Here is one promise of future fodder, suggested by our potential contributor, Karends, who invokes the spirit of a Hemingway character.

I have lots of cooking stories. Being flown in by bush plane with just my dog to the middle of the Alaskan wilderness and walking out with my dog along an old gold mining trail (mostly gone now). But I did run across an old cabin with a stove from the 1800's in it, and cooked on that. My photos are in storage. I also worked at a fire lookout, and cooked on that wood stove (same brand as the Alaskan cabin, but from 1930, so had some improvements from the late 1800's model.)  

I walked across Oregon and cooked some fun meals by campfire. Have built an igloo and cooked dinner there. Lived on a sailboat and had to make some interesting meals as food supplies became low. Best meal on the sail boat though was sailing up to a shrimp boat early in the morning and getting a kilo of shrimp still wiggling from the catch. Yum!!! When I was 12, I went octopus hunting and that was yummy (did not like how they were killed though). I came around a corner and there was a duck crossing the road and I was not able to stop and managed to get truck tires to miss the duck. But the duck did not duck to get low enough to safely let the truck pass over, and well... I stopped to help him, but he was dead. So, I took him home and plucked him and cooked him.  

Had some interesting meals climbing the largest mass of granite in the USA (north ridge Mount Stewart). The beginning meals were fun; but we ran out of food, and water, so had to go without for a few days (missing the water was really bad – world starts to spin). Made some fun meals on multi day bicycle trips.

Tried to eat once when it was 50 below zero with wind-chill and we were climbing, climbing frozen waterfalls in the gorge: that was not possible, because our bars were frozen solid and it was too cold to think of getting the stove going to warm things up. I have learned though, that with onion and garlic and some olive oil one can take almost any food and make something tasty, from the comforts of one’s home, to strapped into a stove on gambles in the middle of the ocean being tossed around in a storm, or from a wood stove or lightweight backpacking or mountaineering stove. I would have to say Garlic is my favorite: and it is lightweight.

The Sand Mountain Fire lookout is a 1930 historically restored lookout on a Preserve in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon, sitting right in the middle of the Oregon Cascade Range. The lookout is completely off the power grid of course, and is powered by solar panels and a small (5 gal) propane tank. Everything is carried by backpack on foot to the lookout, even water, which is really heavy. The propane powers the gas cooking stove and refrigerator. Showers are taken outside on the balcony. A wood stove from 1930 is also used for cooking, and heating. I was there from spring until late fall (november), so had to haul everything up there, including wood, in waist deep snow. Very cool.

karends (k@arends.org)   

Photos courtesy of Arends Publishing

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