Gear Breakdown | Part 3 | Cooking & Food

Cooking Kit

Going lightweight and 'semi-unsupported' means I'm only going to take basic food - some hot drinks, light breakfasts, emergency dinners, energy boosting snacks - all of which require at most simple rehydration or light heating. The most important thing for me will be the two cups of strong Starbucks Via coffee to get me started in the morning after bivying out for the night. To that end, and considering the difficulty of obtaining most bottled gas fuel sources en-route in Southern Turkey, I've decided to go with a simple alcohol stove, pot stand, 1 litre pot and a small bottle of meths (ispirto in Turkish). I'm hoping I can source additional fuel along the way if I need it.

My initial idea was to make the entire cooking kit from scratch and by hand; to build the stove from soda cans, a stand from welding rod, a wind shield from aluminium foil and source a cheap, light pot or make one from a tin can. I started down this path with the best intentions but ended up veering off...

CS985H-EX stove kit

There's a confusingly broad amount of information on building alcohol stoves on the internet and my research took me from the basic super cat stove to a pressurised beer can stove through to precision measured, fuel efficient, vortex capillary stoves After a few days of research I got together the tools and materials together, built some basic jigs to make the job easier and spent a Sunday morning chopping up Red Bull cans to build a vortex capillary stove. The result was impressive and 300ml of fuel burned for around 11 minutes, taking 5 1/2 mins to bring 400ml of water to a rolling boil.

As I started researching the rest of the cooking kit and trying to source materials I came across a commercial alcohol stove set on a Turkish internet site for cheap: an Esbit CS985H-EX with Trangia type alcohol stove, stand, pot with heat exchanger and lid for around $50 in Turkey (versus the Amazon US price of $90). I snapped it up... The burner is heavier than my home made one, but is more fuel efficient and heats a touch faster. It can also be pre-charged with fuel and capped, and comes with a snuffer/simmer cap, whose utility partly offsets the extra weight requirement.

Food

Although I intend to source as much food as possible along the way, eating out, buying local produce from villagers and the occasional shop, I also intend to take several day's worth of dehydrated meals and high energy food for when I end up off the grid - and in case of emergency. For this I'm looking at a combination of cup-a-soups, instant noodles with packets of tuna, home made oat and nut muesli with milk powder, tea/coffee/hot chocolate, trail mix, granola bars, energy gels, high fat crackers with honey/nut butter/choc spreads.

I'm packing three days worth of 3,000 kcal food plus some assorted energy gels I have left over from running, a few packs of beef jerky, extra granola bars and additional trail mix plus a big bag of sachets of good Starbucks instant coffee, hot chocolate and teabags. This is all for the days when I can't find other food and drinks and I'll restock as I go along.

The 3,000 kcal day food pack is made up as follows:

• 1 1/2 cups (200g) trail mix [mixed nuts, dried fruit, m&ms] 800kcal
• 1 pack cup-a-soup ['Cabuk Corba' in Turkish] 500kcal
• 1 tube of nutella ['Cokokrem' in Turkish] 200kcal
• 1 small tube of honey ['bal' in Turkish] 100kcal
• Ziplock bag of oats, milk powder & chia seed 450kcal
• Instant noodles [cheese flavour 'MakarNeks'], repackaged to reduce size 400kcal
• One pack of tuna in oil ['ton balik' in Turkish] 320kcal
• Two granola bars 300kcal