Food and Cooking Utensils and Equipment.

Since water was the previous blog I figured food should be next.

I am not going into all the different brands of hiking foods

available or mention any other food brand name products.

One reason for this is that years ago packing only trail hiking

food into Algonquin Park with my sister for a week.  This one

brand specifically, the stuff all tasted the same, tasted like the

food preservative that was used.  After a week of eating the

horrible stuff I swore never to make that mistake again. Now

I mentioned packing light yesterday and along the same lines

today, you could actually do with out cooking equipment and

just pack food that doesn’t require to be cooked or heated up,

saves weight but does cut down on the variety available.

I prefer to heat up some of the food I carry, I like hot

chocolate on the trail and my sister loves a good cup of

coffee in the mornings.  Peanuts and Raisins also referred

to as GORP (Good old Peanuts & Raisins) took me a while

to work that out is great and a lot of hikers mix this with

other stuff like M&Ms.  I also take a mix of food bars such

as Sweet and Salty bought at a grocery store, premixed

spaghetti packets, peanut butter and jam (packet style

little in fast food restaurants), flat bread or tortillas.  That’s

basically if for food not much imagination. 

Now for cooking utensils what I use is simple just a spork,

no knife, no nothing else.  Simple effective and very light weight.

Now for Equipment such as a stove I use, as stated in the video

part of this blog, an alcohol stove .  Its light weight and

with the windscreen cut to size from a whisperlite windscreen

very effective.  There are two draw backs however to an

alcohol stove the first is that you have no control over the

flame, once you light it you have to let it burn off the fuel.

The second draw back is that in cold weather it takes longer

to startup and in so doing uses more fuel.  There is only one

other stove however that I would use for backpacking and

its the whisperlite from MSR, its heavier but still lightweight,

cooks fast, and gives you good flame control.  I only use a 2 liter

pot for cooking, its stainless steel and from MSR, one of the

best purchases I ever made.  I have a separate pot grabber

which I recommend for and too any one, because I would hate to see

someone get burned grabbing the pot handles after cooking.

Always remember safety first and for most.

And that’s it for tonight’s blog.