solo cook kit

 

mesh bag, used for holding eveyrthing together and fine enough to filter crap out of water
lid, plastic lid, doesnt really fit, needs some holes for straining
titanium cup - 700ml
small mesh bag - keeps all the inside stuff together
instant coffee - why not? =)
windshield
kiwi fruit knife-spoon
gsi spork
bottle of oil
100ml of fuel for stove
small box of salt, pepper and cayenne pepper
small alcohol stove
wire pot stand
still needs cloth for cleaning.

hopefully will get to test it out soon.

*shakes fist at the USD*

Luckily i did do a little bit of shopping just before the USD seems to be bottoming out. At 0.65c!! *sigh*

got a new cooking kit and a new pair of waterproof pants, which i will hopefully review, some time soon =)

boiling water...

 

This is excelleent all round food for both breakfast, lunch and dinner. All you do is add 160ml of boiling water and 5 minutes later you have a nice bowl of nutritious goodness. Personally i dont care for couscous but the speed and flavour is unparallel for when your on the road and on teh move. How are you going to get your hands on boiling water though? Mmmm well it's not always possible but i guess it would rehydrate with cold as well if you are THAT hungry. The little bits of veggy and mixing in olive oil/butter and cayenne pepper make it a real treat.

Another favourite. Have some cheese handy to slice in and melt off while your rehydrating. The cup is a bit superfluous but can be handy in a pinch. Once i get my smaller titanium pot i'll probalby move onto the non-cup packaging to save space.

boiled EGGS! eggs are awesome, they can survive at least 4-5 days i reckon out in the open not in a fridge, too bad once one explodes you're left with a mess. My quick experimentation involving a mesh bag and a kettle kinda showed me that you can get some nice soft boiled eggs by boiling them in the kettle, and then leaving them in for about 10 minutes. So conceivably, you could use a dutch oven sort of a setup when there is no kettle about. The flip side is that it does require a lot of water...

Snow gear set

things to note:

• frost on the fly, both sides. Melts and dries quickly with towel and sunshine
• pot tipped over twice, devastating on food + fuel. Do not let happen again
• Zippers on jackets are not to be trusted. Do not overload, do not carry anything thats important and not tied down.
• Media pocket on jacket is useless, will not keep snow out and will drop things
• keep leatherman nearby and handy, do not risk losing again. Invest in high vis duct tape
• Sparklight hard to get going in the cold. Has trouble getting up to temp, bic lighter works much better.
• Medicine - need to label
• Carry more TP or tissues in case of cold
• stock up on decongestion tablets.
• invert gloves to dry faster
• Bring an extra waterproof bag/garbage bag for putting wet stuff in while sleeping.
• helmet gets very hot even with venting

Ultralamina 15F sleeping bag.. my fail safe

sleeping bag packed, tight

the event dry compression bag at work

extracting the sleeping bag

So here is my new sleeping bag, all packed up in a sea-to-summit event compression bag. This should keep it nice and dry in case i fall in a lake or soemthing, which will hopefully never happen. As you can it packs really small, just about football sized. =) It's still a bit bulky but it's a -9C bag, so it should be a little fatter then normal. I also went synthetic over down because i'm sure somehow i'll get it wet and i don't want to freeze to death if that happens =P

the sleeping bag unfurled...

look at the water pool, looks good.

As you can see the sleeping bag is unrolled and lofts up. I poured a bit of water on the bag and you can see it roll off to the edges and pool in some areas. Not penetrating the surface at all, so excellent there. I got in there for about 30 minutes and i was cooking in there and had to make a quick exit to avoid sweating.

