UPDATE: "Worlds Best Mac and Cheese"

After eating it twice (leftover last night) in the last couple of days, it has been decided that this is a "Don't need to make it again," recipe.

It has a high putz factor in the making...comparatively.

It has an exotic aroma (read cheese stink)

And it just wasn't that good.

Dilemma of taking food to, and cooking at altitude

 Marlys is soooo lucky, I have access to the vast interweb :>. This allows me to find new and very eclectic recipes for her to make. I say her because my culinary skills tend toward bean and franks, canned hash and so on.

Many of my researched recipes make it into the menu rotation, e.g. bacon pancakes (sans bacon), oatmeal pancakes and the now nationally known spaghetti and meatballs recipe gleaned off the Washington Post. That recipe has even made it to the improvised folks near Buuurmidji, in southern Canada (Minnesota).

Some though are quickly relegated to the "You know you don't need to make this again." category. Marlys even has a few in this group, like the infamous fish burritos, enchiladas, Mexican thing. I can't remember as my subconscious is attempting to block that eating experience.

You can't always hit a home run.

Today, before going to town for provisions (That's what grocery shopping is called that when the nearest grocery store, is a 2 1/2 hour round trip), Marlys had two new recipes on the list for testing, a "Pack-It-In-Pizza Hero" something from Rachael Ray, Marlys candidate, and "The Worlds Best Mac and Cheese" found after extensive research my moi.

A paragraph and a sentence in one, how efficient, except for the "word to comma" ratio, which is way out of whack. 1 is my goal.

The ingredients were extensive, I think...the two I remember was a Pillsbury pressurized pizza dough tube and a +$8 morsel of some type of French cheese.

Marlys was going to make the Mac and Cheese for tonight, ya! She wondered what else should be made with it as a main dish. Obviously, Marlys did not realize Mac and Cheese IS a main dish. I provided education.

Off we went to re-provision (guys don't shop).

On the way home something happened that would change the evening menu.

The Pillsbury Doughboy in the tube, decided to arrive before invited. Bingo, we were having the Racheal Ray thing for the evening repast.

Understand this is not an unusual situation. Ice cream also tends to erupt out of its container as it moves up to 8400'.

Update: Having now partaken of the RR PIIPH, I voted for it to be put into rotation, but Marlys says the putze factor may eliminate it from a recurring role.

Next time you see Marlys ask her about baking at altitude, especially the molasses cookies and the thingies for the last community party. Three attempts and then off to the grocery store to provision something that required no prep, to bad is had something green hitching a ride under the covers.

Boots @ 22 miles and +1000 miles

I know its been awhile, but anyone that says retirement is just sitting back and enjoying the scenery is sadly mistaken. Marlys and I have been busy. There were the Holiday's, which this year we spent here at Pinon Rock, and Derek was also around allot during the 5-6 week break at NMSU. We have also been tied up in search and rescue training, both the classroom incident command management type and field avalanche work (hard to do with the lack of snow so far this season) and shop projects, which will be the subject of another post.

The reason for this post though is boots. I got a new pair of boots for XMAS as backups, and I though I would do a longer term test review of them, as they live their life where man meets earth.

So why are these just backups?

About 18 months ago I bought a pair of Asolo Powermatic 200 boots from REI. I now have over 1000 document miles, on them according to mapmyhike.com. This doesn't include any SAR or 14er miles, only the thrice week;y walks (5.54 miles) that we do up here.  I have lived in these boots for awhile, so a few comment/observations maybe in order. 

These are a great pair of boots! 

If you went to the above link you probably noticed that mine, don't look like the one on the website...well that is because they were resoled at roughly the 800 mile mark. While getting them resoled, at Rocky Mountain Resole in Salida, I also had them put toe caps, to cut down on leather wear from the rocky terrain in our area. Also that is a Vibram replacement sole, versus the one Asolo puts on at the factory (Romania?).

Besides knocking the dirt off, I treat them with Nikwax waterproofing once a quarter. In the time I have had these they have seen their share of snow and stream crossings, and as long as I had on waterproof gaiters (Mountain Hardwear), and didn't stand around(top the boot, undermine the gaiters) in the water, my feet have never gotten wet. Until I got a pair of plastic Scarpa Inverno's last spring, used from a consignment shop, the Asolo's were even my avalanche/alpine boots. BTW the used Inverno's have seen the snow and rocks a number of times and they are, as they say "bomber".

Besides replacing the soles, the insoles have been replaced a couple of times. I have high arches, so without good support the balls of my feet take a licking, especially on downhills. I have been using the SOL Ed Viestus model and would highly recommend them.

On to the new backups. They too are Asolo's, mainly because the Asolo boot last seems to match my foot well, so I will probably stick with it for awhile.

While the Powermatic are backpacking boots (heavier duty), the Fugitives are hiking boots (read lighter). At this point I have 22 miles in them.

They are a real nice boot, but I can tell they probably would be harder on my feet when hauling a 24-hour pack around. They should work real good though when the weather warms up, in that my feet will stay cooler.

The thing about these boots is that even though they are a +$200 boot, Santa got them from Sierra Trading for about $80. A great boot for that price.

We are attempting to get a backcountry permit for the Grand Canyon in June. Its going to be a hard choice on which one to wear.