The Cooking Edition – Part I

Mountain View – Wooly Hollow, AR

So there has been a certain amount of confusion about our eating regimen. This post is designed to clear up at least a few of the questions. 

First off, we do have a stove along with us. It’s a small one-burner unit. Some people have suggested that we should use a more fancy camping unit – with specialized fuel. Super easy to use – basically just screw the cook top onto the top of the fuel canister and you are good to go. I think they are called jet stoves or something. They’re cool. 

The problem is that those fuel canisters aren’t so readily available. You don’t just pull up to a Conoco station and ask for camp jet fuel (or whatever it’s called). Worse, good luck finding anything like that in Mexico or Panama. 

So then your option is to carry a whole ton of canisters I guess. Not fun – or realistic . . . 

The nice thing about the stove that we are using is that it works with regular unleaded gasoline. Now, that’s not the preferred fuel. White gas works better because it’s cleaner – but other than getting a little sooty when burning, the dirtier unleaded works just fine. 

This allows us to carry a minimum of fuel – because, really, who wants to carry a bunch of liquid fuel? Just pure weight – making riding, and, especially, hills – like in the Ozarks – even worse than they already are . . .

Today I bought some fuel at the gas station. Cost me, I think, 74 cents. 

I will admit, however, that this system is not perfect. The first time I went to fill our small canister – a few miles back in Illinois – with unleaded I had quite the surprise. It turns out that the nozzles at your average gas station are not really set up to do gas in such small increments. I put the nozzle into our little bottle, engaged the throttle-thing and . . . Woah! 

I think about a half gallon of gas exploded out of the nozzle immediately – causing a big backwash type event. Gas came whooshing back up out of the bottle – and since I was basically looking down into the bottle, the gas spurted right back into my face. If I had lit a match right then I would have been like Burning Man! But even without the match it turns out that it is very unpleasant to have gasoline splashed all over your face . . .

I am happy to report that I have learned my lesson. When I filled up this afternoon I held the bottle at angle away from my face and tried my very best to feather the pump. Still had some “backwash” but it didn’t go in my face. Might have cost me an extra 11 cents in wasted gas, but a small price to pay . . .

So that was a long-winded answer to the stove question . . .

The corollary question, I guess, is why we don’t usually cook unless we have a campfire. First off, for sure we will cook with the stove when we have to. But in general we are not too excited about this type of cooking. We’re more about fresh vegetables and maybe some kind of meat. Especially after a long day of biking.    

Now, I’m sure there will be other questions. So let me use tonight’s meal as a way to get out ahead of some of them . . .

As usual, we headed into the grocery store without a specific plan. This turned out to be a good idea, because this store, like so many that we end up going to, was not exactly Byerly’s (for those not from the Twin Cities, Byerly’s is a fancy place that will for sure have 13 different types of herbs, four different kinds of salmon, and 37 different types of fruit – with a cost about triple your average Arkansas grocery price). 

Instead, the choices just kind of become obvious. Hmm. No fresh vegetables except a few zucchini, and onions and mushrooms – if you count onions and mushrooms as vegetables. Option: a grilled vegetable dish that we frequently do on the grill by wrapping the various veggies in tinfoil and cooking on top of the fire.

(Tinfoil. Super important. Good in general – provides a cooking method without any accompanying dishes. But critical at some places where there is no fire grate . . .)

Rice? Hmm. Again, not a lot of options. But we did find Vigo Yellow Rice – so that’s what we had. 

Salad? Again, only option: cole slaw. Problem with that is that it requires something like mayonnaise. Last time we had it Diana used a few mayo packets she had “borrowed” from a convenience store or deli – but it really turned out that you needed more mayo than that. Fortunately, our grocery store today had small jars of mayo for $1.99. Bingo. 

And meat? Again, not a ton of options – but they did have marinated pork loin. That works!

So we buy all that, bury the refrigerated items in our clothes bags for insulation, and ride the 28 miles remaining to the campground. (Reason we went to a store so far away is that Diana figured out that was the last option other than a few Dollar Generals . . .)

Upon arriving – it’s now like 5:30 or so – we set up camp quick, I find some firewood (which has turned out to be super easy on this trip – probably because, again, it seems that there is no tradition of campfires in this part of the country so there is no competition for firewood), and then we head off for a swim – a story I will finish with in a bit . . .

