Brones Anna - Best served wild: real food for real adventures

Denver-based BRENDAN LEONARD is the creator of Semi-Rad.com, and his writing has appeared in Climbing, Alpinist, Backpacker, Outside, Adventure Cyclist, Sierra, National Geographic Adventure, and dozens of other publications. He is the author of several books, including Sixty Meters to Anywhere, The Great Outdoors: A Users Guide, Classic Front Range Trad Climbs, and Make It Till You Make It.

ANNA BRONES is the founder of FoodieUnder ground.com and Comestible, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, Adventure Cyclist, Adventure Journal, The Guardian, The Kitchn, and many other publications. Pacific Northwest-based, she is the author of several books, including The Culinary Cyclist, Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, Paris Coffee Revolution, and Hello, Bicycle: An Inspired Guide to the Two-Wheeled Life.

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Copyright 2017 Brendan Leonard and Anna Brones

Photographs by Brendan Leonard and Anna Brones

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-4930-2870-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4930-2871-9 (e-book)

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Printed in the United States of America

The authors and Rowman & Littlefield assume no liability for accidents happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the activities described in this book.

I WASNT THE FIRST PERSON TO SAY THE PHRASE HUNGER IS THE BEST SEASONING, but Im one of the most fervent believers in the conceptexercising and earning the right to replace calories, I think, makes eating a joyful experience. I have, at least once, calculated how many slices of New Yorkstyle pizza I could mathematically justify eating by running a 50-mile ultramarathon. (For the record, I also calculated the number of Chicagostyle deep-dish pizza slices justified by the same amount of running.)

I have run/hiked rim to rim in the Grand Canyon in a single day and promptly purchased two ice-cream cones on the South Rim to eat before even changing out of my running gear. I have downed decadent feasts in small towns at the feet of mountain ranges like the Tetons, the Wind Rivers, and the Sangre de Cristos after days or weeks of earning those caloriesand fantasizing about them.

I have organized and packed way too many calories for day hikes, weekend-, and weeklong backpacking trips and thought for a second at the end of each trip, Wow, I guess I could have left some of that food at home and not had to carry the extra weight.

And then I immediately thought, Nah. What fun would that be?

I find great joy in earning calories by moving myself under my own power in wild places and replacing those calories in the most satisfying way possiblewhether thats cooking my own recipes over a camp stove or shopping for cookies that I know wont crumble in my backpack and breakfast burritos that will slowly thaw in my pack as I make my way to the top of a peak for lunch. Oh, and of course, whats a cookie break without coffee?

With Best Served Wild, we wanted to share this joy of eating in the outdoors, or extreme picnicking, or whatever you want to call it when youre out there. Theres a famous climbing saying that the late alpinist Alex Lowe first coined in an interview in 1993: The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun.

Well, we agree with that wholeheartedly, whether youre climbing some gnarly peak in the clouds, kayaking down the coast, camping out of the back of your car for a weekend, or just going for a nice day hike to see if the wildflowers are out yet or if the leaves have started changing. And having the most fun means eating food you enjoy. Ive been on long trips where food was a little light, and I prefer to err on the side of gluttony, or whatever word you use to mean enough chocolate, coffee, and foods that taste so good I would eat them even if I werent 10 miles from the nearest road with no other options at hand.

Weve used that ethos to guide us in writing this book, including a range of recipes that you can make at home and take on one-day adventures, meals you can make when youre camping near your vehicle and weight isnt a concern, and meals to pack on longer trips where youre carrying everything in a backpack for several days and you want to pack the lightest-weight (but, again, tastiest) food possible.

Keep in mind that this is a book of recipes, not a book of rules. You have enough of those in your day-to-day life. We want you to have fun, not feel restricted. The recipes weve assembled in Best Served Wild are open to your own personal interpretation.

If, for example, you want to cover every recipe in here with Sriracha or some other hot sauce, thats up to you. We recommend maybe not doing that with the pancakes, but again, to each his or her own. If you want to add fresh chopped vegetables to either of the chili recipes, by all means go for it. If you want to quit your job, sell all your possessions, empty your life savings, move into a van, and live in it while traipsing around the American West and writing poetry, well, neither of the authors of this cookbook is judging you.

You might notice that the recipes in here are vegetarian. Thats because both of us are vegetarian, and thats the way we think about food. Were not that qualified to advise anyone how to cook meat. Instead, we designed recipes we believe work just fine without meat, but you should feel free to supplement and get as wild as you want when using this cookbook. If you want to add precooked chicken to the chilaquiles, please do. If you want to add bacon to the nachos, go for it. If it makes you feel better to wear a chicken suit and sing Flaming Lips songs while standing at your camp stove cooking all these things, you know what, its your life. Your campground neighbors may look at you a little funny, but you do you.