Wednesday, May 8th. 10:30am

Finally some overcast skies.  I never thought I'd say that, but I've been cooking in the sun-which is still promising to come play today.

Last night I hit a local tavern about 10mi north of Roseburg, OR, where I met some locals.  One older man, Dennis, let me camp out on his yard where I had water and power.  Dennis, looking the type that has survived the last hundred years of nuclear fallout, also had a smattering of chickens and gave me a dozen eggs to help me on my way.  Quite a score for $7 worth of beer!

I'm aiming now towards the coast... Sort of.  I'm hoping hwy 42 won't be too hilly, but Google Maps laughs at my pathetic desires.  We will see...

Pan-Seared New York Strip Steak




I forget which town I was in when I picked this up, but it was a nice little butcher who carried some excellent bacon and locally farmed eggs.

After riding around with it wrapped up for nearly 4 hours, I figured it had reached a good maturity and was ready to be cooked. I made some tea, and then coated the steak liberally with crushed garlic, herbs de provence, salt, and black pepper.




When the stove was free, I got my egg pan out and brought it up to a medium-high heat. A little butter in the pan, then laid that steak down, and just let it sit for a good 7 minutes, until the aroma of chard meat and sweating herbs filled my campsite.




Finally, I flipped it once and reduced the heat to low, covered it and let it cook that way for about 10 minutes or so. Checking the temp. by feel (I like a rare), I slid it on to my plate then added more butter to the pan to scrape up all that excellent flavor.


In my lust and hunger, I forgot to get a shot of the finished product, but it was great. Also good, was I kept half of it for the morning, and fried some pototoes & eggs over-easy to go with it. A great way to start a day.

 Curry Lentil soup has always been a favorite of mine. This one is rather simple, but it gets the job done and taste great after biking.

The first thing to do is get your basic mirepoix together.  In this case, I used 3/4s yellow onion, 2 sm. carrots, 3 stalks celery, all fine diced.



At this point, I fire my camping stove up (it takes about 5 minutes to get going), and begin getting my soup pot hot.

Then I peel a couple of cloves of garlic and slice them very thin. If I had ginger, I would throw in about a thumb's worth (size of your thumb), but I use what I can. Add some olive oil to the pot and toss in the garlic. I like to put mine in first and get it a bit aromatic, before adding the mirepoix.



I then add about 2 TBL curry powder, 2 TBL garam masala, 1 TBL oregano, 3 packets of "burger king table salt", and a bouillon cube.


I then remembered that I had a tomato getting all soft and mushy from travel, so I chopped it up and threw it in. About an hour and a half later, we have soup!

I added a few squirts of Frank's Red Hot in to it as well, since the vinegar works well with lentil soups.  And obviously, this is extremely basic.  When I want to add some real flavor, I like to add things like garbonzo beans, cilantro, lamb, mint, bay leaves, spinach, cauliflower.  There's a lot you can do with curry and lentils.