Last night Brisbane temperatures dipped below 4C, so i decided to test out my gear make sure it all works well. So my sleeping setup involved a emergency bivy ground sheet + OR downmat 7 short on top of the ground sheet + the ultralamina + backpack to prop my legs up. I really enjoyed the side zipper right by the face on the ultralamina, where i could chuck my head lamp in while i'm sleeping. The setup even uses the pillow that comes with the downmat, so very very comfy.

me sleeping on my verandah with my laptop =P

So i slept through 4 degree weather only in thermos and didn't feel the the temperature at all. My face took the brunt of hte cold but it was a minor annoyance as the rest of me was very well taken care off. This will be my winter setup and i'm confident that it will work very well. Worse comes to worse i supplement it with a down jacket and i should have no problems.

Making a muffin with some camping gear...

I heard on a podcast that it's possible to make a muffin while camping and trekking. When i heard this i was utterly amazed. My current form of breakfast is cereal with milk powder + water. Horrible. But now, I could imagine waking up freezing in the middle of Thredbo and eating a nice hot muffin with only 10-15 minutes wait. I had to find out more.
So i popped off to Woolies to see what i could use. Betty Crocker's Just Add Milk, $3ish for 8 muffins in total and all you need is 165ml of milk, which can be supplemented with milk or BUTTERmilk powder. Yum.

I kinda did some maths and then decided, i have no scales so that was pretty much pointless and started mixing the milk and powder together until it was gooey. I hate baking, i have no idea what consistency its suppose to be. It kinda stuck to the spoon and then blobbed off. I figured that was good enough.

place a bit of tin to make sure it doesnt burn

put in muffin mix

steam steam steam away!

To make this muffin, they generally use steam baking which basically uses water to transfer the heat from the stove into hot air. Without the water it would take a longer and i think potentially damaging to the pot, though it has been done (maybe i'll give it a go later).

I had to make a little stand to keep my muffin container off the water. This was made with an old lasagna aluminum container which I had saved. A short bit cut and curved did the job really well. Then it was plonk the muffin in, boil away with the lid on.

soft soft muffin goodness

yumyum=P

so i gave it a good 10 minutes on the boil and it turned out great. No crusty muffin top but juicy, soft and yummy muffin innards.

After this i've tried it a few more times trying to use a pot cosy to extend the cooking time while increasing the muffin size. I think you could easily make a regular muffin size with 1 ounce of fuel + you get a hot drink at the end as well =)

i think a few more runs and i can bank this technique for the trail.

Whitebox Stove

Preparation begins. Since, i'm camping by myself i figured i needed something lighter then the regular butane burner. Since it's only over 2 nights essentially i have no need for all that weight thats in the fuel canister. One of the best alternatives is an alcohol stove of which apparently the Whitebox stove is one of the best. Mainly cos its crushproof and is big enough to put a stove can on, so saving me a stand. so i ordered it from ebay.So the alcohol stove does everything it promises. It's boils fast and keeps the pop upright. Was able to boil water with minimal issues. The main problem i have with it is its somehwat fuel hungry. It's thick aluminium takes quite long to prime which can be fixed with a wick apparently. Other then that, if you take care puttin the pot on teh stove you wont have the flames licking up the sides, or spilt water. Both i experienced during testing =)

A crucial component of using an alcohol stove is fuel efficiency. Pan frying food most likely out of question. Using it with a pot cosy allows you to extend your cooking time by basically allowing the food to cook itself. Apparently, this is what a dutch oven is suppose to be.
To make one, I purchased a $3 windscreen from the local cheapo store and basically cut out the pieces i needed and duct tape them all together. This slightly different to the designs you see on the internet in that I double walled it everywhere. The trickest part was the base which comprises of a trace of the bottom + wrapping the can with the double wall insulation and making another trace. Using duct tape, this was all stuck together =) So. to put it all to the test, I decided to cook a packet pasta for a snack. So to do this, I get 1.5 cups of water to boil with the whitebox stove. Add the pasta packet and let it boil again. This took about 5 minutes and was unexpectedly fast. After the fire goes out, place it in the pot cosy and wrap my jumper around it. 20 minutes later i checked it and the pasta was soft, hot and done.

Woot! on the trail, i'll have some salami in there for extra zing!