Initial Report

The Hiker’s Guide to Preparing Home-Cooked Meals on the Trail

Personal Bio

Name: George Griffin

Age: 42

Gender: Male

Height: 5' 7" (1.7 m)

Weight: 205 lb (93 kg)

Email: ggriff(at)talk21(dot)com

City: London U.K

Date: 30 March 2004

Backpacking Background

I have been backpacking since 1986, mainly in the Peak District, Lake District, Wales and Southern England. I am also the London liaison member for the Backpackers Club. In the early days I backpacked solo but in recent years I have backpacked with two friends. Most of my trips are from September through to May, I normally get four 4+ day trips in that time, plus the occasional weekend.

Terrain and elevation on these trips can be anything from coastal paths to mountains, sea level to 3,000-ft (900 m). Temperatures range from -5 C to 23 C (23 F to 75 F).

Product Information

Author: Steven A. Mroz

Type of cover: Prefect bound paperback

Price £9.01 (from website)

Arrival

The book arrived via. UPS direct from the author Steven A. Mroz; also with the book was a covering letter from the author. The letter explained that this copy of the book was a `proof copy` and that there were some typos and mis-spelt words.

The book measures 9 in X 6 in X 3/8 in (227 mm X 151 mm X 8 mm) and has 134 pages including the cover.

The book is broken down into eight chapters, plus an introduction and an index.

The eight chapters are:

Chapter One : The Backpacker`s Oven

Chapter Two : Breakfasts

Chapter Three : Soups

Chapter Four : Gravies & Sauces

Chapter Five : Delectables

Chapter Six : Meat & Vegetables

Chapter Seven : Dinners

Chapter Eight : Stir-fried dishes

There are 84 types of recipes in the book.

My first impressions are that there are quite a lot of different meals in this book and with a big range to satisfy even the most fussy eater.

The chapters are well laid out, with each recipe taking up a single page. The recipes are quite basic and easy to follow. The only one that confused me was the `delectables`, I was expecting this chapter to cover desserts but it was for basic staple food like noodles, rice, barley and couscous.

Some extra equipment is recommended by the author other than a dehydrator; namely a vacuum sealer, and a Sierra Zip wood-burning stove to used with the backpacker’s oven.

The backpacker’s oven is a piece of equipment which the user can make to enable the cook to bake while on the trail. Chapter one in the book covers in great detail how to go about making one but I must admit that to someone who is not very technically minded I found it a bit confusing; maybe some pictures or drawings of the process in making this item would help.

I for one, like to get a meal on pretty quick and not have to spend too much time messing around cooking and as such I can’t imagine baking on the trail so I think that most of the meals I will be looking at are ones that will be straightforward to re-hydrate and quick to prepare.

Vacuum sealers are still pretty much a novelty in the U.K and as such are quite expensive. All the meals I cook will be kept in zip-lock bags and stored in the fridge, it may not be ideal but I have done this before with dehydrated meals and have not noticed any problems.

Cooking the meals

As I said there are 84 recipes in this book, 17 of these are gravies or sauces which are needed in some of the meals, these help to give the meal a liquid consistency.

Cooking for all the recipes in the book is straightforward, even though there isn’t a lot of instruction for the recipe.

After looking though the book, I picked out four recipes to try out first:

Scrambled eggs

Chicken & Mushroom over hash browns

Tomato basil soup

Chicken & rice soup

Scrambled eggs looked like a good easy one to start with plus it is a good breakfast, but this turned out to be a bit of a disaster. The recipe called for five eggs, milk and olive oil, all straightforward and easy to make, the problems came in the dehydrating stage after eighteen hours the mixture had not dried. I don’t know why the mixture wouldn’t dry but next time I will try less eggs to see if this helps (my wife seems to think that there was too much milk in the mix).

The chicken & mushroom over hash browns is a three part recipe, needing a gravy, hash browns and the chicken/mushroom parts to make the meal. The gravy and chicken/mushroom parts are easy enough to do; but the hash browns are a different matter, the recipe called for ½ packet simply potatoes shredded hash browns. Looking in the local supermarket there was no sign of this type of hash brown, the only ones available were frozen ready made ones. So at present, I am looking at making my own hash browns.

The other two meals are still in the preparation stage, I am off on a two night backpacking trip next week and will be looking to take the chicken & mushroom over hash browns with me plus one of the other two.

Some of the names of the ingredients are different to the ones available in the U.K. but so far I haven’t had too much trouble working out what is needed and either finding it or a close substitute.

This is the first specific backpacking cookbook I had looked at or used, the recipes look interesting and seem to have quite a lot of variety.

Test Plan

I plan to take two meals with me next week on a two-nighter on the South Downs and then look to prepare some more meals for my upcoming weeks backpacking trip on the South West coastal path in May.