Food time. Making Ghee or clarified butter.

So we are less than a month from starting our hike and we are getting to the point where we will be dehydrating the rest of our meals that will be sent to us. I'm not sure if I posted this before but because of the calories we will be burning while hiking, MC will have to consume around 3,000 calories per day and I will have to consume around 5,000 calories per day. That is a lot to ask when you aren't carrying a weeks worth of food on your back. So you might ask "how is this done?" Well, we are no experts but we know a bit about how to lighten our loads. You have to eat as many calorie dense foods as you can. Protein bars and oatmeal are good for breakfast. Snickers contains most of the essentials. Fat is what you want so that you can keep your energy up. This can be found in peanut butter, oils, nuts, and butter to name a few. Butter will melt, so you can make Ghee which is clarified butter that has the dairy removed. It is shelf stable (meaning you don't have to refrigerate it) for up to a year if made correctly.
I am going to try to attach some photos of us making this stuff. I am excited to see if it works because it will be able to add instant calories to any meal for me. Backpackinglight.com has been invaluable with their conversations about backpacking food as well as many other topics I have endless questions on.
3 more days of work and we will be free to spend all of our time preparing for our departure and learning more pottery! Yippee!

This is me scraping the white dairy stuff off the top of the melted butter.

This is what the white stuff looks like and what the clarified butter should look like underneath it.

This is us filtering the skimmed butter through a coffee filter. Not much seemed to pass through and we had to keep changing filters which wasted the butter stuck to the filter. We would like to use a cheese cloth next time and see how that works. (Update: the cheese cloth works WAY better)

Here is the final product. I used 4 sticks of unsalted organic butter. That didn't quite yield a pint. Would like to get more out of it next time. We will see.

This last picture is the clarified butter in one of our fancy squeeze tubes. It opens up wide on the opposite end from the cap so you can pour large amounts of whatever inside of it. We will see how it works for the ghee.

Weighing and working

It's getting close! Hard to believe that in less than 2 months we will be on the trail :). We have been preparing for the trail by weighing most of our gear, figuring out where we can save weight and where the comfort would be worth the weight. It is a tough balance to maintain. MerryCline and I have been practicing our meditation, one of the things we have learned can make a huge difference while hiking the trail. I think I have all the gear I need. Decided to go with the ultralight ExPed sleeping pad on top of the foam pad. Have had problems in the past with insulation regarding this pad, but I know with the foam roll underneath I will be fine. We spent a couple of nights camped out in MerryCline's backyard to see how our sleeping set ups worked out. That's when I learned that the Klymit inertia pad wasn't supportive enough for a big guy like me. I sleep on my side and stomach most of the time, so I need something that will take the pressure off of my shoulders and hip, and the thicker inflated ExPed seems to do that for only 2 more ounces. Those of you reading might be thinking "2 ounces, what the heck?" but over a six month trek where you hike 2100 miles, stuff adds up quick and you want to save weight where you can.

Also, we started a new job today working for Entergy. We have been very fortunate to get these short term jobs that pay so well. It really takes the stress off of wondering what we will have to do when we get off the trail. And I am already broke, so anything helps right now. New Orleans was our final trip that we took last weekend. We saw some of our good friends from the park and went to some amazing parades. They were experiences that I have never had before and will remember for the rest of my life.

I am going to try posting more as we get closer to our departure date so that it will be a regular practice by the time we start hiking. That's all for now. Check back soon for more updates on our adventures.