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Food Talk by Jen Schaeffer

It's cold. It's dark. And if you live in the Pacific Northwest, it's wet. Hiking is about the last thing on many of our minds. However, this "inside" time of year is a good time for prep work for the upcoming hiking season -- if you get yourself motivated! Hey -- the days ARE getting longer, really.

The Food Talk article in the February 2002 Gazette talked about some winter food activities. One item on that list worth repeating is dehydrating your favorite winter meals. Many winter meals tend to be soups or stews or casseroles, perfect for experimenting with in your dehydrator. When the weather turns nice and you suddenly are chomping at the bit to get outside you'll have some of your favorite meals ready to go.

This is also a good time of year to ask yourself some questions about your food and cooking system from the last hiking season: What did you really like last year? What was a complete bust? Anything that you used to like and now shudder at the thought of? Anything you promised yourself you'd try out next year (which is now here!)? Did you see some food item that someone else had on the trail and you wanted to try? Want to try a new stove? A new pot? No stove at all?

It's worth a few minutes this time of year to mock up some menus for a weekend or whatever trips you might have planned and see what falls out. If you are interested in trying out some new techniques or new equipment, time to surf the web for reviews, go shopping, or fire up the stove on the porch to try out a new technique.

One thing I want to try this summer is more fresh food, especially for weekend trips. I'll pass along a tip from a friend that I think may become a staple for me for weekend hiking -- she calls them "rice balls" - - I think of them as redneck sushi.

Take a nori sheet (the same seaweed sheet used in sushi), slap a big spoonful of rice in the middle, jam a piece of something tasty in the middle of the rice and then wrap the nori sheet around the rice in whatever means you'd like to make a handy little package. Because nori sheets are so brittle, I don't think the burrito style of wrapping will work (if you want the ends all tidied up). I drag one corner of the sheet toward the opposite corner and tuck it under the rice mound; do the same with the other corner, then roll the thing toward the open end. You can also dab a little water on the loose ends to get them to stick.

A couple of notes on ingredients:
Nori Sheets. The "sushi" sheets are already toasted, the regular nori sheets are not toasted, but you can do that if you'd like in the oven or over your gas range. It's not necessary to toast them -- it's a matter of preference. Check out your local ethnic market for deals on nori -- I've paid $5 for 50 sheets.

Fillings -- lots of things are possible here:
Smoked fish (I like smoked salmon chunks).
Pickled plums (a preserved salted plum you can find in Asian markets called Umboeshi, also available as a paste).
Tofu. Cook raw tofu or use baked, dried, or fried tofu if you can find it.
Other smoked or cooked meats (ham, roast beef ends, etc.).
Other sushi ingredients -- pickled vegetables or surimi (fake crab meat).
Fried or hard boiled eggs. Just plain rice with a dab of wasabi or mustard.
If you want, you could season your rice sushi style with vinegar, sugar, and salt to your taste.

How long will they last? I think it depends on your filling -- treat them like sandwiches, although something with plain rice or a non-protein filling will probably last longer.

Happy trails everyone -- or at least happy dreams of the upcoming season!