Pesto Pasta as the wonder food of car camping

The second blog post of my life was unfairly snatched from its birthplace and effectively permanently deleted from existance by a fluke computer hiccup. Never to be dissuaded, I forge ahead, fearless and now creating a backup. Cuz you never know.

The post on Sweet and Sour Pork will hopefully be rewritten someday. I make that dish often enough and so it will come back...just in a different guise. The dish I made last week was from frozen pork and adding it to my vegetables caused it to ooze this greyish watery crap that couldn't be completely eliminated even after I drained and drained and replaced all of my flavourings. It made a crappy picture, so perhaps it is best not to mourn its disappearance.

Not that I have a picture of today's recipe. What can I say? It was the end of a long and wonderful day at Marble Canyon. It was getting dark. I had climbed the second climb of my life, rappelled from a 2 pitch 5.8 (let's say 5.9 so I can appear more bad-ass) and felt lucky to not have irreperably screwed up the rope-work. The important point is that it was getting dark. You sure can't take a good photo with a headlamp light.

The beauty of a weekend climbing is that you get to car camp. This means, you can bring anything you want. Jars of stuff, bottles, extra back up food, you know, just in case! Having not been car camping in a few years, I felt like I rediscovered an old companion. Certainly not an old love. I've never LOVED car camping, rather, it always served a purpose: I car camped before a race (Emperor's Challenge in Tumbler Ridge...best half marathon EVER); when moving across the country (with a life's worth of junk in the car).

The dinner I made on this May-long trip was Pesto Pasta:

Bag of dried penne (I all about fresh pasta under normal circumstances)
Jar of pesto
Jar of sundried tomatos in oil
Feta cheese
Pine nuts

Cook the pasta until the desired tenderness. Al dente is just underdone, as the pasta will continue cooking after you drain the water thereby overcooking your pasta if past this underdone point. I guess you can rinse the pasta, but I think that's a big no-no. You want the starch that's hanging on to the outside of your pasta because it will help bind the sauce.

Then mix everything together. I chopped the sundried tomatoes and feta using a flattened beer box as a cutting board. I threw in some fresh tomatoes because we had them.

Don't skimp in the pine nuts. They provide a delightful counterpoint to the heavy 'sauce' ingredients. And I don't think you should substitute in this case.