Backpacker's Cookbook

`Backpacker's Cookbook' by Margaret Cross and Jean Fiske covers a remarkably complex subject for such a thin book. If you have never backpacked or cracked open the `Boy Scout Handbook' or Colin Fletcher's `The Complete Walker', you may have no notion of how difficult hiking and cooking can be. To be clear, this is not at all the same as tailgating, where you have no limit to how much you can carry, so you have practically no limits on the kind of food you can carry or the kind of dishes you can prepare. There are three big differences between cooking at home and cooking while backpacking. First, you can use only what you can carry on your back in a pack and actually walk over uneven terrain at the same time. As a small, inexperienced Boy Scout, I was able to pack for an overnight hike with a scant 13 pounds; however, it is much more likely you will need upwards of 40 pounds of stuff for two or more days; especially if the weather is cold or wet or both. Second, walking 10 to 12 miles with forty (40) pounds of gear on your back means you will need to eat far more calories, and that means mostly fast calories, than you eat at home, even while going to work from 9 to 5 (assuming you don't walk or pedal to work). The classic high calorie hiking dish is `gorp' (good old raisins and peanuts) which may contain far more than just two ingredients (M & M's being the favorite add-in). Third, you realistically have less time to cook than normal, because you will be especially tired at the end of the day, and will have to spend time striking camp and packing up to start up at the beginning of the day. This book covers those issues and more. This scenario is made even more complicated by the fact that in most hiking venues anywhere within 2 hours driving of civilization (Harriman Park northwest of New York City comes to mind), you will be discouraged by our wildlife guardians to not build fires using fuel you may find lying about. This means you need to add close to five pounds of gear for a camp stove and fuel. The best scenario here is that there are at least two people in the hiking party and they can split the stove and fuel between them. Things get REALLY dicey when you are hiking in an area with no ready supply of water. On the Appalachian Trail, for example, there are sources of clean water at every likely campsite. And, this is commonly water piped in from a friendly municipal water supply. The other side of the coin is when you happen to be backpacking to a remote, but fecund fishing hole. This means not only do you have ample supplies of potable water, you have a practically inexhaustible supply of fresh, healthy protein. The only downside is that you have to tote your fishing gear in with you. But, my experience with `ultralight' fishing gear good for fish up to four pounds will not weigh much more than 2 or three pounds itself. While the shape may be awkward, fly fishing gear may be even lighter (but then, there are those waders!). The authors s