Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to Me

My parents gave me the best gift ever this year--an Excalibur food dehydrator!  And, here's the best part...they had it delivered to them.  My mom will be handling all of my resupplies for the hike and will be doing all the dehydrating as well!  Hopefully I can squeeze in a pre-hike trip to visit them and play with help prepare some meals in the dehydrator.

I found it interesting today that my mom texted about wanting to experiment with cabbage in the dryer...and I wanted to dry some cake!  I suppose between the two of us, I will have a pretty well-rounded menu.  The temptation became too great today, so I baked a spice cake using applesauce in place of oil (fats are not supposed to be good for drying).  I cut it up in small pieces and I'm trying to dry it in my oven.

Supposedly after they are dry they can be processed in a food processor or blender until they are powder-like.  Then, small amounts of hot water can be added to reconstitute the cake.  No, it won't be light and fluffy, but might just taste like a cake right out of the oven that was cut into before it cooled.  Yes, I know all about that :)  I've even been known to eat "cake" before it goes into the oven.  Hmmmm...maybe I could just skip a step and pack cake mix...

More Supplies

When REI has a sale, hikers respond!  I needed to spend $100 to earn a "free" $20 gift card.  I accepted the challenge.  The list of what I need for the hike is a lot longer than $100, unfortunately.  This is what I chose, and what was delivered today:

To the left--and being blinded by the light--is ironically my headlight.  The larger package in the middle is a waterproof stuff sack for my sleeping bag.  My bag got here a couple weeks ago.  It's still in the box!  The box, by the way, weighs more than the bag.  I hope there's some additional packaging in this stuff sack package because it's not as light as I'd hoped.  In the orange, a small flint.  The two bottles are soap, Dr Bronner's Magic Soaps, or so the bottles say.  Supposedly they are organic and can be used for body, clothes, dishes, or anything that needs cleaning in the wilderness.  The zip-o-gage, front right, is a small thermometer.  It weighs next to nothing and I like knowing the temperature.  Wish I would have had this on the hike in Washington.  Would have loved to know the night time temps.

Training is ongoing.  Six days a week it's either running, walking an incline at the gym, or lifting weights.  Many days the dogs get walks too.