I know this might be better in the food section but it is also a camp thing and, well, I put it here.
Now, I'm not really strictly a bush crafter but I do spend a lot of time out and about and so I eat in the field a lot, probably somewhere between 100 and 200 meals per year, so I thought to post some of my thoughts and experiences on the basis that it might help someone. I often require fairly rapid meals which require no prep so for many people my comments will simply not have any significance to how they live in the field but there seemed to be no harm.
The first thing I should highlight is that, to date, I make day trips rather than overnights and also that water is almost never a problem and I usually don't need to carry it with me, though sometimes I take a water bottle along. However, I've been doing this for 25 years and so have some views, they are worth what you paid for them
The Crusader.
I think people have a love/hate relationship with the Crusader stove, especially ex-services people who often hate the smell of hexi. However, I love my Crusader and find it just so simple and handy especially for cups of tea on a day out. I use a combination of hexi and chafing gel to fuel mine.
Now the Crusader is one of the simplest devices known to man and to call it a stove is over selling it, given this it is hard to break. It is basically a dish to light a fire in and a mug to go on top in which you can boil water. Now the Crusader looks a little bulky but you can fit stuff into the mug and it nests quite well so in actual fact it doesn't take up much more space than the thickness of the metal. You have limited control over heat output so this is a system for boiling water and doesn't do many other things very well but I find that in combination with a self heating meal (MRE) it is ideal for a day out. This is my Crusader going on a rock, making some tea:
Or making tea on a remote loch while fishing:
Self Heating Meals.
I really like the self heating meals from a company called Hot Pack, they do a reasonable range of menus and the food is relatively tasty and has a shelf life of around 2 years or so. What is really handy about this is that in weight terms you eat almost everything that you carry as the heating element weighs next to nothing. All you need as a spoonfull of water to activate the heating element, and there is a sachet of water in the pack so you don't even need to source water.
The meals cost me something a little over £4 per meal including postage but I do tend to buy them in batches of 24, though you can order a mix of menus so you are not limited to 24 of the same menu. Some people are put off these meals because of the military "meals ready to eat" type reputation and while I can understand this there have been an awful lot of days when I've been only too pleased to tuck into my Hot Pack meal.
The photo below is a hot pack meal in preparation by a remote loch:
A real stove (MSR Dragonfly)
I really like my MSR Dragonfly stove and get a reasonable amount of use from it. The BIG advantage with the Dragonfly is that the heat is controllable so you can turn it down to simmer your food without risking burning it onto the bottom of the pot. The Dragonfly will run off nearly any fuel available to you though I've tended to run mine on Coleman Fuel, or the various replicas, as this produces a good run time and efficient cooking without causing any problems for the stove.
A real stove of this type will, of course, boil water very well but the big advantage is that it will also allow you to cook "real" food or even fry up some bacon and you can't beat the smell of frying bacon. The downside to cooking real food is that you have to carry the ingredients with you and while this is possible in some circumstances, and clearly some food items are more suited to life in a rucksack than others, it isn't always ideal especially on a hot day or for a multi-day trip. Also a stove of this type will probably take up a little more space in the rucksack, along with its fuel, than something like the Crusader so you do pay for the flexibility.
Making some chili on the MSR:
Freeze Dried Food.
Freeze dried food couldn't be simpler - it comes in a plastic pouch and you add boiling water and let it sit for a while to rehydrate before eating it. Mountain House and Expedition Foods branded freeze dried foods get a good reputation and I've tried them and found them tasty. Some menus are more to my liking than others but they really do make a good meal though often require more water to rehydrate than claimed on the packet - most meals claim to need something around 400 - 500ml but my experience has been that all needed over 600ml.
The big advantage of freeze dried food for someone like me is that I don't have to carry water and as the food is dehydrated so I'm carrying the absolute minimum amount of weight plus I only need to be able to boil water so something as simple as the Crusader will do the job on the cooking front. The food will keep for many years and can be eaten from the pouches so there is no washing up and very little rubbish to carry out once you've finished. This makes the food ideal to "backstop" other plans - for example I might fancy eating trout rolls on a fishing trip but then fail to catch any trout so having a meal in the bag means there is no pressure. On the down size freeze dried food is expensive, the "larger meals" type food that I've been eating cost something around £6.50 to £7.50 per meal and so even a few days of eating freeze dried meals soon adds up to a lot of cash.
Boiling up the water for a freeze dried meal:
Look What We Found.
Recently I've been trying some of the "Look What We Found" meals, this is a work in progress but my results have been positive. These come in plastic pouches and have a relatively short shelf life of around 9 months. You can get pouches of a main meal and there are also pouches of rice so, for example, you can have curry and rice.
These meals were designed to be heated in a microwave but can also be stood in boiling water and this seems to work very effectively the one problem being that my pot is a little small for the job, though just adequate. I've been heating the meals for around 15 minutes but you could probably get away with less especially if the amount of fuel you carry was limited and you were on a multi day trip.
I've found the food tasty, though perhaps not always as good as the freeze dried food but in part that is down to my tastes, and they have a good, varied menu which is wider ranging than the Hot Pack meals, for example though the meals are not as big as the larger freeze dried meals so I might prefer a bit more for a dinner but they seem ideally sized for lunch.
