When you’re heading out on an adventure, with days planned full of activities, you want food that will nourish and revitalize you. Hiking, climbing, swimming, paddling, gathering fire wood, lugging equipment — you’re going to be burning more calories than you think. An adventurer should plan for about 1.5 to 2.5 pounds of food — about 2,500 to 4,500 calories — per person per day, depending on the individual and their exertion level. Even if you’re car camping, you’ll still likely be exerting yourself more than on a typical day. Extra food is essential for any overnight trip, but a common beginner mistake is to pack too much food, forcing you to haul extra weight everywhere you wander. Only experience will allow you to dial in your personal food requirements, but Bob Frye, outdoors editor for the Tribune-Review, everybodyadventures.com and lifelong outdoorsman, offers expert advice. Day Hike Even if your weekend adventure won’t include any overnights,…
Watermelon salad perfect for summer
It’s unlikely that you’ll make it through the next five months without finishing a meal with watermelon juice running down your arm. Nothing says ‘warm weather is here’ quite like a thick slice of this quintessential summer fruit. You’re likely very familiar with watermelons sliced or in slushies, but chances are you’ve never had one in a salad. While it won’t go running down your sleeve, this sweet and savory, salty and spicy salad will definitely make it on your menu rotation this summer. It would also be a great dish to take to any summer get together. Watermelon is about 92 percent water and six percent sugars, but you benefit so much more than those figures let on. Adding more melon to your diet means a lots of vitamin C and A and betacarotene. Watermelons are second only to tomatoes for lycopene content — an antioxidant effective in preventing some types of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The thick-rinded fruit is also low…
A look at the growing artisanal salt trend
A half dozen salts sparkle in the sunlight at a stand in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. They vary wildly in texture, size, color, shape, and, of course, taste. The artisan salt trend has taken off in recent years, and with it, a deeper appreciation for the common mineral. Culinary creators are no longer limited to the taste of table salt, and health conscious consumers committed to the “farm to table” lifestyle have taken to them as a healthier alternative. Still, salt gets a bad rap among most. We’re told by doctors to avoid ingesting extra salt at all cost. But Kimarie Santiago wants to shake up that idea. The Long Valley, New Jersey woman is, of course, biased. She owns the growing artisan salt empire, Saltopia, but her passion for preaching salt’s health benefits, is infectious. And, she backs her bias with science. “I’ve dedicated my life to having my two…
Appreciate the onion during winter
Winter cooking can be challenging. But with less to work with, you can focus on what’s available to you. That’s when true creativity comes. You think beyond your usual dinner menus and get inspired by ingredients that might otherwise get overlooked. At mealtime, it could mean paying attention to one of the most common yet underestimated ingredients of everyday cooking: onions. I mean plain, round storage onions, the ones we rarely think about—until there’s a crisis because they’re not in the house. Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an American who wrote about food in 19th- and early-20th-century London, spared no drama when praising the onion’s essential nature. “Banish it from the kitchen, and all pleasure of eating flies with it,” she wrote in an essay called “The Incomparable Onion.” “Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest dainty to hopeless insipidity, and the diner to despair.” Not…
Deconstructing a Presidential Diet
In an era of healthy eating, President Trump is a throw-back to a time, when Americans ate whatever they want. He makes us long for the days when throwing back a BigMac with a Diet Coke and a bag of Lays didn’t garner judging glances from friends and familiar and casual passersby. Trump has been open about his love of fast food on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts. He famously broadcast a photo of himself tearing into a bucket of KFC chicken (while reading the Wall Street Journal), devouring a McDonald’s burger and digging in to a taco bowl. “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s. One bad hamburger, you take Wendy’s and all these other places and they’re out of business,” Trump told CNN. “I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard.”…