The Tuna Review

I've never been a tuna kinda guy. Honestly, I don't really care for it now, but having gone from a healthy income to a ways below the poverty line for sanity's sake, sacrifices had to be made.
(how'd you like that alliteration?) Tuna is bearable, and it's good for me. I'm not one to add a bunch of mayo or sauce it up. Pepper is plenty to mask the fact that I'm eating the canned Pisces that I've always despised. I usually eat about a can a day, so that's 37.5 grams of protein, 2.5 grams of delicious fat, and a big fat goose egg in the carb category. Granted, it's followed by some crackers and probably a healthy drowning in soda, but the tuna itself is mighty good.

I'll just skip the "chunk light" category. I'm not going to eat the lips and butts of fish just because cow lips and butts taste spectacular all rolled up in a Maverik bahama mama hot dog. Besides, the solid white albacore tuna is better in both taste and quality than any canned chicken I've ever had. Just avoid the envelope packaging altogether. Even the albacore in the flat packages is horrific. Stick to cans.

All the albacore can usually be purchased for just under a dollar a can if bought on sale or at Costco, so price is irrelevant. We'll just stick to quality and taste.

The worst - Starkist:
Texture is consistent with oatmeal or chunk tuna. I don't know how they can claim that it is solid white albacore. This brand is best avoided, even if you find it on sale. Don't be tricked by the nerdy fish in the beret. He's a bad, bad fish.






Pretty good - Chicken of the Sea:
Texture is usually good, and you get the occasional solid-fillet-surprise upon lifting the lid. I look forward to popping the lid and seeing one big chunk of fish almost as much as I anxiously awaited waffles that stuck the the top of the waffle iron in my youth. The name is not deceiving. Chicken of the Sea is good and it goes down well. Also notable is moisture content. Even though you squeeze that lid hard enough to crush skittles, this tuna retains just about the right amount of moisture. Not too shabby.





Completely bearable - Bumblebee Tuna:
Great Texture, good taste, decent moisture content, almost always gives the solid-fillet-surprise. Just pepper and go. Sometimes you can actually see the grill marks on the fish. This is the way to eat canned seafood.


I hope you haven't been bored to tears, though I'm sure that hope is in vain. Get some more protein in your diet. BTW, all three claim to be dolphin friendly since April 1990.

Change of Heart - Lack of Photos

I'll have to steal the pictures for this blog from other places on the interweb, so please forgive me. I'm not permitted to take pictures on the trail at Anasazi.

1. Friction Fire - While still difficult, certainly not impossible. I was able to create a coal and drop it into my tinder bundle shortly after I was shown correct methods and materials. Just after that I used a hand drill and got a burning coal on my first try. Wikihow has nothing on the people at Anasazi. I do have some small burns on my hands, because apparently, I was not instructed properly on how to hold my tinder bundle as I blew the coal into flames. It's rather necessary out on the trail since we don't have flashlights, lighters, matches, insect repellent, or even really warm gear. Out there, fire is life.




2. Cow tanks and sleeping on the ground - (had to straight steal this image from Gilz) Yeah, that's not the cow tank that I drank from, but it's only slightly greener. We don't filter our water, we drop it. Two drops of clorox per canteen. Well, I'm still here. Cow tanks are pretty much tiny man made lakes out in the desert. They get pretty gross. I really don't mind sleeping on the ground. It's just cold without anything between the body and the ground. Good thing for pine needles and leaves. It's also quite nice to heat up a rock in the fire and put it in the sleeping bag. Any number of sexual innuendos could be applicable here, but I'm not even going to start.

3. I'm T-pain, you know me - Imma buy U a drank, so just get used to it. One of the young walkers in my band had completely convinced himself that he was the rapper T-pain. Thing is, the other four young walkers were pretty well convinced of it as well. Actually, he was just a confused blond kid from the East Coast who wanted to buy everyone a drank. That kid has a heart of gold and he's laugh-out-loud funny. All of the young walkers have incredible potential, and they show it out there in the wilderness. Here's where my change of heart happened. I truly thought that I was going into the wild to babysit a bunch of punk kids who were too spoiled all their lives to obey their parents. I was humbled like a boxer in a gun fight. My expectations were left in ruins as I became part of a dynamic and interesting family. In true cliche style, I learned a lot more from them than they ever could have learned from me. I had decided to give Anasazi a "trial week" after which, I would return to Utah to climb rocks. Integrity would not be on my list of qualities if I were to turn and run now, so here I am. I'll be here a while, so for those of you who I should be missing, I will. Eight days on the trail and six days off make for ample visiting time, though, so plan on seeing me at regular intervals.

4. Trail food - Our supplies are plenty, but not exactly gourmet. Notable though is that these kids have learned how to make everything from muffins to lasagna in their little tin cups. I mostly stuck to simple foods-cheesy rice and lentils, corn meal, oats, and the occasional ash cake. Ash cakes are rather simple. They consist of flour, water, and whatever happens to be left in your food pack. Powdered cheese and chewed up tomatoes make a pretty good ash cake, brown sugar and chewed up almonds make a better one. You then clear the fire away so you have a nice bed of hot white ashes and toss it in. I suppose the ash probably helps digestion if anything. Chewing up ingredients is just part of cooking in the wild. It's the only way to make tomato sauce. You could spend an hour trying to cut up all the ingredients you need for a tasty dish, or you could quickly chew them up, or love them up as we like to say, and then spit them into the mix. Everything is cooked on the fire or in a steel cup like the one above. Even muffins. It's rather amazing.

Well, I'm here for a while. I'll try to blog on my time off, at least once a week. If you're not hearing from me, I'm in the woods, changing my heart for the better and inviting others to do the same. The Creator takes us to amazing places in this life.