Having extra time on my hands, I opted to try a powdered falafel mix I had brought as a sort of bonus. I mixed the stuff according to proper instructions. He resultant paste firmed up nicely. But when I tried to shape it into patties, things began to get bad. The stuff is like glue. The patties formed alright, but my hands were covered with sticky, granular falafel mix. I had no way to wash them, and I knew it would be pointless to do so anyway since I wasn't done handling them. I heated the olive oil and dropped one in. It sizzled. I tried to move it. It threatened to come apart into a zillion pieces. I added another one to save time (and fuel.) More sizzling. I added a smaller one. Maybe I was making them too big.

By the time I was done, I had a mash of oily, cooked falafel. There was uncooked mix all over everything, dribblings of it on the rock around me, which the ants set to work carrying off, and four sizzled corn tortillas. I threw a cup and a half of water into the pot to see if I could salvage mealtime by making some corn pasta. While that heated, I assembled something along the lines of falafel tacos and munched. Not bad, actually. A bit messy. A bit like the Exxon Valdez, but quite palatable. Far more fat than I need on the average weekday, but it all went down.

It was about this time that I wished that when I settled down to do the cooking I'd remembered the bear tracks and the punctured sardine can I'd found earlier and moved the whole operation several hundred yards to the east.

I polished everything I'd touched with my falafel-ous fingers and sealed everything, including the dish towel into the bear canister. The stuff isn't bad. It's quite good but it made me wish I'd just brought some freeze-dried chili-mac.