B Weiser

Conjure up that image of you in your back yard on a summer day with a gentle breeze rustling the leaves and a cold iced tea (or spirited cold beverage of choice) at your feet and the gentle sway of that rope-formed, wood-ended pendulum that nestles your torso in an ergonomic fashion and provides the both the comfort and the peace of mind that you, my friend, are living well.

Why would we not consider this for our shelter needs in the back country?

For those of you that typically camp above treeline, these thoughts are relatively moot as you simply need a static anchor for your hammock and without trees, well….have fun suspending your mass between two trekking poles or anchoring on two conveniently distanced boulders.

However, for those that are willing to pursue an alternative to your typical search-for-the-right-sized-spot, stake-out-your-perimeter, set-up-your-poles, and now adjust/tighten/tweak/twist, there is a certain simplicity to making a hammock rig your shelter of choice. Depending on your hammock bivy of choice, it kind of goes like this:

1. Find trees, the appropriate distance apart (but there is wiggle room here)

2. Tie a couple knots (Or don’t. More on that later)

3. Guy out your weather canopy

4. Tighten and recline.

Is this over simplified? Of course, but the point is for you to consider something different that may enhance your backpacking experience and the set-up is realistically very simple and potentially much easier in areas with heavy rock beds or dense 1-3 year tree growth that makes tent placement a chore.

Now, I am going to be the last person that tells you that a hammock is the end-all, be-all solution and that you can go ahead and chuck your tent in the nearest cylindrical garbage receptacle. I am just here to highlight my pros and cons of both and let YOU assign value on the components that you feel are the most important to your individual needs when afield.

First, the pros:

Reasonably lightweight and with no poles, the footprint in your pack is relatively small
Easy set up. With two adequately spaced trees, it take me 7-10 minutes to have the hammock and rain fly set up (using a Hennessy A-Sym)
Very good rain coverage. The hammock naturally reduces the area that you need covered just in the physics of hanging and thus it takes minimal material to keep you dry (and less material means less weight that you are toting around
Ground moisture is not an issue in wet conditions
Comfort by position. And this is where the debate begins. I was very comfortable to nap for a couple hours (mid afternoon siesta, anyone?) but all night was more challenging. I think you have to retrain your body’s expectations if you plan to sleep in a hammock routinely. The lack of a parallel support source is a little difficult to get used to. Think about it. What are we all used to sleeping on at home? A flat, minimally flexible, cushioned mattress. Some say that a hammock is the most comfortable night they have ever spent in the woods. Others are incredulous that anyone would subject themselves to such lack of support. I maintain that there is room for both.
Comfort by climate/temperature. Here is where I give the hammock a gold star. In warm or humid climates, it is significantly more comfortable (for me anyway) to have air flow surrounding you. How many times have you been on your closed cell mat in a tent in the middle of summer and have sweat, where you received no air circulation? The hammock is the great equalizer because your back can be as cool as your front!

Now the cons:

I tie knots about as well as a bottlenose dolphin so the fact that my ability to stay air-born depends on that does not bode well. However, there is this handy little gadget called a Figure 9 that was made just for us former Boy Scouts who had to cheat to get past the knot tying badge portion of our quest. So you can carry a few less ounces and be a good knot aficionado, or you can carry two Figure 9’s and rest easy that you will not be awakened by a sudden plunge onto the ground cover.
Dry gear storage is an issue. Without upgrading to a larger rain fly, there are no vestibules so you need to center your gear under your hammock (which just so happens to be where you will be entering and exiting from with a bottom-loading hammock like the Hennessy.)
Comfort by position (see above)
Comfort by climate/temperature. Great googily-moogily it is cold if you don’t insulate your backside when the temperature dips! They make quilts and pads to help with this but I just wanted you to be aware that sixty-five degrees with nothing underneath you is shiveringly cold….

There may be other pluses and minuses and as I tinker around, I will try to note them in the comments or elsewhere but I am left with thinking that, if chosen carefully, there are probably expeditions that you take on where a hammock’s simplicity and wistful ambiance are a good fit. Think summer trips along rivers or streams or perhaps as your shelter for canoe/kayak trips to get you off the shore and away from any tidal tendencies. Either way, don’t dismiss it as an afterthought and risk not experiencing something that could shift your perspective on how you experience the outdoors.

I’m a chef. I’ve never really wanted to be ok with that realization.

I’ve probably been a chef since I sat on the ‘toaster’ counter beside the stove at my Grandparents watching my grandmother fry and over-medium egg with perfect, crisp edges from the rendered bacon fat left behind by the generous slabs that had offered up their fatty goodness for my dippy-egg-to-be.  Or perhaps it was when she let us mix and match every ingredient we could reach without a step-stool, into a tongue numbing amalgam of flour, sugar, salt, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, pickled mushrooms, lemon juice and so on until we put it in the oven, baked it to a golden brown and we all sat down for a piece.  (I have a good poker face but nothing beats Grandma Weiser smiling generously and with approval after masticating what could aptly be described as a pasty spice bomb).

Point being, whether it has been the ability to always have access to a bounty of seasonally grown goodness (thanks to growing up on a farm with very diverse plant offerings) or the above mentioned memory that is seared into my conscience like diver scallops are seared to crisp, nutty brown edges in a wonderful froth of browned butter, I have always felt drawn to food.  I’m comfortable in its medium.  There is actually nothing else that I am more comfortable in.  Not parenting, not managing, not hiking, not anything.  The task of needing to put three moderately passable courses in front of 10-15 people in a little over a couple of hours may seem daunting to some.  I simply want to be shown to the pantry and left to create.  Hors d’oeuvres for fifty?  Awesome, bring it.  Breaking down a whole side of pork to shave dollars per pound off your cost? Merely a walk down my personal commercial kitchen Memory Lane.

