Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling

Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling
by Alan Kesselheim

Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling
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Book Summary Information

Author: Alan Kesselheim
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-02-01
ISBN: 0070344361
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Product features:

Book Reviews of Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling

Book Review: Nice helpful little pamphlet, but not much more.
Summary: 3 Stars

I have done very little backpacking and moderate camping, and I waited with baited breath for this book to arrive (fortunately delivery was very fast so I had little time to form my expectations). When it did arrive, I read the book in a matter of a couple hours. Granted, I did not read through every recipe. This book does have some good common sense information about food drying, but not much more than typical instructions of most driers supply. From there the book goes through the other issues of packing, carrying and preparing trail foods in the very briefest of manners. There are many recipes included, and I will invariably use a few of them, but this is not the information I sought as I know how to cook. The book was weak on many issues that I hoped it might contain, such as information on nontraditional means of food production, such as solar cooking. The short piece on choices between stoves and fires, and the choices in stoves was near useless, even for an beginner, but it did help to fluff out this very tiny 88 page book to a bit more reasonable expectations of what defines a book. There are many line drawings that also stand in place of the diction I expected, and the majority of them have little to do with support of the text. My biggest disappointment is the complete lack of mention of plant based foods gathered along the way. I know there are many books on this topic, but I was more than a little surprised to find a total lack herein. I guess I was looking for a useful trail book, and this is certainly not it. The space in my pack is too valuable.
If you are looking for a recipe book with other basic tips, this book will serve you very well. Strangely, what I enjoyed most are the bits of prose at the chapter heads, but of course these had nothing to do with the book's subject. If you removed these from the book, and the useless line drawings, you would have enough left over for a lengthy magazine article, not a book. I am glad to have read this book, and I will refer to the recipes from time to time, but unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I would look for a used copy or go with another book altogether. Like most of you, I picked this book because of its high review ratings, and this time the ratings let me down.

Summary of Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling

" . . . a book that will appeal to everyone who has ever choked down the pre-packaged, bargain-basement camp food (or gone bankrupt buying the good stuff)." --Canoe & Kayak

. . . if you're on the lookout for a way to bring real meals to the field, [this book] might have the answer." --Field & Stream

Life in the outdoors revolves around food--cooking it, eating it, packing it, carrying it. We even fantasize about it, especially after a week of eating store-bought provisions. This book is all about fulfulling those food fantasies and avoiding those expensive disappointments. Trail Food tells you how to remove water from food, to make it lighter and longer-lasting, without removing its taste. Learn to plan menus and prepare meals just like the ones you left behind, using fresh foods from your garden or market, prepared and seasoned the way you like them.

Why fantasize when you can have the real thing?

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