Week #13: Another week of food.

Well, I took down the damn sexy tent on Monday morning and it was with some regret that I went off to the airport, bade it farewell at check-in and moped my way back to Hobart. Even when I had the tent back, it wasn't the same tucked away in a pack as it had been lying out in the Adelaide sun.

So... maybe I shouldn't be allowed to use tents.


The week was spent buying, cooking and dehydrating food. I had to spend a lot of time buying it because I could only fit so much in my bag for the ride home each time. It really is pretty bulky and heavy before monsieur dehydrator and I get around to turning it into proper hiking food.

The menu was finalised and industrial mass-production of tiny shriveled vegetables, different coloured powders and strange containers of what looks like dog biscuits began. I've been preparing bits and pieces for a while but now the dehydrator is running more or less non-stop, only pausing to change its setting to match the latest load of trays.

I think I mentioned before that there are going to be eight different main meals, cycled through every eight days along the way to give us our requisite four weeks, plus some emergency meals.
Here's the menu:

• Wallaby Chilli Con Carne with Polenta and yoghurt (guacamole having failed)
• Sweet and Sour Vegetables with Rice
• Vegetable Curry with Rice
• Moroccan Spiced Couscous with Vegetables
• Wallaby Bolognese with Spaghetti and suspicious-dehydrated-cheese-stuff
• Sweet Tagine with Moroccan Fruit and Nut Rice
• Spicy Noodle Soup
• Aloo Palak and Daal with Rice

Also doing a few desserts. They won't be every day and there isn't as much variety in them. Also, two of them would only be done immediately after a food drop.

• Passionfruit Cheesecake
• Mango and Coconut rice pudding
• Choc Ripple Cake
• Honey Dumplings

I spent some time working out the cheesecake, grinding, drying and mixing ingredients until I had produced a recipe I was satisfied with. Then, what did I find on the supermarket shelves the very next day? Powdered cheesecake filling, just add milk. Oh well. I ended up making an adaptation of their mix and my recipe. It's tasty and lighter than the one I was planning, but it does detract somewhat from the achievement...

I now have a pack-based charging setup running. My 12W Sunload fabric solar panel arrived, and is possibly a slight overkill but it is capable of running the Unipal charger under overcast conditions. Tested with light cloud cover at 6pm, it was powerful enough to charge my camera battery. The panel clips onto the pack (and generates enough off ambient lighting while facing away from the sun to still work while walking north, provided it's a reasonably bright day), charger goes in top pocket.

The fabric for my groundsheet arrived as well. I'll hack that into pieces and sew it up soon. That's about it for now.