A Look What We Found meal plus rice in my Alpkit pot - it is tight but it actually works well and although there appears to be a lot of the pouch sticking out the food tends to settle to the bottom so it actually all gets very hot:
Now, I'm not really strictly a bush crafter but I do spend a lot of time out and about and so I eat in the field a lot, probably somewhere between 100 and 200 meals per year, so I thought to post some of my thoughts and experiences on the basis that it might help someone. I often require fairly rapid meals which require no prep so for many people my comments will simply not have any significance to how they live in the field but there seemed to be no harm.
The first thing I should highlight is that, to date, I make day trips rather than overnights and also that water is almost never a problem and I usually don't need to carry it with me, though sometimes I take a water bottle along. However, I've been doing this for 25 years and so have some views, they are worth what you paid for them
The Crusader.
I think people have a love/hate relationship with the Crusader stove, especially ex-services people who often hate the smell of hexi. However, I love my Crusader and find it just so simple and handy especially for cups of tea on a day out. I use a combination of hexi and chafing gel to fuel mine.
Now the Crusader is one of the simplest devices known to man and to call it a stove is over selling it, given this it is hard to break. It is basically a dish to light a fire in and a mug to go on top in which you can boil water. Now the Crusader looks a little bulky but you can fit stuff into the mug and it nests quite well so in actual fact it doesn't take up much more space than the thickness of the metal. You have limited control over heat output so this is a system for boiling water and doesn't do many other things very well but I find that in combination with a self heating meal (MRE) it is ideal for a day out. This is my Crusader going on a rock, making some tea:
Or making tea on a remote loch while fishing:
Self Heating Meals.
I really like the self heating meals from a company called Hot Pack, they do a reasonable range of menus and the food is relatively tasty and has a shelf life of around 2 years or so. What is really handy about this is that in weight terms you eat almost everything that you carry as the heating element weighs next to nothing. All you need as a spoonfull of water to activate the heating element, and there is a sachet of water in the pack so you don't even need to source water.
The meals cost me something a little over £4 per meal including postage but I do tend to buy them in batches of 24, though you can order a mix of menus so you are not limited to 24 of the same menu. Some people are put off these meals because of the military "meals ready to eat" type reputation and while I can understand this there have been an awful lot of days when I've been only too pleased to tuck into my Hot Pack meal.
The photo below is a hot pack meal in preparation by a remote loch:
A real stove (MSR Dragonfly)
I really like my MSR Dragonfly stove and get a reasonable amount of use from it. The BIG advantage with the Dragonfly is that the heat is controllable so you can turn it down to simmer your food without risking burning it onto the bottom of the pot. The Dragonfly will run off nearly any fuel available to you though I've tended to run mine on Coleman Fuel, or the various replicas, as this produces a good run time and efficient cooking without causing any problems for the stove.
A real stove of this type will, of course, boil water very well but the big advantage is that it will also allow you to cook "real" food or even fry up some bacon and you can't beat the smell of frying bacon. The downside to cooking real food is that you have to carry the ingredients with you and while this is possible in some circumstances, and clearly some food items are more suited to life in a rucksack than others, it isn't always ideal especially on a hot day or for a multi-day trip. Also a stove of this type will probably take up a little more space in the rucksack, along with its fuel, than something like the Crusader so you do pay for the flexibility.
Making some chili on the MSR:
Freeze Dried Food.
Freeze dried food couldn't be simpler - it comes in a plastic pouch and you add boiling water and let it sit for a while to rehydrate before eating it. Mountain House and Expedition Foods branded freeze dried foods get a good reputation and I've tried them and found them tasty. Some menus are more to my liking than others but they really do make a good meal though often require more water to rehydrate than claimed on the packet - most meals claim to need something around 400 - 500ml but my experience has been that all needed over 600ml.
The big advantage of freeze dried food for someone like me is that I don't have to carry water and as the food is dehydrated so I'm carrying the absolute minimum amount of weight plus I only need to be able to boil water so something as simple as the Crusader will do the job on the cooking front. The food will keep for many years and can be eaten from the pouches so there is no washing up and very little rubbish to carry out once you've finished. This makes the food ideal to "backstop" other plans - for example I might fancy eating trout rolls on a fishing trip but then fail to catch any trout so having a meal in the bag means there is no pressure. On the down size freeze dried food is expensive, the "larger meals" type food that I've been eating cost something around £6.50 to £7.50 per meal and so even a few days of eating freeze dried meals soon adds up to a lot of cash.
Boiling up the water for a freeze dried meal:
Look What We Found.
Recently I've been trying some of the "Look What We Found" meals, this is a work in progress but my results have been positive. These come in plastic pouches and have a relatively short shelf life of around 9 months. You can get pouches of a main meal and there are also pouches of rice so, for example, you can have curry and rice.
These meals were designed to be heated in a microwave but can also be stood in boiling water and this seems to work very effectively the one problem being that my pot is a little small for the job, though just adequate. I've been heating the meals for around 15 minutes but you could probably get away with less especially if the amount of fuel you carry was limited and you were on a multi day trip.
I've found the food tasty, though perhaps not always as good as the freeze dried food but in part that is down to my tastes, and they have a good, varied menu which is wider ranging than the Hot Pack meals, for example though the meals are not as big as the larger freeze dried meals so I might prefer a bit more for a dinner but they seem ideally sized for lunch.
A Look What We Found meal plus rice in my Alpkit pot - it is tight but it actually works well and although there appears to be a lot of the pouch sticking out the food tends to settle to the bottom so it actually all gets very hot:
