TRAIL MEAL: Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki

This is not my first time sampling the Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki meal. It's one I've had before and enjoyed. Truth be told, I haven't encountered a Mountain House meal that wasn't acceptable. Their Macaroni and Cheese is a little uninspired, and I haven't heard great things about their egg-based breakfast (But I'm really not an egg fan myself, so this is no great loss to me), but every entree I've consumed has ranged from acceptable to excellent. Initially, in a post to Google+ almost a year ago, I rated the Chicken Teriyaki in the "Acceptable" category, along with their Beef Stew. I felt that compared to other chicken teriyaki I'd had, their offering was a bit bland. But I felt that the addition of a little extra sauce would fix that right up.

So, Today, I added a bit of inexpensive teriyaki sauce/marinade. I just used a bottle of the store-brand 'essential everyday' teriyaki that has the same consistency as soy sauce. The ideal form to carry on a backpacking trip with you would be packets like these. But I've yet to find a commercial source for them (and by that I mean I really haven't gone looking in any significant capacity). Alternately, I could see using a small bottle such as this to contain a small quantity of teriyaki sauce. 

Like most Mountain House entrees, it required heating up 16 ounces of water, and waiting 10 minutes  after adding the water. Bob wanted to see the BioLite in action, and in particular, to see if I could start the biolite with dryer lint. As with every time I've used the stove, it took more time to harvest and break the wood than it did to boil the water. I did have to re-fuel it once, mid-boil and it was a little reluctant to start, but that dryer lint works really well at jump-starting the biolite if it smoke-stalls. Once I had the water boiled, I dumped it in the bag, sealed it and mushed the bag around a bit to distribute the water everywhere. I also like to fold the top of the bag over a couple of times, shake it around to mix it up good, and invert the bag upside down. Makes sure the water gets everywhere in there.

After I'd finished waiting 10 minutes for the food to rehydrate, I opened it up and added the extra teriyaki. just a few shakes of the bottle seemed to be enough, then I stirred it in and taste-tested it. Even the cheap store brand teriyaki sauce put a lot of life into the meal. It meshed well with the very mild teriyaki flavor already included. I imagine that if I used the thicker more flavorful teriyaki that I usually cook with, it would have turned out even better. (usually the KC Masterpiece Honey Teriyaki Marinade is what I use. Even though it says marinade, I tend to just use it out of the bottle as a grill sauce, or in a frying pan with my meat). Either way, the additional sauce made for a MUCH more flavorful meal. I recommend you give the meal a shot without additional sauce, try a couple bites and if it seems weak to you, like it did to me, add a bit of the extra sauce, stir it in. I did not regret it.

Bottom line? Yes, I would recommend it. at $7-9 per meal (depending on place of purchase) it's more costly than yesterday's rice side and salmon, but it cooks up faster and requires less fuel to produce. If you're looking for the simplest dinner you can make on the trail, something like this is pretty ideal. With the addition of a little extra flavor, the Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki meal makes it into the "Excellent" category. You can buy this on REI or Amazon.com, or find it at your local suppliers.

GEAR REVIEW: Harbor Freight Firestarter

I've always been a big fan of preparedness, it's the main thing that stuck with me from my time in the scouts. I also distinctly recall a whole wilderness preparedness phase around the same time after reading a book about a plane crash in northern Canada, where the protagonist had to survive on their own in the wild for some time. Don't really know when I was going to get stranded in Canada, but I wasn't going to let that get in my way. I remember being given a magnesium firestarter as a christmas present at the time. I liked that, it seemed a good way to start fires in the absence of matches. Don't know where that first one got put though, I'll probably stumble across it some day.

They still sell them though. Any sporting goods place or general purpose store with a camping section, or outfitter such as REI will sell you one for $8-10. This struck me as a bit expensive for something so simple. I did some looking around, and it turns out that Harbor Freight, the cheap tool store has them for less than $3. That's cheap enough that I'd buy one for my hiking pack, one for my car, and one for my car camping supply bin.

They come with a little serrated striker tool. At first, I appreciated that, thought anything that saves my knife from wear was a nice inclusion. But in today's field testing, it didn't really hold up well. Yeah, you could make sparks on the flint strip, but it was awkward to hold and didn't strike them very well. It also sucked at trying to bite into the magnesium. Actually, everything I brought today had a hard time with that. After giving up on the little green striker they included, I tried a small multitool I had with me, figuring it was better to wear on that blade than my good knives, but even that proved difficult to strike good sparks from. It didn't want to shave off much magnesium either. Finally, I just gave up and resorted to using my Buck Pathfinder 105, which worked far better than either of those. I should have just used that to start with.

Fortunately, the dried beech leaves we harvested to catch our sparks caught very readily, and the magnesium part wasn't necessary. Now, I could swear that the block I owned two decades ago gave up magnesium very readily. I'm not sure if they changed to a harder material for all the firestarters, or if it's just the cheap harbor freight ones, but be prepared for the magnesium to be very reluctant. it may take some time preparing before you have a pile ready to catch sparks. Or bring some dryer lint instead.

Despite the very solid, even reluctant, magnesium block I would in fact recommend these. It's hard to beat that price.

Starting the fire:

Clearing at Plamann Park where we built our fire:

Boiling some water in my snow peak pot:

Video of the firestarter in action

Available from Amazon.com or at a local Harbor Freight Tools.