What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?

I just spent 3 weeks backpacking and a friend of mine put together one of the most unbelievable meals I've ever had on trail: Pesto pasta with sun dried tomatoes, salmon, and toasted pine nuts. It was by far and away the most delicious thing any of us had prepared and was put together with minimal weight. (heads up all links will avoid Amazon and will be the specific brand we had on the trip.) The salmon was individual packs with cracked pepper flavoring. Normally I try to eat low on the trophic scale with sardines or herring, but the flavor of the fish was pretty incredible. I just kept saying how good the cracked pepper element was. So fuck Chicken of the Sea for their exploitive fishing practices, but big ups to the corporate chef that dreamed up this flavor. We ended up using a variety of pastas for this dish over the 3 times we had it. I think my favorite (which could just be because it was the first time I had it) was the Barilla pasta. The little shells, filled with the rehydrated sauce and salmon, were little flavor bombs. For these I'm not sure of the exact brand, but these fit the bill and aren't amazon. For the sun dried tomatoes, we rehydrated them separately for 30 min before adding them into the pasta. They added a wonderful texture and flavor to the pasta. The pasta "sauce" was just a packet of dehydrated pesto sauce mixed into the pasta with some of the residual starch water. I'm sure there are makers other than Korrs, but it was pretty tasty. He also brought a bag of Trader Joe's pine nuts (no link, go in person) that we lightly toasted on one of the pot lids. Lastly, we added a pinch of parmesan cheese to each bowl which gave it a perfect stringy consistency. Total weight was probably about 2lbs (if you want to cut weight the pine nuts were probably the most unnecessary/heaviest part). Two thumbs waaaay up, 10/10 banger, would definitely take into the backcountry again!

Edit: Olive Oil!!!! Don't forget the olive oil, half cup should set you.

I've been experimenting recently with trying to incorporate more protein into my diet since I realised I get roughly 50% of the recommended daily. My favourite way of doing this was through gram flour (mixture of chickpeas and lentils) pancakes since the flour itself is 25% protein.

I blended a ratio of 60g:120g flour and water with a teaspoon of tumeric, salt, black pepper. Added some chopped up spring onions and fried pancake thin. (not fluffy american pancakes though)

They're really good with chutney and for more protien rolling a fried egg up inside is good.

My wife and I keep buying a whole head of cabbage to make some fish tacos, and throwing away 3/4 of it because we never figure out how to eat the rest. So this time I made "southern" fried cabbage with the leftovers. Recipe's abound online, but its kind of a leftover "whatever you got" meal, like fried rice.

I ended up using chicken apple sausage, red pepper, shallot, onion, garlic, and of course cabbage as the base. I spiced it up with chili powder, cumin, and plenty of salt, fried it in 1/4 stick of butter and some olive oil. It came out pretty good for a healthish way to finish off the cabbage.