Winter Road Trip Food

It's January. Every night for a week, the temperature has dropped below zero. Daytime highs have been in the single digits. It's not cold like Alaska cold, but it's cold for the lower 48.

It's nice to hole up in a warm house but eventually, one becomes stir crazy. Then, a road trip is in order. Maybe a trip to the city for a movie and dinner or a good restaurant. Maybe a trip into the mountains, into a world of white with heavily draped trees and the occasional track of a moose or an elk blazing through the deep powder. It's amazing how much easier it is to see wildlife in the winter than the summer. (To read more about wildlife viewing in the winter and/or early spring click here.)

Cold weather calls for hearty food. A thermos of chili or thick soup is perfect-maybe paired with some hearty homemade bread.

This month, we thought we would share a couple favorite wintertime recipes, a hearty Chicken and Black Bean Chili and a wonderful recipe for 100% Whole Wheat Bread. You can make the chili at home and store it in a thermos. If you are traveling in an RV, it's not too much trouble to make on the road. Make the bread ahead of time. You can even store it in the freezer since it freezes well.

We hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we do.

Dennis Weaver
1/21/07

Editor's Note: Dennis and Merri Ann Weaver have written a wonderful 250-page e-book, How to Bake. Each article is chock full of tips and suggestions that can transform the expertise of an ordinary cook into something approaching that of a master baker. What makes this book especially fascinating is that the Weavers provide not only excellent "how-to" instructions, but they also explain the science behind baking.

Dennis Weaver -- having burnt food from Miami, Florida to Point Barrow, Alaska -- is RTA's road food expert. He has logged thousands of hours on the roads, trails, and waterways of America including many of Alaska's wilderness rivers and has consistently been elected the trips' "chief cook and bottle washer." Dennis is currently general manager at The Prepared Pantry, a company in Rigby, Idaho, that produces ready-to-eat meals and baking mixes packaged in Mylar. Weatherproof, bug-proof, and critter resistant, they're ideal for both roadtrips and back woods camping. Dennis may be reached at dweaver@preparedpantry.com.