July 4, late snack. Some really outstanding eggplant spread on a bit of bread. Robin and Shivani brought this to Danny Vinik's. Wow.
July 5, breakfast. The usual.
July 5, snack. A fresh white peach.
July 5, dinner. Salad.
July 6, breakfast. The usual.
July 6, lunch. Fish tacos from La Salsa. They do this weird double-wrap tortilla thing, which I just don't get. But the tacos are good even if you only use one tortilla.
July 6, dinner. Hamburgers and corn-on-the-cob. Chez Jams. It's not hard to make a good hamburger, but so few people bother to even think about it. Adding a bit of milk and bread to keep it moist seems to be the key (along with using ground beef with enough fat).
July 6, dessert. Fresh fruit, and a bit of whipped cream. Fresh fruit in the summer is really outstanding.
July 7, breakfast. The usual, plus some fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.
July 7, snack. Some picholine olives. Very nice. Small, a bit briny, and tasty.
July 7, late snack. A fresh white peach. From Trader Joe's. Good.
July 7, dinner. Peach, cheese, sausage.
July 8, breakfast. The usual. Plus a glass of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice.
July 8, snack. Some olives.
July 8, lunch. A "Prime Baggins" roast-beef sandwich with horseradish sauce, lettuce, and tomato. This is never as good as I hope that it will be. The chicken sandwiches are all better here, as is the BBQ sandwich.
July 8, lunch dessert. A chocolate chip cookie. Jan is in the background. And some iced tea. The tea at Baggin's is often very good.
July 8, pre-dinner snack. A nice white peach.
July 8, a snack of some dates.
July 8, dinner. At Rosa's. Salsa and chips, of course, plus 2 carne seca enchiladas. No rice or beans.
July 9, breakfast. The usual.
July 9, dinner. Some rigatoni and a tomato-basil-mushroom sauce (from a jar). In the San Bernadino mountains, at Barton (not Fink) Flats. With Jan and Sam.
July 9, dinner. A green salad, supposedly "Caesar" from a bag, at Barton Flats Campground with Jan and Sam.
July 10, breakfast. A Clif Bar. Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch. I actually also took a spoonful of some abyssmal and disgusting low-fat strawberry yogurt that Sam brought, but then passed on the rest of that. No picture, because it was truly too gross.
July 10, lunch. A turkey and pepper-cheese sandwidth, with mayo, mustard, tomato, and lettuce, on toasted bread. Very good, especially after hiking for 3 hours.
July 10, dinner. Dehydrated mexican chile/rice/chicken, rehydrated and served at Dollar Lake (with Jan and Sam). I don't really know how it tasted, but after hiking for 8 hours, it was great.
July 10, dessert. A dehydrated dark chocolate graham cracker cheesecake. Rehydrated for 13 minutes. This was really very interesting. Tasted like cheesecake, although I'm not sure why. The texture was wrong, but not too wrong. At Dollar Lake, San Gorgonio Wilderness area, California.
July 11, breakfast. A Clif Bar. And espresso, made with Bruce's stove-top espresso maker. I also used hand-made sugar (something I picked up in France a while ago) to add to the incongruity. The espresso and Clif bar were good. In comparison with other energy bars, Clif bars are really head-and-shoulders above the rest.
July 11, lunch. Cheddar with carmelized onions, Gruyere, and Manchego. Served with picholine and dry cured black olives, filberts, dried apricots, dried figs, and dates. On Wasa breads. Oh, plus artisanal sausage. This hits the spot at 11,000 feet.
July 11, dinner. From Backpacker's Pantry, Organic Tofu Pesto (on tagliatelle noodles). Not as good as the other dehydrated stuff, but not unacceptably bad. The basil doesn't seem to travel well; I think it was strong and biting rather than smooth the way it should be in a good pesto.
July 11, dessert. Hazelnuts and dark chocolate. Goooood. Worth carrying all that weight for.