Category — outdoor cuisine

I just realized that Labor Day is right around the corner and I haven’t even thought about making plans for the long weekend. Although I’d love to get some biking under my belt, I think I’d prefer to stay close to town instead of scrambling to come up with ideas for a destination that won’t be packed for the last holiday of the summer. Besides, it’s been a few weeks since I last visited the farmer’s market, so Labor Day is a great excuse to invite some friends over and grill up some market-fresh veggie kabobs along with steaks and burgers. There is nothing like outdoor cooking and entertaining to celebrate the end of summer.

I basically want to do a fuss-free yet fabulous evening with friends. I think the best way to pull it off is with some food that is relatively easy to cook, like steak and kabobs, with a couple unique side dishes and cocktails. I still haven’t set the menu, but luckily I found these great Labor Day party planning links:

• Food Network: Labor Day Recipes
• About.com: A Labor Day End of Summer Party
• All Recipes: Labor Day
• Rachael Ray: Labor Day Party

Here’s a great way to take urban outdoor cooking to the next level: solar ovens. Box cookers and parabolic solar cookers are a fantastic way to slow cook just about anything without the risk of accidentally burning the food, and they cook without raising the gas bill or the temperature in the home. Solar ovens are a great addition to regular gas grills, too: you can slow cook chili, baked potatoes and corn all day, then just grill steaks or burgers for a few minutes when you are ready to eat.

It would be especially nice to have a solar oven installed in the home so that it can be left unattended, but I don’t know if there are any contractors who will retrofit a wall to make a solar oven…yet. However, people with fenced-in backyards shouldn’t have too many problems beyond curious neighborhood cats and squirrels coming to investigate.

Check out these links for more information on solar ovens and solar cooking:

• The Farm.org: Solar Box Cooker
• Solar Cookers International
• The Solar Cooking Archive
• Solar Now, Inc.: Make a Pizza Box Solar Oven
• Journey to Forever: Solar Cooking Resources
• Cook with the Sun
• Treehugger: the Sun Cook Solar Oven: Cooking without Carbon

Thanks to Safiyyah for her inspirational post about solar cooking on Green Vaccine!

I have seen quite a few mentions of the Mike and Maaike Baja BBQ Firepack (NotCot, Core77, MoCo Loco, Josh Spear, et al) and I am really interested in seeing one in action. According to the Mike and Maaike site, the firepack is:

“made from 100% recycled biodegradable paper pulp, the package contains 2 lbs of natural lump charcoal and features an integrated chimney that creates perfect hot coals without the aid of chemicals or lighter fluid.”

That sounds fantastic. But I have yet to find a price or details on where to buy it, beyond “gourmet supermarkets.” However, I have found a few links about eco-friendly outdoor cooking that might be useful as I wait for the Baja BBQ Firepack:

• Buy eco-friendly charcoal
• Get Your Grill On at Sierra Club
• Use a Bucket Grill to conserve space and energy
• Use solar power! Make your own solar oven or buy one from Sun Oven

The spike in temperatures this weekend has convinced me that I need to start looking into outdoor cooking options quickly. I LOVE to cook, but the kitchen and living room turned into a sauna last night while I was making dinner. I need a new grill and I need it now! It’s the first piece in the puzzle that is my dream outdoor kitchen. After years of messing around with hibachis and other portable charcoal grills, I want a nice big gas grill with side burners, possibly with charcoal or smoking capabilities. I know I am starting to sound like Hank Hill (”Taste the meat, not the heat.“), but I can almost smell the grilled salmon, corn and kebabs.

My top 5 grill choices, based on features and reviews:

• Ducane Meridian 24″ 3 Burner Natural Gas Grill
• Weber Summit S-650 Natural Gas Stainless Steel Grill
• Napoleon Prestige V Freestanding Gas Grill
• Vermont Castings The Grand Signature Series 5 Burner Gas Grill
• Viking C4 Outdoor Cooker with 41″ Side Cart, 2 Side Burners and Charcoal Cooking Capsule

The sad reality of course is that I am a bit limited by space right now, and any one of the above grills would totally dominate the space we have. So, they’ll have to be on the wish list for a while, while I consider a more practical option like the Weber Spirit. It seems more suited to smaller spaces and it’s definitely easier on the budget.

I realized the last set of Bishop photos didn’t really demonstrate just how large the boulders are. In this photo from the Sad Boulders, the cars in the distance give some idea of the scale of the boulders.

The weather was amazing. It was hard to believe it was late November. At night, the temperature dipped below freezing, but during the day in was in the high 70s and incredibly clear and sunny. It was absolutely perfect for scrambling around on the rocks and hanging out and working problems. Here are a couple of photos of Partner-in-Climb (PIC) having fun at the Sad Boulders:

We couldn’t find this problem mentioned in any guides, but there were some chalk marks on a nearby problem, so it might be an area that is still under development. I didn’t try this problem because what you don’t see in the photos is the sheer drop on the backside of this boulder. Yes, I am a big chicken sometimes. But that’s OK with me.

