Food Reviews: Heather's Choice Buckwheat Breakfast, and Smoked Sockeye Salmon Chowder; Alpine Aire's Veggie Burrito Bowl

Enjoying the cool breeze rising from waves below in the section between Little Harbor and Two Harbors.

Over President's Day weekend, we decided to check out the Trans Catalina Trail on Los Angeles' own Catalina Island. I was particularly excited about this trip because I was planning to try my Heather's Choice meals and, well, because Catalina is a remote, warm island with beautiful turquoise beaches only two hours from home. We didn't have many opportunities to eat our own food during this trip because (for better or worse) the trail goes through several towns and eateries, so my review today is limited to two Heather's Choice meals: Apple Buckwheat Breakfast, and Smoked Sockeye Salmon Chowder, and Alpine Aire's Veggie Burrito Bowl.

Simple packaging. Note: NO nutrition information is available on the packaging or on the website (yet).

I found out about Heather's Choice from a reddit.com/r/trailmeals thread sharing Heather's Kickstarter Campaign, which successfully funded on 12/21/15. Most of Heather's meals are inaccessible to me because they are "paleo oriented" (although not strictly paleo), and as such, all but one meal contains meat. Heather herself is a CrossFit enthusiast, competitive rower, sports nutritionist and self-proclaimed "nutrition geek." As a powerlifter and "nutrition geek" myself I took an immediate interest in Heather's Choice and wanted to try her products right away.

Heather's meals are pricey, I'll get that out of the way now. They are at least what you'd expect to pay for a similar product in a nice restaurant. But they are super high quality products and the ingredients are sourced responsibly and ethically. I realize these are not priorities for everyone, but if they are priorities for you, HC is worth the price.

Handmade chunks of smoked sockeye salmon, carrots, peas, and dill in a thick potato broth.

Heather's Choice Smoked Sockeye Salmon Chowder

Flavor, Nina: 8/10

Ease at camp: 10/10

Price: $15 for 1 medium serving
Would buy again: Yes

Best for: any meal

Praise: excellent smoked salmon flavor, quality is very evident, good consistency, very unique (so hard to find any fish-based dishes!), well seasoned, clear flavors.

Criticism: Expensive, did not rehydrate after 30 minutes in warm (65-70) degree weather in a reflectix cozy (instructions suggest 20 minutes). Carrots were hard and chewy, salmon was still leathery, peas were inedible. Ideally should be rehydrated by bringing to a boil in a pot with water.

This stuff is really promising! Excellent flavor all around, really high quality smoked salmon, big peas, sweet carrots, fresh dill, and creamy potato. The only downside and the only reason I docked 2 points is because after 30 minutes of rehydrating, the contents were still chewy and inedible. This is a common problem with dehydrated meals (Good to-go, Hawk Vittles, my own food) and the best solution I've found is to either chop the ingredients very fine or simmer the mixture for a few minutes before putting it in the cozy. I know that from a saleability perspective this is hard, HC wants to appeal to the convenience of "cook in bag" dehydrated backpacking foods. But if GTG and HC are any example, it's really a farce, most of them do not cook in bag properly. So just avoid the disappointment, and heat the soup in a pot.

I do recommend this dish, it is absolutely worth the money and you can tell on the first bite why it costs as much as it does. I'll be giving it another try in the coming months (cooking it in a pot) and will update my review accordingly.

----

Heather's Choice Buckwheat Breakfast: Apple Buckwheat Breakfast

Flavor, Nina: 0/10

Flavor, Dennis: 0/10

Ease at camp: 10/10

Price: $8 for 1 serving
Would buy again: No

Best for: firestarter

Praise: Very high fiber

Criticism: Really, really bad

Geez, where to start.

It would not be an exaggeration to say this is one of the most disgusting things I've ever eaten in my life, ever. I'm not even being hyperbolic.

Looks innocent enough

This is subjective, but I think Heather's Choice Apple Buckwheat Breakfast goes too far with the "health food" thing. She sacrifices flavor and texture for the sake of "healthy" ingredients (quotation marks because the definition of healthy ingredient seems to change every year). The prepared cereal is a slimy cinnamon goop punctuated by once-crisp coconut flakes that have become partially soggy, leathery apple chunks,  and worst of all, a mystery flavor that you cannot place but which is profoundly wrong, profoundly does not belong, so you scan the ingredients and in a moment of total fear and disbelief your eyes notice  "beef gelatin" and it occurs to you, holy shit, this does taste vaguely of beef . It's a cinnamony, slimy, crunchy, leathery, beefy nightmare.

The concept (breakfast goo) is fine but the execution is awful. I don't even mind the mucilaginous quality but the gelatin absolutely has to go. I get that gelatin is healthy: it contains protein, is good for your joints, but it doesn't need to be in your breakfast.

Anyway, wow. Really bad.

Eyebleach. Little Harbor, Catalina Island

---

Burrito Bowl: what you see is what you get

Alpine Aire Foods Veggie Burrito Bowl

Flavor, Nina: 6.5/10

Flavor, Dennis: 5/10

Ease at camp: 10/10

Price: $5.95 for 2 medium servings, when wrapped into 6 small burritos
Would buy again: No

Best for: Fiber? 

Praise: Lots of vegetables, straightforward contents/flavors, very cheap, wide distribution/readily available

Criticism: Really bland, almost a mystery how bland it is... where did the flavor go? Even if you made beans, rice, and vegetables at home with zero seasonings, it would taste of more than this. Dennis didn't like the roasted red pepper flavor, he said it was too strong and even declined to finish his last burrito.

To Alpine Aire's credit, this mixture tastes like what you see. White rice, beans, corn, roasted red pepper, and maybe some onion, garlic, and spice. Normally this would be a good thing, but mysteriously, all of these flavors (except the roasted red pepper) taste like they have been dulled about 30-50%. I tried to improve the flavor by adding some salsa (dehydrated Tacos Moreno Salsa) and crumbled pepper jack Moon Cheese, but even these weren't enough to enhance the burrito flavor. So tbell hot sauce packets came dutifully to the rescue, as we can always depend on them to do.
Anyway, it was alright. Not worth the money and very easy to make something like this yourself.

Yawn

I'm grateful to almost be done with my stockpile of purchased food. As convenient as it is to have meals handled for me, I miss my own cooking and there are a lot of ideas I'm looking forward to exploring in 2016. I just placed a massive order for raw ingredients (sour cream powder, cream cheese powder, blue cheese powder, etc.) and I'm super excited to play with them in trips to come.

Campsite 1, Blackjack Campground