Gingerbread – that dark, molasses mistress of holiday cookies. We made ours using the following recipe, handed down through generations of holiday cookie and outdoor enthusiasts.
Below is a little recipe for lovers of the holiday cookie.
Get Leigh's gingerbread recipe here
You can almost taste it
Are you picking up sticky marshmallows covered in pine needles? Is melted chocolate oozing down your Icebreaker? Perhaps you are tragically losing graham cracker cookies into the fiery depths of Mordor (that's the campfire)?
Are you looking for a Smore solution?
Yep, already my last article. My trek ended with a beautiful sunny day atop the imposing Katahdin, Maine's highest mountain and northmost point of the Appalachian trail. I would never have reached the end without a bunch of little useful accessories, and especially without eating. Here’s my equipment review of "Cooking and More”.
Breafast fit for a Crusher
The most important cooking accessory for a hiker is unquestionably the stove.
Read on about The Crusher's food tips on the Appalachian Trail
Spring is in the air, and that means it’s time to skip the coffee and reach for a refreshing smoothie instead. The milkshake’s healthier cousin, smoothies are a great way of getting all those fruits and veggies into your diet when you don’t find yourself making time to eat them.
Smoothies are great as a between-meal snack, or as a surprisingly filling breakfast before you start work. They’re nutritious, cheap, easy to make and most importantly, delicious!
I am crazy about beans. To me, they represent comfort food and did you know this fun fact? When beans are accompanied with rice they make a complete protein! If you make chili at camp one night for dinner, you can use the leftovers to make a bean burrito for lunch. Another option is mixing in a few small ingredients to make veggie burgers.
Don’t get too excited, I know most of the veggie burgers you may have tried could taste like cardboard or a stale Frisbee. However, if you make them yourself, you know exactly what’s in it and they will taste delicious without requiring much time to prepare or cook.
Try telling me that does not look delicious! Photo by Seelensturm @ Flickr
Yes, beans do have some unfortunate side effects like causing the person sleeping next to you to leave the tent for some fresh air. However, if you wash your canned beans well, and soak your dried beans overnight before cooking them, you will remove the phytic acid that causes gas.
A really healthy and easy recipe follows if you want to make them from scratch.
Read more about Veggie Burgers
When you are out in the wilderness, it’s important to be prepared. You don’t want to end up eating Ramen noodles or Cup o’ Soups when you can easily warm up with your own delicious variety at camp. By equipping yourself with canned or dry beans, and vegetables that are easy to bring to camp such as carrots, onions, and sweet potatoes-- you won’t have to worry about spoilage.
My personal take on cooking, (which you will soon catch on to) is that it shouldn’t be something to fear and you don’t always have to rely on recipes if you understand a few basics. Most importantly, my advice is to trust yourself and constantly taste the pot and adjust the flavours according to your unique taste buds.
Yes, soup for you. Image by stu spicack @ flickr
I like to throw beans/legumes or grains to make a thicker soup and get in some extra protein and nutritional value. You don’t have to worry about the right proportions of bean or grain to water in this case because it is in a soup and the consistency doesn’t matter. If you need more liquid, add more. If you want a creamier consistency, use a handheld immersion blender to puree your soup. If you are at camp, you can add a can of coconut milk for extra creaminess.
Read more about this tasty soup recipe
You’re out in nature, in touch with your animal instinct, and you just finished your hike. Upon reaching into your pocket to satisfy your hungry belly, you take out the granola bar you packed. As you chew, you proceed to read the ingredients on the wrapper and to your surprise, realize you have just eaten what sounds more like a chemistry lab experiment.
Nutriciously delicious?
Read more about the Power Balls, granola bars in a sphere format
In Gaspésie it’s an obligation to eat seafood, provided that you like that sort of thing. Who doesn’t like to tuck into a nice big, freshly caught lobster? We do, and certainly took maximum advantage of our situation. We tried, with our feet in water much too cold, to coax one into the cooler, but it was in vain…. After only a few seconds, we decided, due to our numb, swollen-red feet, to go to the nearby fish store and pick a monster out for ourselves. The choice wasn’t difficult as there were only lobsters in the tank. We’ve tried to cook them in all sorts of ways and our favourite is on the grill. This worked out well as we had brought one along with us!
Read more Second Supper in Gaspésie: Lobster
Everyone has fantasies. Things they would like to accomplish before they die. I certainly do. I would like to finish hiking the Appalachian Trail with Juan, I would like to spend a summer working with the girls from The Boutique North Face in Montreal, cycle from Montreal to the Hershey’s Chocolate factory in Pennsylvania, actually give a public speech where the audience is naked, so on and so forth, you get the idea. Many fantasies can be quite secretive, selfish and even ridiculous in others’ eyes, but I guess that is what defines them as our own personal fantasies.
Well this afternoon I can say with confidence that one of my fantasies has become reality. I know, I know, anyone from Montreal is hoping that I will be spending time with those beautiful girls, but no unfortunately not- I’ve never been that lucky I’m afraid. This afternoon I walked into my local coffee/bakery and found that a sandwich had been named after me (read: not me, but Altitude Sports). Please keep your applause until the end. That’s right, there is now officially an Altitude sandwich ready for your consumption at Les Cafés La Fayette in the Promenades de Mont-Tremblant development.
