What's cooking?

We're dehydrating like crazy!

Food and Time

Lockdown on the dehydrator

We've been dehydrating lots of food for the last week.  This thing has been running non-stop, and we're going to need to buy a bunch of food along the way even still.  To date, here's what we've managed to crank through this shiny new dehydrator:

• 12lb sliced strawberries
• 12lb ground beef
• (2) 5lb cans tuna
• (6) 12.5oz cans chicken
• (2) 5lb cans peach slices
• (2) 5lb cans pineapple bits
• 5lb broccoli florettes
• 5lb asparagus
• 3lb string beans
• 2qt yogurt
• 1lb hummus
• 10 jars apple sauce
• 5lb shrimp
• 2lbs worth of beans turned into stew

Next on deck will be some various banana purees.  We bought a lot of bananas with the intention of slicing them for use, but we didn't get to them fast enough and they've started to get a bit mushy.  Now we have to mix them with other fruits (strawberries, pineapples, oranges) and make fruit leather out of it.

We chose an Excalibur 3900 food dehydrator because it's huge, has good reviews, and it's simple to use.  I looked around a ton and settled on buying a refurb direct from Excalibur.  It's actually the place to get the best deal on the ParaFlexx liners that I could find as well.

Despite all of this effort though, Mindy and I will have trouble making enough food in time for our trip.  We'll either buy some dried stuff to supplement what we make, or rely a bit less on maildrops and pickup food in town.  Decisions decisions....

Some info to begin with

We decided we were going to hike the Appalachian Trail at some point in November this year.  We were visiting friends near Sacramento and watched a special about it on Netflix.  Shortly after that we headed south to L.A. and spent a day with a friend who was in the midst of preparing for her thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. (Read about that at http://www.pcta.org/)  The combination of being on a long trip like that and Sherri's talk about the adventure she was preparing for really gave us the impetus we needed to start planning our next adventure

After hemming and hawing over a date and how we wanted to go about this, we decided we are going to head out in a southbound direction on June 21st this year.  This is a very short amount of time for prep for two out of shape 3rd shifters like us, but hey, if it wasn't for the last minute We'd never do anything at all!  Southbound is not the traditional choice, but hiking the other way would have necessitated starting earlier in the year.  Also, we like the idea that there will be less people in this direction.

At this point we're still very busy dehydrating food and procuring gear.  We also need to make sure all of our business at home is taken care of for the 6 month period between June 21 and the end of December.

Maine to Georgia, 2188 miles and a lot of prep work to go.  Oh, and we leave in 35 days

Well...

Here it is, this is where you can finally come to find Mindy and I talking about our adventures.  We love to travel and love to talk about it.  We like to hop in the car and drive obnoxious distances to go to Burning Man, visit friends and family, and to go eat random food.

Flying is pretty annoying, it's expensive, uncomfortable, and you have to be in the mood to let a lot of underpaid folks violate your rights.  It makes me mad.  Mindy just doesn't really like it.

Due to our dislike for air travel, we end up traveling by car a lot.  Driving 3 days straight to get to the west coast really allows you to see a lot of neat things.  If you have the time to stop here and there, the sights just along the main highways themselves in this country are spectacular.

That's probably what lead us to the silly decision to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, from Maine to Georgia (because why go with the crowd?)  Taking your time to go from point A to point B is worth it.  We're going to try it on a grander scale than a 3 day drive -- A 6 month stroll

-Drew