You have to eat on the trail for a multi-day trip and there are no McWendy's in the forest. Some backpackers only take food they can eat cold so they do not need to bring a stove. They eat PB&J tortillas and they sometimes do something called cold soaking to turn dry oatmeal, rice, or pasta into something easier to digest. It's a hard pass from me. I will be carrying a stove and real food to cook.
Stove
When I first started backpacking, I bought a used MSR Whisperlite. It was a popular stove at that time, but it was heavier than the iso-butane cannister stoves that are widely used now. It's also a little scary to use because you have to prime the stove by heating a vaporization tube, and priming the stove involves a puddle of fuel and somewhat large flames. When you get it going, there is a bit of a zen feel to using it, but ultimately, there are more convenient options available now.
So a few years ago, I sold my Whisperlite and upgraded to a smaller packing and much lighter weight cannister stove. I chose the Optimus Crux Lite stove.
Optimus Crux Lite
You can find these stoves for under $50 today. They screw onto an iso-butane cannister. They are fairly easy to light, and they pack very small. This one weighs 2.85 oz on my scale with the stuff sack it comes with. 2.65 oz without the stuff sack. You don't really need the stuff sack, but it does keep it from rattling around if you pack it in your cook pot.
This is one of the few items I had from my old gear setup (I probably bought this about 10 years ago) that I have not upgraded and don't necessarily have active plans to upgrade. The BRS 3000T stove is lighter and smaller. It is not expensive either. By the time my thru hike date arrives, I may have talked myself into saving the almost 2 oz and spending the $20 (they have been selling for less than that on Amazon), but for now, I will carry those 2 oz.
Cook pot
I have had a few different cook pots. When I first started backpacking, like 20 years ago, I picked up a set of MSR steel pots. They were large enough to use car camping with my family. They also held my MSR Whisperlite stove (but not the fuel bottle). That set was larger and heavier than I needed for solo backpacking trips.
Around the same time that I upgraded my stove to the Optimus, I also purchased some smaller and lighter cook pots. The mid-grade pots I bought were Coleman Max. There was a 800 ml and 600 ml pot that nested inside each other and also had lids that doubled as cups. They were steel and still a bit heavy.
Toaks Titanium cook pots are popular with backpackers. They are super light weight. They are designed to be able to hold the small 4 oz iso-butane cannisters, and depending on the size of your stove and size of the cook pot, you can also store your stove inside the pot. They are also inexpensive.
I chose the 750 ml pot. This allows me some flexibility with regard to the types of meals I can cook on the trail. I can boil water for freeze dried meals, but I can also cook some other types of meals. I will produce a future article on some of the alternative meals I am planning to bring for my trip.
Optimus stove, Toaks 750 ml pot, 4 oz cannister
Stove, fuel, and piezo spark lighter nested inside Toaks cook pot
Another thing that I have done to my cook kit to help reduce fuel consumption and also expand options for meals is creating a simmer cozy.
Insulation cozy
After I bring my water to a boil and stir in certain ingredients, some recipes require simmering for as long as 20 minutes. If I kept the stove burning for that long, it would use a lot of fuel. With this insulating cozy, I can boil my water, stir in my ingredients, but turn off the stove and drop my pot in the cozy to finish cooking. The cozy should keep things hot enough to finish cooking. I custom made this cozy using Reflectix insulation material. You can find a number of videos on YouTube with different designs. This one was relatively simple to make and it still fits inside the Toaks stuff sack (barely).
So, how much does this all weigh?
Total cook kit weighs under a pound. If I trade out the stove, it will drop by a couple of ounces.
Spoon
You don't want to eat ramen noodles or rice or eggs with your fingers. Some backpackers like the long handle titanium spoons. So far, I have been fine with a cheapo plastic camp spoon. Walmart sells Ozark Trail brand sets of camp utensils. I am pretty sure I will be able to get by with just a spoon (though I will also be carrying a real folding knife for cutting things). The Ozark Trail set is $0.98.
I will only be bringing the spoon
My spoon is actually Coghlan's brand. It weighs 0.4 oz. I bought it years ago in a set. I think I may have even bought it on clearance, but you can find that specific brand for around $5 today.
Titanium long handle spoons are $10-20. The long handles have become popular because the freeze dried packages are deep sometimes and people get tired of getting food on their hands. To me, I'm not going to be using the package more than once. If it is too deep, I will cut it so I can reach the bottom without getting food on my hand. The long handle spoons weigh slightly more than my spoon. I like my spoon just fine. I don't need another one.
Food bag
I have teetered back and forth about a food bag. I had been hoping that I could use one of the Walmart cheapo stuff sacks I purchased as a set. I am using one for my poop kit. Another one as a ditty bag for small odds and ends, but the largest one hasn't really found a purpose yet. The trouble with these stuff sacks is that they are all the same diameter. They differ in size because they are deeper or shallower. The largest bag is a 10 liter capacity bag, but it is so long and narrow that it's not very practical for a food bag. It looks like a wind sock.
Hilltop Packs is a small company that makes popular food bags. But they are more than $50. Yikes. I just can't bring myself to spend that kind of money for a simple bag.
I have a reusable shopping bag that I got either free or on clearance from a the gift shop where I work. I used it to hold my food on the previous overnight trip I took and it worked fine. Here is what it looked like when I hung it to keep the bears away.
It is made out of lightweight ripstop nylon. It is soft and can be tied off with the two handles. It weighs 1.65 oz on my scale. The Dyneema food bags that can hold more than 3 days of food weigh 1.3 oz. I think I can make do with my nylon shopping bag. I would wager my shopping bag can hold as much or more than the Hilltop packs large size food bag. Eventually I may want to upgrade, but this should hold me for a while.
I actually had one of those food bags in the digital shopping cart and was at checkout when I decided to weigh the bag I already had and have used successfully. That scale saved me from spending $50.
...Other
I may be creating a different kind of cozy for keeping food hot while like the cozy for the pot, but more like an envelope of Reflectix. If I do make one of those, I will post about it in a future article, probably after I have trail tested it.
That's all I have for this one. I hope you found it interesting and/or helpful. Holler if you have any questions.
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