A little backstory if you’ll permit. Like the sun sets in the West, I always order the same ham and cheese baguette sandwich for lunch. It didn’t bother my undeveloped palate, but apparently it did bother the chef: “When the heck are you going to order something else?” I get thrown at me one lunchtime. Momentarily flabbergasted, I stupidly mumble something about the rest of the menu not being to my liking. Oops. Anyone who knows me, knows that quick, idiotic retorts is part of my charm- needless to say I make many enemies with my charm. But instead of getting a thrashing with a fresh baguette I got the ultimate question: what would I like? Now asking this to a self-indulgent, pretentious, wannabe writer like myself, gets the old noggin rolling.
So here it ladies and gentleman, the pièce de resistance: it is healthy, filled with eggplant, grilled peppers and sun-dried tomatoes, partly wild with a cream cheese sauce, and undeniably raw and honest stuffed between La Fayette’s 9 grain bread. To me it epitomizes who we are as Altitude Sports. To be honest I have not figured out how we are going to ship the Altitude in the mail, but I will work on that at lunch after I lick my fingertips dry.
Thank you very much La Fayette for not only fulfilling a life long fantasy, but for creating a piece of culinary history.
Read more Sandwiches and fantasies
Gaspésie! Long hours in the car, magnificent maritime scenery, bona fide villages and people: this was what Philippe and I wanted on our journey. As we had decided to live from day to day without planning anything, we prepared our first dinner before we left home: a little something applicable to many dishes.
Where the sea begins...We knew we wanted to camp most of the time in national parks, so we equipped ourselves with a grill for cooking meat over the fire, good cooking utensils, our camping stove – MSR Whisperlite international – and a good pot. Not to mention the cooler we used to drag our belongings around problem-free, and in particular, to keep the beer cold….
First Dinner in Gaspésie
We prepared chicken Tandoori drumsticks. They were frozen so we could put them in the cooler several hours even 2 days in advance without worrying. This way they marinate longer, taste better and are juicier.
Magalie at the grillChicken Tandoori Drumsticks
For two hungry people
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes.
Ingredients
8-10 frozen chicken drumsticks
750 ml plain yogourt
1 head of garlic, minced
5 tbs. Tandoori spice mix
juice of 2 lemons
Directions
1- Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.
2- Put the chicken in a zip-lock bag with the spice mix.
3- Close the bag and mix everything around so the drumsticks are well coated.
4- Keep the chicken cold until you’re ready to cook it.
5- To cook the chicken, the best is over a fire or on the barbecue. Shake off the excess marinade from the drumsticks and cook them until the meat comes easily off the bone.
Accompanied with baked potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil, this chicken is finger lickin’ good.
*translated by Judy Altitude
Magalie and baked potatoRead on about Chicken Tandoori in Gaspésie
It's lunch time all day long at Altitude Sports on Saturday.
In a can!
Altitude-blog.com and Altitude-sports.com invite you to wake up your taste buds. Oh yeah ! All day Saturday, along with our friends at Gastronomie Le Naked Lunch, we're having a taste test of camping food. Come in and savour some of Le Naked Lunch's great meals. With dishes like Thai Chicken and Coconut Soup or Duck Brest Smoked Meat, amongst others, you know you're in for a treat
Read more about how to savour some Naked Lunch
Are you looking for an easier way to cook while camping or hiking? Would you love to make sautées but don't like the hassle of carrying around messy oil or butter? Well, our friends at La Guilde Culinaire have a great solution for you! It's called Mycryo cocoa butter and if you hadn't heard of it until now, join the club! All I know is that after having learned about it, it's on my must-have list.
Find out more about Mycryo Cocoa Butter
Sweet Potato Hash
Sunday morning was gloriously warm and sunny. Appropriately, Leigh Partington, (another loyal altitudiène), Carie, one of Leigh’s friends, and I brought our picnicking equipment, i.e., camping stoves, fuel, coffee, food, blankets, cutlery, cups, plates, bowls etc., to Jeanne-Mance Park in Montreal where we proceeded to cook ourselves up a delicious little breakfast. Trying to recreate the most authentic camping scene that I could, I wanted to think of a recipe that would be appropriate for folks spending some time out in the trees, or along the beach, or in the mountains, and that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Learn more about Judy's Sweet Potato Hash
Are you looking for a quick and easy way to cook your own energy bars before your next hike? Here's an idea from our friends Nabil and company at La Guilde Culinaire, a cooking school two blocks away from our internet warehouse in Montreal.
Click here to see the energy bar recipe
I know I know, everyone eats oatmeal when they’re backpacking, less when they’re car camping, but at some point or another someone is going to cook oatmeal. Why? Because it’s nutritious and delicious, not to mention drop dead easy. However, eating oatmeal the same way all the time is tedious, and in order to boost its mmmm factor and caloric intake I’ve made some additions. There is no ahead-of-time prep for this meal before leaving on your trip and although it takes slightly more time than making plain old oats by themselves, I hope you enjoy the process of cooking as much as you will the eating.
My Oatmeal with Coconut and Flax
Learn more about the Oatmeal with Coconut and Flax
Hang on to your nuts!
No, not those ones. We’re talking survival here, not leisure. Survival tools can come from some of the most unlikely places. 
You can add this handy little item to your gear and you won’t even notice the difference. It packs light, takes up very little room, and if you don’t need it, well then just eat it. So what kind of nuts are we talking about? Almonds.
Learn more about survival with almonds
