# What is your kit?



## erehweslefox

Hey, friends, I am kind of new here, I've been avoiding the outdoor cooking forum, just because I've been indoor cooking and focused on baking, getting my cooking technique better, etc... 

But it is Memorial Day Weekend, and I am loading up the truck, well we call it a truck, it is a Toyota Rav4, but compared to my wife's Mazda protoge? Truck, and I don't have a backpacking trip planned, so I'm bringing my full field kitchen. I have one of those coleman type pavilion things, and well can roll out a nice camping kitchen when car camping. So here is what I use.

The center is a two burner Optima propane stove from the 60's. I like it as it has about three parts, and two o-rings which are a standard industrial size. I have a bag of them in my camping closet.

Coleman camping oven. Another vintage pic, it is a fold able oven that goes on the stove. It has a thermometer, I can get it to about 300 degrees consistent. Enough for camping pie. 

MSR Dragonfly. The best backpacking stove ever. You can run this off pretty much any flammable liquid you can find. Loves white gas, but can work off gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel!, even isopropyl alcohol in a pinch. And it is adjustable. I use this backpacking as the main deal, car camping, it is my saute side burner. Side benefit, this thing sounds like a jet engine. Everyone knows you are cooking

Big ass fire, with a side pit for coals. If you don't know how to make a big ass fire, you shouldn't be camping, dig a small side pit, and shovel coals from your heady heavy and large conflagration.

Some cast iron... Lodge dutch oven, and lodge 10" skillet. Um if you don't know what these are stay out of the woods. 

Carbon steel wok, for camping stir fry.

One large roll of Reynolds Wrap heavy aluminium foil. Wouldn't set up a camp kitchen without it. Ever. 

Cameron stove top smoker, can't believe I forgot this. It works on a burner or a campfire, and if the gods love me and I catch a fish, this is the go to prep.

So armed with these, a tent, and a good disposition, if work doesn't interfere, we are going out to make a camp. As far as the menu? don't know. Driving out this time of year through central PA? I am going to pass enough farmers markets that we can just buy stuff.

Happy camping friends. 

TBS

*edited to add my cameron stove top smoker, love that thing*


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## CraigC

The only thing we have that can be considered portable (one person) is a Weber 22 kettle grill. We have a rotisserie and kettle pizza kit for it. The other cookers we have are a large BGE and a Horizon 16 Classic, offset smoker. We also have two propane fueled, Jet cookers. One will be used tomorrow for a crawfish boil.


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## Katie H

erehweslefox said:


> Cameron stove top smoker, can't believe I forgot this. It works on a burner or a campfire, and if the gods love me and I catch a fish, this is the go to prep.



Glad you enjoy your stovetop smoker.  We use ours for all sorts of stuff.  I only wish they were around when I was camping...back in the Stone Age.


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## PrincessFiona60

Saw, hatchet, matches, bucket, coffee pot and a 12 inch cast iron pan with lid.


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## erehweslefox

Katie H said:


> Glad you enjoy your stovetop smoker.  We use ours for all sorts of stuff.  I only wish they were around when I was camping...back in the Stone Age.



OK you, Katie just spoke the majik words, stovetop smoker. I'm gonna give you my best-est recipe. This gets me invited back to the cookouts at the synagogue even though I am a Quaker. to wit:

Ingredients:

At least four large beets, skinned and sliced into disks (yeah your hands are gonna look red after this step, my favorite is to go all lady McBeth Out out damn spot!)
cilantro, fresh and diced to taste
16 oz can Ro-Tel 
one pound fresh spinach, cleaned up and chopped nice
16 oz feta cheese
one big fat red onion, diced.

OK, so to make, smoke the beets in the smoker. I use Alder, but hickory or oak works just fine. If you have a main fish course? Smoke it together. On medium heat I give them a half hour on my range. 

Dice the beets, mix everything together, save the cheese for the last. and toss. Chill out, and chill the beets, you just made a salad, this is best served cold.

