chew but holds finely shredded jerky). For about a $1 you would get 2-3 times the meat. OK, OK….it isn’t organic but I like meat these days and mini portions don’t do it for me!

With the meat added:

It is an easy meal to make, just add in 1 cup boiling water and let sit. I have found that MJF meals do best if you can give the pasta ones an extra 5 minutes sitting time and be put in a cozy it will be less soupy. The flavor/texture wasn’t bad and it made a nice lighter lunch (easy to digest while hiking on) but yes, it did need more meat

Jared munching on one of his bars that he made from one of my recipes, Cran-Mac Caramel Bars:

Salmon berries just coming into ripeness:

On the way back the wind was blowing up valley, towards Rainier. It was very nice. In the sections on the river it kept us very cool. In the deep forest, well not so much.

It is always odd no matter how many times I hike this trail to be able to see the road across a gaping maw of river and know that it used to be there:

A last look upriver before we headed into the forest for good:

The GPS showed a shy 15.40 miles. It isn’t horribly hard elevation wise (you only gain about 500 feet to the campground) but the road part does do one’s feet in by the end.

~Sarah

Photo © Kirk Kirkconnell.

In the Pacific Northwest all too often one sees the invasive Himalayan Blackberry crawling and engulfing everything. It grows fast and strong, crowding out everything else. I am not a big fan of the Himalayan berry – I find it to be like Californian strawberries – big and not a lot of flavor. That and the seeds/papery dried bits are not appetizing at all. Seeing native Pacific Blackberries though is a treat.

Photo © Kirk Kirkconnell.

Like wild strawberries they are smaller and have a taste 100 times bigger than they are. The small fruit is perfect when it is glossy black. Best warmed from the sun, they melt in your mouth.

Photo © Kirk Kirkconnell.

Visit our foraging page on berries for more information.

~Sarah

The SB cup is one of the reusable double walled cold cups with a permanent straw – don’t laugh it works great on trail and fits in my pack’s side pocket

Each box has 5 tubes in it, retailing locally for $5.95, though they are handing out $1 coupons it seems.

Easy to make of course – just sprinkle it into 16 ounces of cold water and stir.

Very tasty overall, not too sweet or bitter. I would most likely add some coconut cream powder or full fat dry milk (as well vanilla soy milk powder would be great).

~Sarah

An oldy but goodie, the Luna Peanut Butter Cookie bar. Chewy, not too sweet and it is frosted.

Snikiddy snacks. Crunchy, light and great tasting. Check out their Facebook page as well for both a sweepstakes and a sample offer! Kids will love the mac n’ cheese poofs and as a bonus, they are lower sodium, something so rare in savory snacks.

Salad Pizaaz – find these in the produce section of your grocery store, often hanging above the vegetables. They have a couple varieties to try, we love the Cherry Cranberry Pecano blend. Not overly sweet and as a bonus no added sodium! Use them in breakfast dishes, tossed in with chicken salad on the trail or even top a savory rice dish with them – or eat them out of the bag while hiking.

Frontier Soup Mixes. If you have ever tried Harmony House Food’s soup mixes you may want to take a look at their 15 varieties. A number of them can be adapted to backpacking and all work well for a cold car camping trip. Just avoid any with wild rice for a quick cook time – you can always bring the soup to a boil and then cozy it for a good 30 minutes for a hearty meal! My Mother In Law and I tried out the Red Pepper Corn Chowder the week Walker was born. I had just got out of the hospital and it was an easy/quick lunch to make. How backpacking friendly is it? Use lower sodium chicken bouillon and NIDO whole fat dry milk! The Tortilla Soup can be easily made with a 7-ounce pouch of chicken and as a fuel saving secret let the dry items soak for 20-30 minutes, then bring to a boil and let sit in a pot cozy for 20 to 30 minutes. For salsa to go with it, see here for a easy DIY recipe. The bags of soup make quite a bit so will easily feed 3 to 4 hungry hiking partners.

~Sarah

Is it shelf stable? No, but it is durable and easy to pack for a long day hike or first 24 hours of a trip. Being individually sealed and pre cubed it keeps dirty hands off of it, leaving you with easy to use cheese that stays fresh longer. You can easily add a bag to a rice dish, toss with pasta or sprinkle down a wrap for lunch. And it is pretty tasty cheese as well.

I found it with the grated cheeses in the dairy section.

~Sarah

I came across the Kashi TLC Pumpkin Pecan Bars at Target this past week and had picked them up for Kirk, figuring he might like them. But on squeezing one of the bars I noticed they were softer than I had figured they would be, so they were brace safe.

An interesting granola bar! The bottom half is a traditional chewy/crispy granola mix, on top of that is a thick layer of what I can describe as pumpkin flavored caramel, then sprinkled with pecans, which is delish. The topping is what takes it from an old school granola bar to ‘wow, I love these!’. The bars have 4 grams protein, 4 grams fiber and 120 calories at 1.1 ounces each. A good small snack.

Kashi also has 3 other flavors in the line as well which I will be keeping an eye out for.

~Sarah

The meals are not cheap though – not by any means. Expect to pay $11.25 to $13.50 per package. And like all MJ meals these really only serve 1 person (though the packages are 1 1/2 servings). They are great sources of protein though. The Tex-Mex Beef Casserole has over 37 grams of protein in it.

They also have out Shepherd’s Meat Pie and Chili con Carne. The links are to REI – the meals do not show up on the MJ website in the food section. This will be interesting to see how the meals fare, more organic choices are always nice!

~Sarah

I found it in normal Lemonade and also Raspberry Lemonade. They come in the packs of sticks that one sees in most single serving drink mixes these days, so as with others you add the powder to 16 ounces of water and shake till mixed. The price is competitive at around $3 a box (though I found it on sale for less).

The biggest things news wise is these are sweetened with Truvia™ and are naturally flavored with no artificial dyes. So for someone like me this is a nice find.

Taste wise? It comes pretty close to tasting like Crystal Lite™. It is sweet but in a nice way.

~Sarah