Route on RideWithGPS (About 6000ft of climbing on my GPS, not 7600!)
RUSA listing
Ride info on RMCC permanents page

For now, in honor of the last day of Vegan MoFo 2012, I’m sharing our (so far) best recipe for vegan kibble. It’s based on the “No Soy Kibble” from the VegeDog recipe sheet, with inspiration from “Mini Seitan Bites” in 500 Vegan Recipes. Bonnie loves those! It has quite a lot more fat than the VegeDog recipes. I’ve always given my dogs higher fat foods, and added vegetable oil to that, because their skin and fur seems healthier, especially in this dry climate.

If you’d asked me a few months ago when I started switching Bonnie to vegan food, I would have sworn that, while I wouldn’t mind cooking up lentils and rice for her, I would NEVER bake vegan kibble!! Ah well. For several reasons, that went out the window pretty quickly:

1. Bonnie is a VERY picky eater. She won’t eat the same thing more than a few times in a row. This has always been true. No matter the food. Although it’s contrary to standard American dog feeding advice, the more variety the better for Bonnie.
2. You can’t really leave your dog for a week with a dog sitter and ask her to cook 2 meals a day for your dog … unless you have a much bigger dog sitting budget than I do.
3. The pre-made kibble Bonnie likes (Evolution Diet, both flavors) is expensive! (Also see point #1.) (Note: She also likes Evolution canned food. Also expensive! It’s a stretch to say she likes it, but if she’s hungry and hasn’t had it recently, she’ll eat Natural Balance Vegan, which is available at PetCo.)

1/2 the batch. This is about 8 meals (4 days food) for Bonnie.

Given, that I rotate different foods, and Bonnie weighs less than 30 pounds so she doesn’t eat a lot, I make about one batch of homemade kibble a month. Altogether it takes about an hour. I figure saving several chickens from battery cages, and giving my dog food she likes is worth 1 hour per month. I’ve tried making bigger batches, but it doesn’t really save much time. I can’t fit more than this on my two pizza stones without making the kibble thicker. Thicker turns out chewier. Bonnie likes that ok, but seems to like the small, crispy kibble the best. And it seems to keep a little better. I usually store a few meals in the fridge and the remainder in the freezer, just to make sure it stays as fresh as possible.

Oat-Tahini-Herb Kibble
Makes about 12 cups

Preheat oven to 325°F

Wet Ingredients

• 1 c quick oats soaked in
• 4 c water
• 2 T Soy Sauce

Dry Ingredients (mix together the following)

• 3 c vital wheat gluten
• 4 c whole wheat flour
• 1/3 c VegeYeast
• 2 T VegeDog
• 3/4 t soy lecithin (optional)
• 2 t dry basil
• 2 t dry oregano
• 2 t dry thyme

Blend dry ingredients with:

• 3/4 c tahini (or peanut butter)
• 1/4 c olive oil

Add wet ingredients and knead about 4 minutes. I use a stand mixer with dough hook for mixing, blending and kneading steps.

Line pizza stone with parchment paper (unless you have an hour to chip kibble off your pizza stone after baking!) Roll dough out on parchment paper to a thickness of 1/4″-3/8″. No thicker than 1/2″. Score with pizza cutter or knife. I try for about 1/4″x1/4″ squares. Sometimes, for a change, I make bigger squares 3/4″-1″. That size is also good for peanut butter “sandwiches”.

Dough rolled out and scored with pizza cutter. It’s dog food. It doesn’t need to be perfect!

Bake 45 min to 1 hour and 20 min. I’ve always baked at least 1h 20m, but nearly always have to double baking times in recipes so I’m guessing most people will be closer to 45 min. (Yes, I have an oven thermometer. Altitude?)

I usually remove the edge pieces when they start to brown. Then return the stone and middle pieces back to the oven.

Options
You can try different dog-safe herbs and spices. Tahini seems to be more flavorful than peanut butter.

Try not to eat it all yourself. It’s for your pup!

Fresh out of the oven!

Jen and Abi at California City rider exchange.

Pika 4X 2012 Furnace Creek 508 from Cathy Cramer on Vimeo.

Catherine first put the idea of a team in my head in 2010. I’d said if she ever wanted to ride The 508 I’d crew for her. She’d responded that a team sounded like more fun. After my disappointing attempt at HooDoo Voyager in 2011 I was ready for something different, and asked her if she’d be up for riding The 508 as part of a 4X team in 2012. I thought it might be cool to have other teammates who’d never ridden an ultra event on their own and even better if they were people who’d given up their time crewing for me or other riders in the past. I also had an inkling that since we were planning to crew ourselves, crewing ability might be as valuable as riding experience. Abi and Jen, both cyclists and former crew, signed on.

From the beginning, the goal for me was for us all to have 508 jerseys by the morning of Oct 8. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that happened. It gave me huge motivation for training all year. Since we’ve each ridden 500+ mile events solo, having Catherine on the team also gave me a lot confidence, and meant I could relax and not lose sleep worrying in the months before the race.

I’ll admit that I anticipated a 4-person team to be a bit like a rolling party, as compared to riding solo. I can tell you now that it’s not. Not that we didn’t have fun, but as a 4X team crewing ourselves, everyone had a job to do the entire 35 hours and 15 minutes we were on the road. Riding, driving, feeding/navigating and yes, sleeping. There’s no room for slackers or anyone who’s not willing to step up and do any job that’s needed. It was pretty amazing to see everyone doing all they could, and using their different skills and abilities to fill whatever the need at the moment. It is also amazing how hard you can push yourself when three other people are depending on you and you see your teammates pushing themselves to their limit.

Photos from Jen. I’ll try to get some more photos up in the next few days.

This year the 508 is special because I’m not riding 508 miles, I’m riding 130. I’m very excited to be riding with a 4-person team. Two of my teammates have crewed for me in the past. Abi Spring the anchor my 2010 Furnace Creek 508 crew; electrician, cooling expert and nutritionist. She earned a new nickname during that race, “MacGyver”. Jenifer Boyce has crewed for me more times than I can count. Often crewing solo. Her trailside style, “Here’s your bottle. Here’s your battery. I have to get back to work,” was critical to me riding as far as I did at 24 Hours of ERock in 2010. She couldn’t have gotten too much work done, because she was standing by the trail waiting with supplies every time I rode by. Catherine Shenk is an experienced randonneur who’s many accomplishments include 2007 Paris-Brest-Paris and 2010 1001 Miglia Italia. Training with Catherine and other Colorado randonneurs was instrumental to me being able to finish Furnace Creek solo in 2010.

Starting on Friday at 11am, you can follow all the action, including webcam, photos, and other updates on the AdventureCORPS webcast. Race progress and time splits for the entire field can be found on the results page. Click on any totem or rider name to get details, including average speed, and breakdown by timestation, for solo/team progress.