BRT Insights - WW Kayaking & Hiking

Use Sauces for a Burst of Flavor on your Zucchini Chips !!

Thin slices of cucumber, zucchini and the other summer squashes can be dried in a food dehydrator to make delicate snack chips with very subtle flavors (i.e. too bland for me !!). Adding various sauces on the raw zucchini veggie slices before dehydration can produce spicy veggie snack chips with some excellent bold flavors. So far I have tried hot pepper sauce, wasabi horseradish sauce, worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard and extra hot Chinese mustard. Some of my favorite sauces for making chips from zucchini and other veggies are Tabasco Chipotle Pepper Sauce, Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce, Beaver Extra Hot Wasabi Horseradish, Dynasty Chinese-Style Extra Hot Mustard, and Patak's Original Hot Curry Paste.

The flavor of the sauces mellows considerably when the snack chips are dried, so I was surprised how much sauce I needed to add to each zucchini chip to get the high flavor intensity that I wanted. Sauces that are thick like catsup can be applied in quantity on each snack chip. Vegetable slices can be marinaded overnight in sauces that have a watery consistency, but lots of flavor gets left behind in the marinade when these slices go into the dehydrator. Thin watery sauces can be thickened with tomato paste and/or onion powder if necessary to enable more sauce to be applied directly on each vegetable slice prior to drying. This way all of the great flavoring becomes part of the snack chips. The sauces dry down and stick tightly to the dehydrated chips, making these spicy, raw vegan chips a neat and tidy finger food that can be enjoyed as hors d'oeuvres and appetizers for parties, while watching TV, working on the computer, etc.

Low Fat, Low Salt and Low Calorie Homemade Zucchini Snack Chips

Most of the sauces I've tried so far on veggie chips have little or no salt, sugar or fat. Many sauces are also wheat-free, gluten-free and low carb. That makes these spicy veggie chips much more healthy to eat than many popular store-bought snack foods, and likely also suitable for people following various restricted diets. The intense flavors and low salt content in my spicy veggie chips recipe seems to quickly satisfy my urges to snack. Maybe I end up consuming fewer calories from these vegetarian chips than I would from many types of store-bought snack foods.


More about:
• Pickle-Flavored Zucchini Chips and Dried Pickle Recipes Made in a Food Dehydrator. • Healthy Hiking Snacks Made in my Food Dehydrator - BRT Insights.
• Food & Drink for Outdoor Activities - BRT Insights.

Tags: zucchini chips, healthy snack foods, tv snacks, food dehydrator, homemade snacks, zucchini recipe, dehydrator recipe, snack food recipe, hot pepper snacks, wasabi snacks, barbecue snacks, vegetarian chips, veggie chips.
Tags: zucchini recips, dehydrator recips, zucchini chips, dried vegetables, vegetable chips, spicy snacks, spicy chips, low salt snacks, low fat snacks, worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, hot mustard, diabetic snacks, diet snacks, low calorie snacks, raw vegan, wheat-free, gluten-free, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, low carb.

Labels: food-drink

Law would create a new National Conservation Area in Yolo, Lake, Napa and Mendocino Counties in California.

Lets support the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Conservation Area Act (HR 5545) introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in May by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, U.S. Rep. John Garamendi and U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey. This would provide National Conservation Area status for the federal lands from Lake Berryessa to Snow Mountain, tying together the Cedar Roughs Wildlife Area, Cache Creek Wildlife Area and Snow Mountain Wilderness areas. The act will bring together the three federal landowners in the area – the Mendocino National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation – to coordinate management of 319,300 acres of federal land. Pia Lopez kayaked the Cache Creek Wilderness Run to experience some of the area that would be protected in this proposed National Conservation Area. See: A conservation opportunity amid the wilds of Cache Creek - Sacramento Bee 09june2012.

Map of Landmarks in the Berryessa Snow Mountain area.

• Map book: California Maps - Atlas & Gazetteer by Delorme, 2008.

• Online map user instructions. Click and drag to reposition this interactive map.
• The tool on the left zooms in and out. Point on the red markers to see the names.
• Map=roads. Satellite=satellite map. Terrain=3D shaded topo map. Topo=topographic map.
• Full-Screen online interactive map - Berryessa Snow Mountain area.



N 39.38332 W 122.75213 - Snow Mountain Wilderness (A)
N 38.98857 W 122.54086 - Cache Creek Wildlife Area (B)
N 38.61244 W 122.32212 - Cedar Roughs Wildlife Area (C)

Contact your U.S. Congressional Representative to support HR 5545.

• US House of Representatives. Determine Your Representative via Zip+4 Code.
• ZIP+4 Code Lookup - USPS.


Additional information:
• Cache Creek and California's Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
• Trip report, Cache Creek Wilderness Run, Wild and Scenic, kayaking 22jan2006.
• California residents contact your legislators about conservation issues.
• River & Land Conservation in California - BRT Insights.

Tags: Cache Creek, Cedar Roughs Wildlife Area, Cache Creek Wildlife Area, Snow Mountain Wilderness, Mendocino National Forest.
Tags: California, National Conservation Area, Yolo County, Lake County, Napa County, Mendocino County.

Labels: conservation

I bought a Nesco FD-35 Food Dehydrator in hopes of making some healthy hiking snacks and TV snacks. I paid $40 for my dehydrator and another $40 for some accessories - additional trays, screens and fruit roll sheets. Initial results have been pretty good. I made some great dehydrated fruits including apple, pineapple, banana, watermelon & cantalope. Dried vegetables such as zucchini summer squash, red peppers, green peas, green beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, & carrot also turned out nicely. Tofu marinaded in soy sauce also dehydrated into a tasty snack. I'll discuss dehydrator recipes in more detail later.

More about:
• Food & Drink for Outdoor Activities - BRT Insights.

Tags: hiking snacks, healthy snacks, tv snacks, food dehydrator.
Tags: hiking snacks, dehydrated fruits, dried vegetables, zucchini snack chips.

Labels: food-drink