Day 50: Nickerson

Distance: 58 avg: 11.8

One of my favorite food personalities is Alton Brown. He has an engineer’s perspective on cooking which I admire. That isn’t to say that love isn’t a necessary ingredient in cooking. It’s just that most chef’s don’t talk enough about the difference between say chuck and round steak, or that if you mix the two together you get ground beef.

The reason I bring up the old Iron Chef mc is that I had two places where I used his knowledge today. I picked an ear of durum wheat off a farm. I hulled an endosperm, yummy!

Wait, I hulled an endosperm?! Yes, wheat is an ‘angiosperm’ that is inside a hull. You can take the hull and bran off and inside is the ‘endosperm’. Thanks Alton.

I also arrived at Nickerson about 5pm on a Sunday. Literally the only thing open was a Quick Stop. Limited food options. No fresh veg or meat. And so I decided to make mac and cheese.

So a rule of cooking: for the most part any liquid can be substituted for an equal amount of another. This may impact flavor, but for many recipes the liquid is chemically important, but doesn’t impact taste. The same can be said for fats. If a recipe calls for butter you can just read it as ‘fat’ and use lard/olive oil/crisco.

This knowledge is valuable on the road, you can cook up a much larger variety of food by applying simple substitutions. And I didn’t notice any flavor difference in my mac!

Thanks again Alton!

I also recently swapped out from cooking with camping fuel to unleaded gasoline. Thanks go to Caleb and Andy for convincing me this was a better option. If only it wasn’t such a bitch to fill. 😉

Camping fuel can be bought at hardware stores in gallon containers. It’s also $10 a gallon. Unleaded is 400% cheaper and I can buy just what I need. 🙂

So today was ultra-chill. Checked out, did 58 miles between Larned and Nickerson. Head/crosswind the entire way. 🙁 Hutchinson was an option but the wind picked up.

Kansas drivers are so nice. Traffic picked up at one point, and even then people were patient and didn’t try to squeeze between me and semis. WTF is up with Colorado?! Learn something from your Kansas brothers!