We had to head back to camp around 4:30 PM because the sun was going down and the temperature was dropping quickly, but we did have several great hours enjoying the sunshine, the boulders, and the scenery. Here’s a pic I took at sunset back at the camp.

The dusty crash pad in the foreground is truly one of the best investments anybody who spends any amount of time bouldering can make. It’s the Black Diamond Mondo Crash Pad and it rules. When not actually using it as a crash pad for bouldering, we have used it as a “camp couch” and a camp bed. It’s really amazingly comfortable. When the straps are underneath the pad, you can’t feel them at all. The first time we used it as a bed, I thought it would be a “princess and the pea” situation and I’d be turning all night, but the foam or something seems to absorb the straps so it’s just pure relaxation.

It came in very handy on the cold Bishop nights as well. It’s about 5 inches thick so it was a nice layer of protection against the cold ground. I highly recommend it.

I wish we had the chance to stay for a longer time on our last day, but Big Old Dog was hobbling around so we decided to head home a little early to give the poor guy’s hips a rest. He loves to run around when we go out exploring but he usually needs a day or two to recover from all the fun. I totally understand how he feels.

I saw a golden eagle on the side of the road just as we turned onto 395, but I fumbled with the camera and wasn’t able to get a photo. It was eating some roadkill, so it might be best to just leave it to my memory anyway. The site didn’t really do much to kill my appetite;I think I was too much in awe of the eagle. We stopped at Schat’s Bakkery on the way home and loaded up with treats, including a sticky pullaway bread that was mostly devoured by the time we were back in Los Angeles. I am really looking forward to the next road trip to Bishop. Bishop is really an amazing place.

Ok, I admit the title is a bit alliteratively cheesy, but I am in that kind of mood. I haven’t really had a chance to write about our Thanksgiving trip to Bishop yet, other than a few notes here and there, so here is the first official installment of “Bishop
Boulder Bonanza 2007″.

The trip from Los Angeles was amazing. The full moon was rising as we drove through the desert near Edwards Air Force Base and I caught this pic:

It really set the tone for a fantastic trip. We arrived in Bishop well after dark that night, but the moon was so bright details of the mountains were still visible. I don’t even think I used a headlamp most of the time when we were setting up the tent. The Pleasant Valley Pit campground is set in the middle of a lot of desert scrub and vegetation, and under the light of the moon, it was so easy to navigate all the way around the campground, from the dumpster to the restroom and back. I walked out into the brush very, very late in the night because I couldn’t resist getting to a place where I could feel like I was completely alone out there in the middle of this beautiful moonlit plain surrounded by the Sierras. Walking off marked trails is usually a huge no-no with me because there are a lot of important microbes in the soil crust and I don’t want to screw up the ecosystem, but it was such a rare opportunity I could not help myself. While I was in the brush, I found an almost new Thermarest sleeping pad that must have blown away from someone’s camp site and was therm-a- resting on some bushes, so I picked it up and brought it back to our site with me and went back to bed. The owner of the Thermarest, unfortunately, was nowhere to be found the next day, so I still have it.

The plan was to get to Bishop at night, sleep until the sun woke us up, then spend the day bouldering at the Happy Boulders. We did manage wake up early, and instead of making breakfast at camp, headed to town to Schat’s Bakkery. Now, I have only been through Bishop twice before on my way to and from Mammoth, but I did stop at Schat’s Bakkery both times, in addition to sampling the one in Mammoth (which, by the way, is not affiliated with Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop, but that is another story entirely. Suffice it to say, there seem to be some “eccentricities” among the bakers that will become apparent if you visit.) My partner-in-climb (PIC), who lived out of his van for 2 years to dedicate some quality time to climbing and bouldering and spent several months camping in Bishop, had not been to Schat’s Bakkery even once before. We needed to remedy that right away.

As I suspected, it was total “love at first bite”. I got a ham, egg and cheese croissant and a mocha latte, while PIC had a cherry danish, I believe some sort of breakfast sandwich, and a caramel latte. Neither of us are huge coffee drinkers, but Schat’s has AMAZING coffee and it was the perfect accompaniment to their light, buttery pastries. I don’t know if it’s the fresh mountain water, or the Farmer Brothers coffee with the slightest hint of cinnamon, or some other secret ingredient, but man, that is some fantastic coffee. They have a little outdoor patio where were sat to savor our heavenly treats, and we overheard this teenage straight outta the OC whining that she wanted to go to Starbuck’s. Silly Ugg boot wearing child!

After that breakfast, it was pretty much a sure thing that we would be eating breakfast there every day for as long as we were in Bishop. We got back in the 4Runner and headed out in search of the Happy Boulders. After a few minutes of map time fun and a short detour in the wrong direction, we finally made it to the first boulder spot, the Sad Boulders. We decided to just park and explore the Sads for a while, since there weren’t a lot of people there yet and we could have our pick of problems. The name “The Sad Boulders” is a little misleading; they may be “sad” in comparison to the Happys, but they are really fun in their own right.

OK, gotta work for a bit… To be continued…