Now if you want a dressing for this salad:

1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tbsp mustard (strong powdered British like) or 1 tbsp table mustard (Dijon or stone ground is better than french's)
1 tbsp honey or maple syrup

mix quite well, and pour over mixed.

I impress VEGANS with this recipe, I convert people to vegetarianism, and I'm not even a vegetarian. It is all about smoked beets. 


Best,
TBS


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## erehweslefox

PrincessFiona60 said:


> 12 inch cast iron pan with lid.



I'll even carry that one backpacking. If you have a good pan with a lid, you often in the Northeast don't even need to carry food, you can forage. That and the Dragonfly stove, we ate foraged food all through the shenandoah NP

TBS


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## roadfix

erehweslefox said:


> MSR Dragonfly. The best backpacking stove ever. You can run this off pretty much any flammable liquid you can find. Loves white gas, but can work off gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel!, even isopropyl alcohol in a pinch. And it is adjustable. I use this backpacking as the main deal, car camping, it is my saute side burner. Side benefit, this thing sounds like a jet engine. Everyone knows you are cooking



That is a very nice stove.   I use an Optimus Plus if I'm cooking for two or more.   And there's no mistaking, people, even 50 yards away, know you're cooking with that jet engine roar these stoves produce...LOL...
Most of my local mountain, over night backpacking or bikepacking trips are solo so I carry either my canister stove (MSR Superfly or Pocket Rocket) or an alcohol stove (Trangia or Fancy Feast diy stove).   In fact, I'm bikepacking and spending the night at a local trail camp Sat night and I've got my Fancy Feast stove nested and packed already.

For Memorial Day, at home, I've got a bunch of people to entertain and I'll be smoking 4 racks of St.Louis style ribs on my UDS (ugly drum smoker).

Enjoy your camping trip!


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## erehweslefox

The pocket rocket is a good stove, I just don't like canisters, I will take the weight penalty to carry a liquid fuel stove. I adore, diy alchohol stoves, and if it was just me, I'd even carry the old school hexe tablet stove. It boils water fine. 

I ended up, in the end, spoiling myself. In order to get my wife out on the trail I had to convince her that it wasn't awful, part and part of that was good food. Dragonfly is great for that, you can run it full blast, or sautee some nice mushrooms. We do a backpacking trip every other month, mostly weekend 30 mile trips, the mids are car camping (heck when I am car camping if I could fit my oven in the car I would), but I even backpacking like to carry the MSR dragonfly, just also because we like to forage as we go. get some fresh ramps? sauteed in a little butter with mushrooms? often we save the dehydrated stuff for the next hike.

A good camp stove does wake people up, doesn't it? My cousin is a marine, took him out to camp and he bolted out of the tent early when I fired it up for oatmeal and coffee, swore to god he thought we were commencing harrier jet flight operations 

Dragonfly will eat anything. Why I love it. Backpacking in eastern europe? No trouble.

We are apartment bound, so no UDS here, but glad you have one. throw a little maple syrup on them ribs if you can find some, and think of us in the Northeast.

Happy Memorial Day!


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## RPCookin

My "kit" is a pop-up camping trailer with a roll out queen size bed on each end, towed behind a Honda Ridgeline pickup.  I'm old enough to have a greater appreciation for personal comfort than I did in my 30's.  These old bones have no interest in trying get a good night's rest on a 1" thick Thermarest mattress.  In the 70's and 80's I carried a backpack in the Colorado, Wyoming and Montana mountains, over passes as high as 12,700 feet, both on and off trail.  I paddled a couple of 8 day canoe trips into the Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario back in the 60's.  I kayaked the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho - 100 miles of wilderness whitewater travel.

I'm happy to sit back and leave all that to the young folks these days.  I had my fun, and still enjoy the memories.


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## roadfix

My back can no longer handle sleeping on the ground so I've been hammock camping.   
When I turned 60 I switched from a tent to a hammock.    I'll convert to a motorhome in a dozen years or so....))


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## rodentraiser

I lived in my truck for a bunch of years and then about 20 years later, I lived in my car for a couple months. 

