Observations after six months
On a four-day hike in the Nantahala Mountains in March, my hiking partner and I stopped in the Brown Fork Gap Shelter for the night. We met two Appalachian Trail thru-hikers there, both of whom admitted to some dissatisfaction with their own backcountry culinary skills. I think they were eating a lot of Ramen noodles and Pop-Tarts. I made one of the recipes from this book -- the Pacific Crest Tortillas -- and as I shared my meal with two hungry and now much happier thru-hikers, they both remarked that it was the best food they had eaten on the trail. I have to agree that it's my favorite recipe from the book, and it's one of the easiest to make:

Pacific Crest Tortillas (makes three meals):

1 Package Fantastic Foods Vegetarian Taco Filling
1 Package Fantastic Foods Instant Refried Beans
1/2 Package Taco Seasoning Mix

Several of my favorites in this cookbook are Mexican style food: the PC Tortillas, the Time Traveller's Tamale, and the Kilauea Chili are all great hiking dinners. But there's enough variety in the recipes to provide different and varied meals over a long hike. I have also adopted several of the breakfast meals, including some oatmeal recipes and the farina with dried blueberries (taking great care to make sure I pay attention to the number of servings).

I still have several concerns about the book, mostly about nutrition and serving sizes. On a personal level, I am most concerned about sodium levels, and I have made changes to many of the recipes to reduce sodium in the finished product. The serving sizes vary, but many of them are just huge -- enough for a thru-hiker, maybe, but far too much for a weekend backpacker like me. So I try to split really large meals into two or more smaller meals, or when making larger batches, I split them more ways. For example, I am now making 4 individual dinners from the Pacific Crest Tortillas recipe, above. This makes plenty for me for a weekend hiking dinner.

These are my conclusions from my Field Test report, and after six months, I still feel the same way about the book. I will keep it, and keep using the recipes that I like, but I will modify them where necessary.