Mise En Place
A reader wrote to ask me what I’ve been eating and how I cook it. I’m a pretty decent camp cook—thank you, Outward Bound, for setting me on that path—but for bikepacking I throw all that to the wind. My day is too packed to do fancy things like bake bread, plus I don’t have the space to stock my kitchen for it. On the bike it’s all about Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I accidentally struck upon my current system somewhere in the middle of Tasmania, and I don’t mind patting myself on the back for it. I’m quite pleased with how it’s worked out. The most important principle is this: tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast are the same thing.
That means whatever I cook has to be tasty both hot and cold. Obviously the first thought there is macaroni and cheese. I love cold mac and cheese. I was stunned the first time I heard somebody say they didn’t like it. I just thought everybody loved it, the same way everybody thinks Han Solo is cooler than Luke Skywalker. I still remember the first Luke Skywalker fan I ever met, too. I still don’t get it.
Eating the same thing for dinner and breakfast cuts cooking time in half and also doubles the lifespan of a fuel canister. That was a lot more important in Tasmania, where fuel was hard to come by and I spent so much of it boiling water to make my Peruvian babies. That’s a Nalgene full of piping hot water, which you keep in your jacket (looking rather pregnant) to stay warm. In Tasmanian high country in late winter, or Peruvian way-up-high country (which is where I conceived this trick) I recommend two bottles, the second down by your feet in your sleeping bag. In Tassie there were plenty of nights I had wake up and reboil the water (which wasn’t true even at 15,000’ in Peru). That’s a lot of fuel, which inspired the system of repeat meals.
My other favorite dinner/breakfast is Moroccan couscous. It comes in a box mix at the better grocery stores down here, an envelope of couscous and a packet of spices. It’s an idiot-proof dish, and for variety you can stir in all kinds of different goodies. Just be careful to pick additions you’d also enjoy for breakfast. My top two faves are dried cranberries and fresh cucumbers and tomatoes.
I do variations on the mac and cheese too, but these are limited to:
Add chili flakes
Add garlic powder
Any kind of potato is good for dinner-breakfast too, and all of them improve with chili flakes or garlic powder. Cheddar cheese is good for every meal and doesn’t need refrigeration. Just wrap it in something and don’t pack it in the hottest, most sun-exposed part of your bag. Ditto cream cheese bagels. If I have an AirBnB with a toaster I’ll make a whole sleeve of them the night before and that’ll be breakfast and lunch.
The other staples of my diet are mandarin oranges, bananas, hard-boiled eggs, a large variety of chocolate, and when I’m lucky, some tasty selections from the bulk food section of New World. That’s a grocery chain I had never seen before arriving in Wellington, and it is the bee’s knees. It is to grocery stores what the Alamo Drafthouse is to movie theatres: more fun, more creative, more better. I ride through some pretty small towns, so I’m not always lucky enough to find one, but I think they should be everywhere. In the bulk section, I highly recommend the maple coconut almonds, BBQ cashews, and chocolate-covered salted caramels. Mmmmmm, caramels.
As for how I cook, my entire kitchen is one pot, a spatula that doubles as a spoon, and the kind of camp stove you screw onto a standard fuel canister. I’ve pared my spice cabinet down to salt, chili flakes, cinnamon, and garlic powder, plus the occasional sugar packet swiped from a cafe. Anything cinnamon, chili, or garlic can’t fix isn’t worth fixing.
I get most of my water from the largesse of strangers—farmhouses and cafe staff are my most frequent donors—and also a fair amount from streams and the occasional lake. Flowing water is better. Deep, fast flowing water is best.
Maybe you’ll think this is gross, but when I cook for myself I don’t use soap. I clean my dishes, of course, but humanity has yet to invent a true Leave No Trace dish soap. Instead, I use a variant of the Outward Bound method. I eat straight from the pot, and I eat all of it. Every grain of couscous, every last drop of sauce. For this a spoon isn’t good enough; you need a rubber spatula. Then I boil water to make tea. If you finish your breakfast thoroughly—every last smear of it—then the only thing left in the pot will be trace amounts of oil or fat. These vanish in a liter of tea. Stir that boiling water with your spatula and voilà, you’ve sterilized your whole kitchen sans soap.
Usually I boil another liter of tea before dinner, not to double-sterilize but because I only carry one pot. If I need a Peruvian baby, I’ll make the tea even before I unpack. Much easier to stay warm than to get warm.
So that’s it: the simplest system I can devise that doesn’t rely on those gourmet boil-in bags. Or soap.