What frustrates me is that I don’t really get to do it anymore.  Sure, I still cook at home when I can but adding a toddler to your evening reservation list changes things entirely.  And I still cook a little at work but mostly just doctoring up what someone is struggling with or taking the time to have a teaching moment about soup texture or how to effectively cook a piece of protein to ensure the balance of tenderness and moisture.

This last part is sadly, only temporary because at some point in the not-too-distant future, I will have new responsibilities that lie more along the lines of fixing our national healthcare system rather than discovering a new way to take a roasted pear and stuff it with bleu cheese granola for a salad course drizzled with reduced Sancerre and perhaps some balsamic syrup.

So the responsible side of me will continue down this nice career path that has been laid out before me…..but don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, food.  I’ll be back.  Don’t grow up without me.

I’m a preserver…a hoarder…a keeper of things. Especially things that I think can enhance their value going forward. So this dish is a snapshot of some things kept and some things fresh. I hope the taste is evident to the viewer/taster. It is really a simple pasta dish that incorporates a depth of flavor that we miss in the splurge of summertime freshness:

2 TBSP smoke dried tomatoes (see note) chopped
2 TBSP Red wine

-Place in bowl together and microwave for 30 seconds

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 TBSP olive oil

-Place in sautee pan and cook over medium-low heat

3 tomatoes of whatever you have in the garden, cored and diced
3/4 cup of tomato sauce…saved from the previous years abundance, presumably.
1 TBSP balsamic vinegar

-Add all of the tomatoes and balsamic and reserved liquid to sauteing garlic and oil mixture

-Simmer until aroma fills the room (additions of basil, fennel, ore oregano to taste)

-Season and toss with boiled pasta of choice

-Smoke dried tomatoes add depth of flavor, fresh add texture and brightness, sauce adds body and richness

*Note- I make smoke dried tomatoes out of Juliet variety ( a miniature plum tomato).  Smoke over indirect coals/wood for 1-2 hours at no more than 200 degrees and then finish in dehydrator)

After posting culinary ideas or perhaps a tweet about what I might be dehydrating on a particular day, I get requests that are usually the pretty boiler plate “You should do a cookbook on how to do X Y Z!”

It’s a great idea, it really is….but no one reads anymore.  If your food related tome isn’t cutting edge gastronomy or cutting edge simplification and sustainability (see: foraging and @hankshaw  ) NO ONE IS BUYING OR READING THAT BOOK!!!! (or at least not enough to make it worth your while) and you can’t do a book for your local/message board/blog family and assume that you won’t eat your hat on the investment.

So the question becomes “How do we want to receive that information?  How do we want to be taught from other experiences?  How do we want to learn? Do we want it in video format?  Do we want it in 140 character quips that link us to a longer editorial?  Do we want to flip pages with step-by-step pictures?

…and then….how does the rest of the US/World/any large entity want to learn?  Do they mimic the reader(s) of this rant?  Are they becoming standardized in one format or another?

Making a solo (cheap) How-To video is hard and time intensive…….Let me clarify:  Making a GOOD How-To video on your own is difficult.  Many takes, many angles, many mistakes….but is that what we want?  Is a book any better?  Are live demonstrations enthralling enough to have a take-home component?

Are we really wanting to learn? Or do we want the quickest medium that can give us just enough information to carry it forward conversationally while we have no intention of applying any of it?…………

No agenda of ‘eat more fish!’ here. I just like fish. I think it is a really clean canvas on which you can create myriad flavors. The flavors range from saline-clean to oily-‘fishy’ and a broad range in between that some try to force in to the category of ‘meaty’ or ‘steak-like’ which is mostly a marketing tool to all of us fat-XXX Americans to try and get us to buy fish. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT MISTAKE FISH FOR STEAK AND DON’T BE DUPED BY THOSE THAT ARE SELLING THAT BUCKET O’ GARBAGE!!!

Off my soapbox. My new reality involves a small child and trying to feed them what I feel is acceptable cuisine while not making 2-3 meals every night to please everyone who lives under this roof. I refuse to be Mac-and-cheese Dad or anything vaguely resembling that. That is not a slight at those who take this route. I simply feel that I have been given different gifts and if this is mine, my child is going to benefit from that or at minimum, experience it, if only to rule it out for future consumption. I may not be able to teach them prudent investment techniques or how to maximize their taxable income but I can make 2 star food out of 1 star provisions.

So I recently made butter crisped mahi-mahi. Ground bread crumbs, salt, pepper for the crust. Melt 2 to 1 ratio of butter to olive oil over medium high heat until the butter solids just start to turn brownish and develop that toasted flavor. Add coated fish and sear to seal in moisture. Turn, allow to brown and then place in 200 degree oven to hold until everything else is ready (and to finish slowly cooking through so you minimize moisture loss)

I wanted to use this a a collection point of simple fish/seafood recipes that will feed your children and wow your friends alike.

In the future, I will give more detail for:

BBQ Swordfish or Mahi-Mahi

Lemon-butter Seared Trout

Pumpkin seed crusted Salmon

Honey/Citrus/ Rosemary Grilled Salmon

Fennel dusted Shrimp

Cornmeal Catfish (which I know everyone and their mother will give their recipe for….fine…I am listening )

Maybe more…this is off the top of my head. Enjoy.