HOT

We are currently away on a 5 day kayak trip in Desolation Sound, we didn’t want to leave our followers with nothing to read – so here is a post we prepared earlier!

IT IS HOT.

Temperatures have exceeded 40°C this week in Vancouver. Rosie is not rated for such a harsh environment and has ceased to function. The weekend (particularly hot) was a struggle. We attempted to prepare and pack for our trip, but everything was taking much longer than usual as we kept having to take breaks to lie on the floor or stick our heads under the cold tap.

The heat didn’t help, but we were already tired after a busy week. As well as the sailing course and day jobs, we used any remaining time to play with our new toy – a food dehydrator! As we are planning a few overnight backpacking/camping trips this summer, we decided to branch out from our usual super-noodles for dinner. The dehydrator is basically a hair dryer in a box which causes the water in food to evaporate without being hot enough to cook it. You can dry ingredients or whole meals, the result is lighter and keeps much longer. The possibilities are endless, except for the fact that things which are high in fat don’t keep as long once dehydrated. Here is what we have created for our upcoming kayak trip:

• Snacks:
  • Banana chips
  • Dried apple (with and without cinnamon/maple/mint coating)
  • Dried peaches
• Breakfast
  • All of the above pre-mixed with porridge oats and various other ingredients
• Lunch
  • Dehydrated houmous (just add water and perhaps some dried spring onion or basil). The fatty tahini is a bit of a problem, so we are storing this one in the freezer until we leave.
• Dinner
  • Dehydrated mushroom risotto (no cheese or butter sadly)
  • Dehydrated chilli with quinoa
  • Dehydrated tomato and lentil sauce (lentil slop) with pasta
  • Just add water curry, made from dried veg, dried tofu, spices and shop-bought dried peanut butter and coconut milk (can’t make those in the dehydrator because of the fat content)
• Desserts
  • Peach and raspberry crumble (AKA rehydrated fruit topped with granola)
  • Raspberry and coconut milk rice pudding
  • Angel food cake dessert (dehydrated fat free cake soaked in rehydrated raspberries and cocoa powder)

In theory, all we have to do is heat some water, give the contents of each bag a bit of a boil/soak and we should magically get a proper dinner! We’ve tested the rehydration on a small sample of the meals and it seemed to work fine. The houmous is inexplicably much saltier than before, but other than that you can’t tell what it has been through. You will have to tune in next week to find out if we end up foraging for seaweed instead.

Because of the exciting sailing course last week (the final day was great, slightly too windy but we were eventually allowed out and had a great time) we forgot that we had been back to Golden Ears Provincial Park to see some snow caves on Sunday. That was a sunny weekend too, naively we thought it was hot, but it was nothing compared to this! Anyway, we thought it would be busy, so set off early and were glad we did as the queue of cars to get into the park when we were leaving at lunch time was huge.

The walk up Evans Valley trail was fun and varied, with forest, open clearings and a big rocky area to climb up. Near the top of the valley, there are several streams and waterfalls which melt the snow from underneath, leaving behind the snow caves. It was very tempting to explore deeper, but not sensible as the snow was pretty thin in places. (After writing this I read that the big cave in our photos actually collapsed the following weekend, injuring some people) On the way back, we stopped to jump in a freezing cold pool of snow melt. We would love one of those right about now.

The weather is forecast to be a bit more reasonable for our kayak trip, around the high 20s rather than high 30s. We’ve got plenty of sun-cream, big sun hats and water containers to store 35 litres, with a chance to stop off at a lake to get some more fresh water. We look forward to sharing some pictures next week, if Rosie doesn’t drop her camera in the sea.