I have made hyperbolic paraboloids in my oven!

I’m preparing for a four-day hike in the Swedish mountains. The early preparations are already done, especially all purchases – train tickets, map, some extra equipment. What’s left is packing – and food preparations.

I’ll be hiking hut-to-hut and the huts all sell some food, and I could make do with what they have. But I know from experience that if I only have dull, unvaried food to eat, I will have little appetite and will struggle to eat enough. I could do it for a day or two, but probably not four. So I intend to buy the heavy ingredients at the hut shops (pasta/rice, lentils, tomato sauce etc) and then “spice up” my meals with, well, spices and other extras that I bring with me.

The internet says that if you want variety in the meals during your hike, and don’t want to lug a heavy pack, then drying your own food is the way to go. It sounded complicated and inconvenient, so I wasn’t too excited about this idea at first. But it turned out that it only sounded that way because people have (of course) found ways to make money out of it – by selling books and dehydrators and whatnot. I just chopped up my food and dried it in the oven, and it was the easiest thing in the world. Hardly any effort at all. And the weight after drying is just a tiny fraction of the original.

The strips of bell peppers dried into wrinkled strips. The leeks turned papery and fragile. But the carrot slices came out really cool. The outside edge barely shrank at all, which turned the carrot slices into these interesting paraboloids. I wonder if it was because I didn’t peel the carrots first.