All posts by Kenneth Shaw

Blogger, photographer and backpacker. If you like my writing or my site don't be afraid to follow me, like or share my posts here on the site. Thanks and enjoy!

Recipe

Recipe: super, ultra, mega backpacking jerky

Really it’s just lazy mans beef jerky. I absolutely love beef jerky on a long days hike, unfortunately for me, finding good beef jerky in Sweden is a near impossible mission. Even if it’s starting to make its way here, at the moment it’s just so expensive and in “tiny” human bites.. In other words pathetic is the best word to use when describing the “jerky” that can be bought here.  Read More

Recipe

Recipe: Almond butter

Since I want to start adding some of my recipes that I use when I plan for hiking, I figured that I also need to share some of the basic building blocks of my recipes. Sure you can always go out and purchase energy bars, dried food and breakfasts… But what fun is that? Part of the joy in backpacking is the preparation.

With that you will see one recurring theme with all of my recipes: fast and easy. Oh, and you need a food processor. I have a pretty cheap Electrolux that works wonders. Read More

Recipe

The Chocolate hazelnut Nutella bar

I admit it, I’m addicted to chocolate and really anything that resembles sweet. That’s why most of my energy and raw bars are in taste very close to being in my mind as tasty as your regular store bought sugar bombs. My chocolate hazelnut Nutella bars are simply put: Amazing!

Like all my bars and recipes, these are minimal effort with maximum taste. You just throw everything in a food processor and roll a minute or two, mush them in the shape you want and your done.. Takes about 10 minutes start to finish. Read More

Recipe

Recipe: Dates and Cashews bar

What can I say? I love energy bars and as a start to this new section in Ultralight and Comfortable I will start with the worlds easiest and possibly one of the best energy bar recipes. I can literally make this energy bar in 5 minutes. This bar has more nutritional value than a snickers bar and is a hell of a lot tastier! On top of that it’s easy to make and fits within my philosophy of less is more.

Tools you need:

Food processor

Recipe:

1 portion dry (mushy fresh) dates – not the hard dried out sort. Just pinch the seed out before throwing in the processor Read More

Ramblings

My love for manual labour… ..

It’s hard to deny the therapeutic value of manual labour.  Not brain dead labour, manual hard labour. I have always been a fairly “brain” driven person. Meaning I would rather pick up a book than a hammer. But as time goes by I have realised one big truth, at least for me: Manual labour is an amazing therapeutic venture. I have different activities that I consider manual labour, and I find myself gravitating more and more towards these activities. I find that my ambitions of money, power and success are not and have never made me happy. The more money I made the more sick and burnt out I felt. Never in my life have I been so stressed out as when I had my restaurants, hedge fund and consultancy firm. To be honest, the stress sucked the life out of me. I hated it and when I came home I threw myself on the sofa and died slowly every day without ever really living.  Read More

GearGear reviews

Mountain laurel designs Solomid XL cuben 

Well, after feeling a little spontaneous I decided to splurge on a Cuben MLD Solomid XL (I believe this is the same thing as the Solomid 2016). I found this New on eBay For about $390.. Way too much For a spontaneous purchase.. But what the hell, I figure if it doesn’t work for me I should be able to sell it for about the same amount.

I can’t say that I am tired or not happy with my MLD Duomid, quite the opposite actually. I find the Duomid to be and continue to be the best tent I have ever had and plan to keep it for a long time. I bought the Solomid out of boredom I guess and wanting to try something lighter and hopefully with the same amount of comfort as my Duomid.

Full review of the MLD Duomid you can read here

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Gear reviewsPhoto reviews

Gear Review: The Fujifilm X-T1

It’s been a while since I’ve done full on camera review. I think camera reviews are some of the hardest reviews to do simply because the only thing that really matters is the final product. Are the pictures good and did the camera capture the scence the way you saw it or better? When looking for a backpacking camera I usually even take in to consideration how good is the camera in comparison to other cameras of similar weight and features.

In a backpacking camera I am looking for a few of these essential aspects:

  1. Picture quality – how good are the pictures and what is “good enough” for the desired trip
  2. Weight – I would never bring a big full frame Nikon or Canon with me as the weight doesn’t justify the end results (in my opinion)
  3. Water proofing – Some waterproofing is usually a good idea as the longer I am out the less I care if my gear gets wet.
  4. usability – This perhaps effects me more than it might others; I come from a background of analog cameras – in face I still use a prefer analog for just about everything. So usability for me is very important, I want a camera to be fun to use.
  5. Battery life – The longer the battery life the less batteries and recharges I need to bring i.e much less weight.

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DestinationsTrip report

Finally winter…ish.. a hike along Sörmlandsleden

So the hike continues where I left off last week.. I walked from alby to Haninge last week, that you can read about here. As you can see from the pictures, the weather was fantastic! about -1 celcius and sunny. An absolutely lovely day to be out. I started in Haninge and ended in Lida – on my maps about 27 kilometers. My adventure started at the OK28 gas station in Haninge and really you can say it starts at Rudan as you can see from the pics below. I don’y know if I would dare go out on the ice right now, as it’s pretty thin, but that didn’t seem to bother these guys too much. Read More

Trip report

A long days hike along Sörmlandsleden

What was initially meant to be a nice walk in the woods split up with dinner by campfire and a cold beer, ended up being a 28kilometer walk and sore feet. My thought was that I needed to get in the woods and have some “me” time. Which is usually the case when I’m feeling the winter blues. Or for the most part, I get down whenever I don’t venture off into the woods with my gear on my back. However, once I got out in the woods I found in my soul what I really needed was a long brutal walk…  And that was exactly what I got.  Read More

daily picUncategorized

A day out

I’m not sure if long distance ice skating is a thing in the USA, in fact, I can’t recall ever hearing about it while I was growing up.. That’s not saying much of course considering I grew up on Oahu, Hawaii and in Herlong, California. In any case here in Sweden in the winter people pull out their long distance skates and enjoy the miles and miles of frozen lakes and coast line.

Our little family decided to take a days trip down to the local lake, which is a few hundred meters from the house. We packed in the toddler, some sandwiches and hot cocoa. Was  nice day out.  Read More