Cooking. Get the fire going so that you can start bigger pieces of wood and they can burn down into coals. Better to actually cook on the coals than on serious flames . . . But it takes a few minutes to get there.

While the fire is getting going, chop up the veggies and wrap them in tinfoil that is greased with the butter we obtained at the pancake place we went to a few days ago. (Purely Diana’s idea . . . 🙂 

(Side note on butter. Butter is a big thing in our house. Not margarine. Not butter suffused with olive oil. No, butter. There is usually 4-5 pounds of butter in our refrigerator. Any less than that and Diana starts to become very nervous. Running out of butter is pretty much a national disaster . . . So it should not be surprising that butter has been a bit of an issue in our travels. Usually when we hit the grocery store there is a discussion as to whether we should buy a one pound package of butter for our one meal. The problem is that they really don’t sell butter in smaller increments and when it gets to 80 or 90 degrees during the day the leftover butter is not going to survive for a second meal. Worse, you have to carry it and it is likely to liquify all over all of our stuff . . . Nonetheless, we frequently end up purchasing a pound of butter . . . with ¾ pound going into the garbage at the end of the evening. Though I did “borrow” some from a fellow camper in Iowa – which started a nice discussion and friendship . . .)

Where were we? Oh, yes, the rice. It is at this point that we get the stove going for the rice because that will take 20 minutes – after we add the remainder of the absconded butter . . .

And now the pork loin. I was actually pretty happy with how that turned out given that it is a pretty big, thick, cut of meat. Our pictures make it look like flames are going everywhere – but the reality is that the key is the water bottle. A little spurt on the fire controls the flames and allows for a better, slow-cooked meal. Turned out great tonight. 

That’s it. Sounds complicated, but took about half hour to make start to finish . . . Best meal we’ve had in days!

Now, we had to wash all of our dishes. But we only have two plates, two forks, one sharp knife, a big spoon, and our one cook pan – which we love. So, really, doing the dishes never takes more than about two minutes. 

Last thing I’ll say on these meals tonight . . . In normal everyday life in Minneapolis we rarely cook together in quite the same way. Everything is always a rush, there’s so much to do. And it’s such a shame – because cooking together like this is such a joy. 

When we first met in college one of the big contributors to our falling in love was the Sunday meal that we would cook together every week. We would plan it out, get a ride to Wegman’s from our friend Jim (the only one of our friends with a car) – the nearby grocery store – and then cook and eat together. 

One of the best parts of these trips is cooking and eating together like this . . .

Whew . . . Who knew we had so much to say on cooking? 

The riding today? Beautiful for the most part. But we did cover about 70 miles and while we are, I think, done with the Ozarks now, the Ozarks did not release their craggy grip on us without a fight. We went up some doozy hills today – the first being a 2+ mile climb, mostly in first gear. Ugh!

The campsite? Super nice.

But I told you I would come back to the swimming . . . 

The thing is, I always envision these more rural states to be more ____. Rules, shmools. But when we biked up and saw a postage stamp sized swimming area marked off in the lake I knew there was the potential for some issues. Because, as you might have picked up on, Diana (a) is not a rule follower on things like this, and (b) REALLY likes to swim across bodies of water – be they lakes, rivers, streams, rivers with really strong currents, lakes with rules against swimming across, etc. 

Sure enough, when Diana started swimming across I heard one of the children in the swim area ask, “What is that lady doing?”

A few minutes later the local Ranger Rick approached me. Somehow he knew that I was associated with the criminal swimmer heading to the middle of the lake. 

“I hate to be the bad guy, and you probably didn’t know, but you can’t swim outside the swimming area.”

I’m like: Who me? I don’t even like to swim. 

I thought about disavowing my relationship with Diana altogether: “Who is that deviant swimmer person out there?”

But would I do that to Diana? 

Anyway, Diana was hailed back to the swim area – and she actually came back. 

Afterwards she regretted it. 

“I should have just swam across. What were they going to do?”

Is it just me, or is this swimming thing the most likely thing to sidetrack our trip? One day Diana is almost heading to New Orleans via the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, the next she’s hauled off to Boss Hog by the local sheriff . . .

Maybe I’ll just stick to dinner . . .

Tomorrow? Little Rock and our friends and fellow blog community members Gunnar and Maria. We hear it should be a little flatter from here . . .

Anyone know anything about Little Rock? Museums? Restaurants? Barbecue? Let us know.