Whether you’re a vegetarian or just looking for an alternative to tuna/salmon/sardines/freeze dried beef stroganoff, you may (or may not?) want to try Textured Vegetable Protein the next time you’re on the trail. Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP) is made from defatted soy flour that’s been cooked under pressure and then dried. It’s high in protein (12 grams per 1/4 cup serving) and, because it’s soy-based, takes on the tofu-like characteristics of tasting like whatever your season it with. But unlike tofu, it’s got the texture of ground meat and doesn’t need to be drained. All you have to do is quickly rehydrate it, making it a perfect camping companion. And the kicker? It’s wildly inexpensive. If you can’t find it at your local grocery store, you can buy it here for around $2.50 a bag.

*Recipe for Curried Sloppy Joes after the jump…

Ingredients (Makes 2 sandwiches):
-1 cup of TVP
-A little less than a cup of boiling water
-2 pitas
-Chopped cilantro
-Chopped onion
-Small can of tomato sauce
-1 or so tbsp of good curry powder

1) Boil the water
2) Pour the water into a bowl filled with TVP. Cover the bowl and wait 5 minutes.
3) While the TVP is rehydrating, dice the onion and chop the cilantro.
4) When the TVP is ready to go, pour in the tomato sauce and curry powder. Mix.
5) At this point, you can either put the sloppy joe mixture back in the pot/pan with the onions, but, if you’re like me and enjoy raw onions, throw the goods into the pita, top with onions and cilantro and eat dinner.

Via Boston, MA and Portland, ME, this week’s Trail Mix comes from my personal King Of The Mixtape, Mr. Creepy Powers (aka Sean Turley). Sean and I’s relationship goes all the way back to our younger years when he was a promising Eagle Scout with a rattail. These days, he’s a gracious host and a wonderful tour guide whenever I’m hungry and traveling north and east of New York City. I’ve driven up the coast of Maine with Ali Farke Toure while Sean was living on the shores of Harpswell. He took me to my first Common Grounds, paddled our canoe down the Delaware Water Gap while I drank copious amounts of warm Coors Light, and over the years, as he’s become bigger and I’ve become smaller, has proved a wonderful partner for a disgusting amount of thrift store shopping. And though Sean usually drives me bat-shit crazy, at the end of the day, after all the Nepalese lunches, late night music, and camping adventures, dude makes a damn good mix tape. And this one, Full Of Smoke, is among his best. Enjoy it and stay warm and dry this weekend.

Download: Trail Mix Volume VI: Full Of Smoke

“This is a scan of a slide that I took while on an outdoor survival camp in February of 1978 up north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was -30°C on our camp out night…We slept in quinzhees.” *

I guess at that temperature (-22°F), all you can do is think warm thoughts…

MP3: Delorean – Stay close

Leonard Peltier is an activist and member of AIM, who, in 1977, was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the shooting of two FBI agents during Pine Ridge. Peltier’s supporters (who include Willie, Joni and Kristofferson) present him as a political prisoner due to concern over the fairness of his proceedings. His conviction is the subject of the 1992 documentary directed by Michael Apted and narrated by Robert Redford, Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story, which you can watch in full right here. If you find yourself with 90 minutes to spare, watch it. It’s a humdinger.

(There’s also They Buried The Heart of Leonard Peltier, which, oh lord, you should watch too. Redford’s narration is substituted for the whitest sing-song narration you ever heard…)

Another Outdoor Retailer show, another long weekend of puffy coats and new friends. And another long flight home with music blaring on the iPhone as I curse the heavens for my inability to sleep on airplanes.

It’s been a while since there was any Grateful Dead in these parts. Mostly because it creeps up in the sunshine, but after a few straight days of 3.2% beer consumption that lasted from 4pm – midnight-ish, summer needed to come early. And Harpur College? May 2nd? 1970? Dick’s Picks Volume 8? Whatever you want to call it, just listen.

MP3: Grateful Dead – We Bid You Goodnight

Cold Splinters has a column on the New York Times style blog, The Moment. It’s called The Campster, and this week, sandwiched between stories about women’s handbags and a Japanese Muji store, lies a new article about a weekend excursion down in the Everglades. Fires on the beach, euchre as the sun goes down, and steel cut oats soaked overnight in water. Enjoy it.

Cold Splinters is off to another winter version of Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. Holler if you’re around and we’ll see you there.

Thank you to the Appalachian Trail Museum for posting another Appalachian Trail log from 1983. This time it’s from Spring Mountain Shelter, located in Tennessee on the North Carolina border, just north of Hot Springs. The shelter is at 3,300 feet, 282.2 miles from Springer and 1898.2 from Katahdin.

MP3: Henri Tixier – Les Là-Bas

Along with Andrea from Fjallraven/Armor Lux/Wool and the Gang, Cold Splinters was asked to curate an “outdoor” section of Capsule this year. The show-within-a-show is called Above Tree Line and includes brands like Snow Peak, Poler, Heimplanet, Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Juniper Ridge, Outlier, Woolpower, and many more. It’ll be a damn good time, so if you’re around New York on Monday and Tuesday for the show, stop by and say hello.

“I’d rather be broke down and lost in the wilds of Big Bend, any day, than wake up some morning in a penthouse suite high above the megalomania of Dallas or Houston.”  - Ed Abbey

Cold Splinters and Upstate are gearing up for a southern adventure down to Big Bend National Park towards the beginning of next month. It’s an area we’ve never experienced, so if you’re lucky enough to have spent a night or two in that “barren, sun-blasted, apparently lifeless, stone-bleak ocean of the Chihuahuan Desert,” drop me a line. Let me know where we should go (backcountry hot springs, please), and more importantly, where we shouldn’t.

MP3: Smog – Too Many Birds