Blather
Cooking for Guys
Live to Camp
Camp to Live
Poetry
and Other Lies
Optimus Crux Backpacking Stove
I have had this little stove for a number of years and it is still my go-to on those rare occasions when I choose to backpack in. The stove itself weighs 3 ounces and folds up to fit in the palm of my hand. It uses isobutane-propane for fuel. The stove stores in a...
Tarting Up the Ramen
Ramen noodles are a no-brainer pack food. Cheap, lightweight, quick and easy to prepare, you can eat them right out of the pot and cleanup is fast and effortless. I like to tart mine up just a little. Adding some oil and vegetables and maybe an egg to the mix doesn't...
Baked Couscous
Baked Couscous I've made this dish stove top at home and in the Dutch oven while camping. A savory couscous galette, it is an easy, flexible recipe. You can use any mushrooms, or none at all. The same with the meat: use whatever you have, or no meat at all. I've made...
Chicken & Dumplings
Chicken & Dumplings Chicken and dumplings may be the ultimate comfort food. We had this for Sunday dinner on our Halloween camping trip. To ease the work at camp, I did some prep at home, mixing the dry ingredients for the dumplings in a zip lock bag, and cooking...
Cranberries and Chanterelles
Cranberries and Chanterelles Cranberries ripen at the height of chanterelle season. It was inevitable eventually I would try cooking them up together. I'm only surprised it took me so long to get around to it. Ingredients chanterelles wild cranberries...
Good Evening
10/3/25 8:30 Clear sky cool, temperate weather, The moon waxing gibbous and approaching full. Just got home from the deep, dark forest. Mike and I drove north, looking for someplace we hadn't camped before. ...
Outhouse Camp August 2025
My brother Andy, my friend Jason, and I all had our birthdays within a week of each other. Obviously, a birthday camping trip was in order. It would take some effort to work out the logistics. Jason is employed at an orthopedic clinic, with weekends off. Weekends are...
Good Afternoon
Walter accompanied Michael and I into the woods to look for mushrooms. Even though we have had recent rainstorms, it was too dry and we didn't collect many specimens for the amount of ground we covered. We did find a few rubbery chanterelles, a small chicken of the...
WAAAM Fly-In 2025
My friend Russ Noe suggested I help him ferry people around the air show with our sidecars, so I did. We had a lot of fun, met some great people and saw a bunch of interesting machinery. Here is a photo dump. I may add captions later, when I have more time. ...
A Day In the Woods
We had been hearing rumors of boletes being found at higher elevations, so Amy loaded Michael, Walter and me into the CrossTrek and we headed north of Trout Lake. ...
Good Morning
11/28/25 8:30 41F (5C) Broad daylight. I slept in. It is a calm morning, with birds chittering, foggy around the edges. A light mist is falling from the gray clouds overhead. Yesterday the family was over, about thirty people, including seven kids. The house...
Good Morning
11/27/25 5:00 42F (5.5C) Cool, damp and dark. There is no wind. After a brief pause, it has started to rain again. Inside the tipi was dry and smoke curled from the ashes of last night's fire. I soon had a merry blaze ignited and piled hardwood on to hold it...
Good Morning
11/26/25 6:30 40F (4.4C) Cloudy, cool and damp. The downpour stopped sometime after I went to bed last night. The ashes inside the lodge were still warm this morning and I was able to easily rekindle the fire. The pumpkin rings didn't get wet and continue to...
Good Morning
11/25/25 6:00 36F (2.2C) Calm, foggy, dark. Amy is up. Traffic is beginning to move. I hear a truck's back up alarm somewhere down the road. Walter is barking. The rooster is crowing. I am still waking up. Everyone seems to be ahead of me this Tuesday...
Good Morning
11/24/25 5:00 40F (4.4C) Dark, clear, calm. The tattered remnants of last night's rain clouds lie like discarded rags around the periphery of a moonless sky pierced by an infinity of stars. ...
