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.

Work work work

Happy New Year everyone! The work has began. We will find out in a couple of days wether we will get the contract that will keep us busy for all of January or wether we will be free to have fun instead. We already have a trip to New Orleans planned in a couple of days. Can't put a lid on our wanderlust. MerryCline has been busy helping her mom with appraisal work and Mr. Pickenpaugh has been teaching me his craft of pottery. It has been challenging and wonderful at the same time and I think I am finally getting the hang of throwing pots, but I still have SO much to learn. It has been raining regularly down here in Mississippi so it has been difficult for us to exercise the way we would like. MerryCline has been putting in a total of 5 miles every day that she can, 3 running and 2 walking. I go with her when I can but it has been upsetting my IT band so I have been getting 20 or so miles in on my bike when the weather allows.
We are still in the process of getting some companies to sponsor us. Our water filter company, Sawyer, has donated bags that go with our water filter that should get us through the entire trail. Now we are working on Salomon and Brooks to donate two or three pairs of shoes since we will be hiking so many miles in such a short period of time.
More to come later. Thanks for following and for all the love and support from our family and friends!

New iPad mini

Just picked up our new iPad mini tonight that we are planning on taking on the trail with us. Had to try out the new blogger app to see if it works. Seems to do pretty well. All is going smoothly here in Mississippi, just working so we will have money when we get off the trail and I am getting some quality time with Mr. Pickenpaugh while he shows me his craft of pottery. Planning on working hard through January then back to the grind on dehydrating food and getting our boxes together that Merry will be sending to us.

In the beginning.....

So today is Sunday, December 2nd.  We are working to get all the final touches on the boxes that my mom (Gail) will send to us for the northern half of the trail.  We went out and bought a bunch of protein shake powder that we will be having for breakfast, and we are distributing into each of the boxes, and then we will take them to the freezer so they will stay good over the next 8 months (hopefully).  We will be leaving Michigan and making our way south in a couple of days.  It has been really good to see my friends in Michigan that I haven't seen since we went out to Yellowstone this last spring.  It has also been hard to say goodbye to most of them knowing that I won't see them for over a year from now. 

On a positive note, we are very excited to be heading down to Mississippi. It is the next step in the progression leading up to the beginning of the AT.  We can't wait to see MC's family and bask in their love for a while.  We will be starting work soon which will make the time go by faster and help us to earn some of the money we will need while on the trail.  MerryCline just got back last night from spending a week with her sister Peyton and her husband Peter in SanFrancisco so we are ready to get back on track and start working on the supplies we still need to get for our pack weight to get down and the food and supplies that Merry will be shipping to us. 

The First Days

So this is the blog for Patrick and MerryCline (Run PMC) as we prepare for and thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.  This is our first blog, but we want to use this as a way to stay in touch with our friends and family as well as use it for a journal and probably a place to share our frustrations and accomplishments.

Today is Tuesday, November 20th.  We are currently in Michigan staying at my mom's house (Gail) through Thanksgiving and a bit after that.  We have been preparing food and supplies while we are here.  The plan is to have my mom ship the things we have prepared for the second half of the trail and MerryCline's mom (Merry) will ship the stuff we need for the first part of the trail.  It has been pretty humorous seeing all the stuff MC has been dehydrating.  My mom has a 5 tray dehydrator and we have a 9 tray.  So all 14 trays have been going non stop for about a week now.  We have almost everything together that we will need for my mom, but with the time constraints it has been difficult to balance between getting everything ready for the boxes and spending time with my friends who I won't see for another year unless they come to join us for a section of the trail.  We are making it work though.

So today's tasks of preperation involve vacuum sealing bacon in my moms FoodSaver.  We need to put the finishing touches on a couple of the dinners.  MC has found an ingenious way to keep our chips and crackers from crumbling.  Most of our stuff is shoved in ziplocks, but she has been collecting pringles cans because they are light weight and keep our chips safe, so we need to fill those up today too.

Most of our boxes are made of supplies that we think we will need while on the trail that we can't get when we go into town, or that we only need a couple of instead of buying a full package.  Then there is the food.  We decided to make most of our meals to cut down on cost.  Some of them look very delicious and others look like they could be a bit rough, but we are excited either way.  We are going to freeze the dehydrated meals we have prepared in hopes that they will stay good until 8 months from now when Gail starts shipping them.

Even with all the food we have been making, we figure it will only be about half of the food we will eat while on the trail.  The plan is that we will receive a package about every 2 weeks with a weeks worth of food in it and supplies that will last us as long as we can make them last.  Once our food from the box runs out we plan to hike a distance by then that will put us close to a town that we can go into to pick up food at a grocery store.  Realistically, we will also be shopping at gas stations or anywhere that we can get sustenance for parts of the trail, but from the research we have done it is possible to hike the whole trail without shipping anything.  Its just more expensive and you don't get freshish baked cookies and cinnamon rolls from your loving mothers if you do it that way. 

I get it that someone who wasn't planning on spending 6 months of their lives in the woods wouldn't understand why we are starting our food prep 4-5 months before we even start hiking, but that is what is required for the hike we want to hike.  We are very excited that the time is so close!! We have been dreaming and planning for this experience for about 2 years now.  We can't wait.

So this blog will serve as a way to stay in touch with our friends and let everyone know how we are coming with the preparation.  I don't think we will blog every day, but it will be good practice for when we are on the AT so that we can keep up with all of you wonderful people.  We could never do something this epic if we didn't have the friends and family that supports us.  We live an amazing, exciting, wonderful, blessed life and want to take advantage of every minute of us.  We hope y'all enjoy following us in our adventures.  Any positive feedback and support will be graciously accepted.  Love you all.