Archives January 2013

In Washington we stayed at a small orchard where we were lucky enough, even in early November, to find amazing apples still on the leafless trees. We scampered up dew-covered ladders to collect the bright red and green gems to dehydrate, mush and juice for the winter.

Here are the steps on how to dehydrate apples for dry storage.

Step 1: Pick apples. You want to go for the apples that don’t look riddled with bugs or more importantly slashed open by a dirty bird’s beak. Ground apples are okay as long as they are clean and bug free.

Step 2: Wash the apples. Even if you got them fresh of a tree, al la organic style, you can still find germs and bacteria on the apples that you’d do better to avoid. Washing is just smart with anything you’ll be shoving into your face.

Step 3: Slice ‘em up! We tried ours in rings at first by coring the apple. This was really time consuming and a bit of a bore. You can get way more done if you simple quarter the apples and then cut out the core of each quarter. You waste less apple this way as well. Then slice the quartered sections into thin, chip-like slices.

* If you’re going to take your sweet time, drop the apple slices into lemon water to preserve them while you finishing slicing up the apples. This keeps them from turning brown.

Step 4: Lay ‘em flat. Cover your dehydrator in rows of apple slices. The closer the better because they will shrivel up a bit once they dehydrate.

Step 5: Add flavoring. Apple slices taste great just plain, but you can also sprinkle on the spices for a bit of a flavor punch. If you dipped your slices in lemon water they are ready to adhere spice. If not, you can sprinkle on spices right away and the moisture of the apple will hold the spice in place. Just sprinkle quickly before the apple browns over.

We did cinnamon on a few rows, ginger powder, orange peel powder and of course cinnamon-sugar on a few rows. I was also curious to try cayenne pepper on a few just to see what happened. I’d also recommend nutmeg, allspice and if you put vanilla extract in a spray bottle with some warm water you can get a sort of apple pie flavor once they dehydrate. Be creative and try your own mixes.

Step 6: Let your dehydrator go all day. 6-8 hours on the low side and overnight (10-12 hours) if you have a slower or less efficient dehydrator. We had two different models. One was nearly done in 7 hours, the other needed double that. You’ll have to play around with your device. You want a finished product that is NOT gooey, but still bends. You don’t want a chip, you want a bendy, fruity slice. Keep sampling until you get one that you love then hit the off switch.

Step 7: When you package up your finished apple slices, make sure you seal the container. Since it’s a food product it can still go bad, and can’t sit out on a shelf for too long. If you won’t be eating them within a month or two toss them in the freezer inside a dry bag. When you thaw them you can either soak them in water to rehydrate them (great for pies) or else just let them defrost on their own then eat them as normal.

We have several friends who are vegetarian. Having always silently contemplated whether they were truly sane to have given up meat, we never really thought we’d en up going vego on our own. It’s such an extreme decision. Here’s what happened to put us on that course.

First, we lived in China for a few years. In China, land is scarce (because there are so many people and China has less arable land than the US) so space for growing livestock is limited. Meat is thus used to flavor and add texture to staples and vegetables. It’s not really a main course kind of thing. Once we got back to the USA we were overwhelmed with meat. Every meal centers around it! Steaks, ribs, pork chops, crab legs, meatloaf—every entrée on every menu was a meat dish with a few vegetable support dishes tossed in more for color than consumption. Naturally, we put on weight and felt a bit sickly from all the damn food when we got back to the States.

Suddenly ballooning up is scary. Add to that a general sickly feeling and lethargy and you have the perfect storm of motivation to change something. My lovely aunt in North Carolina is a vegetarian and I recalled that she had read Skinny Bitch before deciding to go vego. Likewise our friends in Eugene, OR (the home of the original hippie) are veg-heads after having consumed the same literature. I downloaded a copy on my Kindle (I’m so chic) and started reading.

I knew slaughterhouses were gross. My grandpa worked in a hotdog plant and swore off hotdogs as a result. But what shocked me was the odd sexual stuff people in the slaughterhouses to do animals. I love animals, and wouldn’t ever want to hurt one personally, let alone contribute to anything as perverse as the processes used to stun, kill, and dismember the meat used in our food. But aside from the cruelty, the animals are so stuffed with steroids and antibiotics and medicines that the meat isn’t really safe to eat anymore. The healthiest thing to be, I think, would be a meat-eater who hunts natural game and otherwise eats garden supply.

So, after reading the book out loud to Mike on our month-long road trip we decided to give the Skinny Bitch diet a try. It’s not just vegetarian, it’s vegan (no animal products like cheese, milk or eggs, butter, etc) and no chemicals (alcohol, high-fructose corn syrup, sugars, etc). The diet is nearly impossible while on the road, we learned, but once stationary it’s much easier to be healthy, organic and meat-free.

We filmed our progress (and failures) along the way. We’ll load the videos soon!

We recently did a massive road trip across the motherland of America. Here are the absolute highlights for over a month on the road.

• Bear Baiting in Big Bay
• Niagra Fall, in Canada
• Mount Washington Resort, in New Hampshire
• The Freedom Trail, in Boston
• Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, in Philadelphia
• The Capital on a lazy Sunday, in DC
• Carmen, in Winston-Salem, NC
• The Ocean on Halloween, in Wilmington, NC
• Drinking PBR during the day in Nashville, TN
• Seeing Al Green, in Memphis
• The flatlands of Oklahoma after seeing Oklahoma!
• The world’s creepiest wasteland, outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico
• Singing with Hippies, in Boulder, CO
• Touring Vail by Moonlight
• The Columbia River Highway, through OR
• The beautiful rainforest drive on I-5N

Of course the moment we hit I-5 and headed North we were struck by the most amazing rain storm. This only gives credit to the rumor that it rains all the time in Washington. I’ve tried to convince Mike that people over hype the rain, but every time the poor lad has been in Washington he’s been drenched to the bone. Bad timing or global warming?—Or could it just be that Washington is a rainforest of beauty that needs a bit of rain to keep it so wonderfully green. Mike prefers to think of it as vampire territory where everyone has blue-tinted skin and edgy dispositions (as well as an addiction to meth, cults and an affinity for collecting broken cars for lawn ornamentation.)

Washington, the Evergreen State, is just that—it’s green forever. No matter which way you look it’s hard to see a color other than green. Of course, if you cross the mountains and head East you’ll find a desert out near Spokane. But who would go out there when the rainforests, mountains and shores are to the West?

We spent several weeks exploring the many ways to stay dry in a rainforest. What we came up with was this—don’t go outside. If you do, you’ll get drenched. Even on a sunny day Washington is wet. They call it “liquid sunshine,” but of course it isn’t sunny, Washingtonians just don’t know any better, bless their souls.

We also spent a few great weekends in Oregon, which is just like Washington, but with more dedicated hippies. Eugene, where Nike has it’s headquarters, is full of vegan restaurants, dreadlocks and birthing centers covered in dream catchers. It’s a lovely place for anyone who votes blue (or refrains from voting because it’s too much a part of the establishment).

We took a drive up to Seattle one weekend and ended up visiting the Matador restaurant as well as the Kickin’ Boot. Both are awesome, by the way. And Seattle remains one of my favorite cities in the world. If it weren’t so expensive it’d be a great place to strike a claim. But alas, the land is so green, so beautiful that it’s much coveted and in that regard, unaffordable.