camp CHEFY — Arielle Giusto

And then one day it became clear - pasta is the ultimate camp food. I was 18 and living in Florence for the summer while taking a film making program through NYU. At that moment however school was a distant thought as I struggled to fit in among the shaggy, bohemian young Italians camped riverside at a music festival outside of town. When they weren't smoking hash the cool kids were getting busy with huge pots of water, boiling and straining pasta. My American mind was reeling - pasta and camping? I was used to hot dogs, canned beans, maybe a quesadilla. That day the world shifted a little bit. Pasta stepped into the great outdoors.

In another twist of fate I married an Italian American who would eat Cacio e Pepe every day of the week if I let him. We camp a lot - took our honeymoon as a road/camp trip through the west - and no matter how long or how short the trip, we always make Pasta al Pesto. We've had it at 11,000 feet in the San Juans of Colorado and we've had it in the dank fog of the Mendocino Coast. When you've got nothing but time, like on most camping trips, crushing up basil leaves in a mortar and pestle becomes much less laborious. I rarely do it that way at home, but out in the wild I hand it over to Nick who pounds the greens while I prep the rest. Teamwork makes the dream work. See our foolproof Camp Pesto recipe here.

Elk sausage over polenta...with Polygamy Porter: "Why have just one?"

Another Italian dish that has become a camp mainstay: polenta. It's creamy heartiness is like a big warm hug to your stomach. Keep one pot rolling with the polenta, and use the pan for chopped up sausage, broccoli, peppers, onions, and maybe a can of crushed tomatoes. Shave a load of parm on top and sleep soundly that night.

The summer before my last year of college I decided to drive my little red pickup truck out east so I could really it whoop up. It was a pretty epic road trip - Stinson Beach, CA to NYC. The culinary highlight, besides the salad bar at KFC, was my discovery of the Road Rap. Whole wheat tortilla, avocado, cucumber, hummus, you get the picture. Basically whatever you have on hand rolled up in a wrap. It is dream road food. Or high altitude refuel food, like Nicky here enjoying it at 12,000 feet. Important things I have learned in wrapdom: always have tinfoil; if you use tomatoes eat right away; sprouted grain tortillas do not roll well but taste delicious! Another star combo: turkey, salami, tomato, dijon, cheddar. Duh.

Important Camp Kit Items for Culinary Excellence

Cheese grater (hand held, small grate) or Microplane

Mortar and Pestle

Strainer

Good Chef Knife and Light Cutting Board (pref wood)

Red Chile Flake

Kosher Salt - lots

Olive Oil - lots

Tinfoil

One Pot. One Pan. Many mixing bowls.

Condiment I don't leave home without: DIJON MUSTARD

Tupperwares! (breakfast = dinner + fried egg)

May 11, 2020

Mating Dance

April 1st and it is the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually I go walk the beach, to the place where we scattered her ashes and where she spent her last years, but it’s 2020 and the beaches are closed so instead I go for a walk around the block. In my seventh month of pregnancy now and my feet have started to ache from the extra weight, so the walk starts out slowly, gingerly. I conjure her here, in step beside me - Suzanne Segal, born on Friday the 13th and died on April Fool’s Day. Was that her ridiculous way of encouraging us to see some of the humor, the lightness of life? Those deep dimples and that shrieking laugh are with me as much today as they were decades ago.

February 20, 2020

santa fe, NM 1995

My mom and I got off the plane in Albuquerque and headed for the white Isuzu Trooper we kept parked at the airport. After our first few visits to New Mexico, when my mom had properly fallen in love with the landscape and started buying property – all sagebrush and pink dirt – she decided we needed our own car there. This one was properly beat up enough to fit in, as I learned after my eyes had adjusted from the bombastic wealth of the Bay Area to this perennially poor state. But the colors! Even on the license plates! The flamboyant yellow, red and turquoise delighted me, set as they were against the glow of the high desert. I suppose we both were in love with this new frontier.

December 15, 2019

Peeking through the Back Door

I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.