Backcountry Cooking: From Pack to Plate in Ten Minutes

This book has a good amount (it's not War and Peace) of recipes that are tasty and easy for backpacking! Also a chapter or two of good advice concerning food in general...how to pack it, what kinds of things work, making your own dried foods, etc. Each meal has a chapter, like Breakfast, Lunch, whatever...there are no-cook things, all the way to fresh baked bread on the trail and pizza. Yum! (well no I haven't done the pizza or bread but I'm going to try it since they sound so good! And easy too)

If you are looking for a book full of recipes, then this is the book for you. I would say they make up about 80% of the book. The first part is about gathering ingredients and there is a little wisdom about taking precautions against animals. I got this book to complete the series, but I don't really like to read a bunch of recipes, but someday I might.

This book is excellent. It may not have the largest number of recipes, but the ones it does have are well thought out, backpacker friendly, and just plain good. The book has a lot of variety too. Each recipe is organized into two parts, the pre-hike preparation (what to do at home) and then then a on-trail section. The authors have tried to simplify the on-trail requirements making meal time easier. The book emphasizes using standard ingrediants (no more expensive store bought freeze-dried stuff) and includes instructions for preserving (dehydrating) your own.

If you subscribe to Backpacker magazine the things in this won't suprise you, but having them all collected together is great. Lots of interesting recipes, good stories about cooking, and useful advice really rounded out my bookshelf.