I kept a Coleman stove attached to a propane tank and cooked on that (yes, I slept next to a propane tank and cooked in my car). When I had the truck, I put a heater on the large propane tank and kept a small one to power the stove, but the car was too small for that kind of heater. My next investment would have been to get a propane heater rated safe for indoor use, but I got housing before I could get that.

In the car, I kept a couple collapsible plastic clothes bag. One had clean clothes and as I wore them, they went into the other bag, which eventually got pulled out and brought to the laundromat. I got one of those plastic drawer units and kept toiletries in one drawer, paper plates and plastic silverware in another, boxes of garbage bags, handy wrap, and foil in another, and then just a catchall drawer for things like matches, batteries,etc. 

One one side of the drawers I drilled some hooks into the plastic and hung my measuring cups and measuring spoons. On the other side I put up a paper towel holder and some hooks to hold rope where I hung the kitchen towels and hot pads. Because I was in a PT Cruiser and the back roof slopes down, I had just enough room to hang a couple of pots and one frying pan from the back. I also kept Kleenex there on the floor under the pots and pans.

I folded the front seat down and was able to put a box for canned and boxed food there alongside a slim 2 1/2 gallon water container with a spigot. I kept two 1-gal water jugs on the floor of the front seat and also fit a small cooler there as well. 

Collapsible bowls for washing up and doing dishes were tucked under on the backseat floors, as well as a rolled up sleeping bag. Since I could only enter the car from one side, shoes came off immediately and they went on the floor too. I ran a rope from one side of the car to the other in the middle of the space for hanging drying towels and also hanging a battery powered lantern that could be slid from side to side in the back as I needed it to be.

I put down a piece of wood 1" thick, and then laid a rug and a foam mattress (cut in two) on it, wrapped it in a bottom sheet and then had three blankets on top of that, along with my pillow, of course.

I was actually quite comfortable.

In the mid 80s, I had a telescope and went out for weekends with my astronomy club and did stargazing, and then in the mid 90s, I did some SAR work and we would have weekend drills, so I was already used to getting together all the things I needed to be comfortable. I finally got another telescope again last fall, so I'm in the process of refitting the car into a camper again for weekend stargazing treks. Problem is, I sold and/or gave away most of my stuff when I moved in here, so basically, I'd be buying everything to outfit the car again. This is my dream purchase:

Amazon.com : Camp Chef Camping Outdoor Oven with 2 Burner Camping Stove : Portable Propane Oven : Kitchen & Dining


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## erehweslefox

rodentraiser said:


> I'm in the process of refitting the car into a camper again for weekend stargazing treks.
> 
> Amazon.com : Camp Chef Camping Outdoor Oven with 2 Burner Camping Stove : Portable Propane Oven : Kitchen & Dining




I think, and you sound handy, you can do better than that. Rodentraiser, how are you at fixing things up? Most of the time you find a stove it is a problem with o rings. You clean everything else, get an O ring from someone like well:

O-Rings - Standard AS568, ISO 3601 | Apple Rubber Products

and you are good to go even with an old stove. Honest it just takes being good with a tape measure.

You can find people with great stoves that are just not working, need an update on the seals. check the e-bay

best wishes,

TBS


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## rodentraiser

I'm inventive, but I'm all thumbs at trying to fix anything. Anyway, it's the oven I want as much as the stove. If you're car camping, then a lot of stuff can be made with dry goods and baked in the oven. 

It's a pipe dream though, because I can't really afford that right now anyway. I need - OK, I don't need, but I would like very, very, VERY much - to get a new focuser for the telescope. If I decide to take off for a stargazing weekend right now, I can still use my old stove (single burner canister style) that I kept in my backpack for doing SAR.


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## roadfix

rodentraiser said:


> VERY much - to get a new focuser for the telescope. If I decide to take off for a stargazing weekend right now, I can still use my old stove (single burner canister style) that I kept in my backpack for doing SAR.



What kind of focuser are you looking for?
Astronomy has been an in and out hobby of mine for decades.   I also, on occasion, head up to a popular, local dark site and camp with my scope.


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## erehweslefox

So, just cause this went out into astronomy... Wife and I lived in Oklahoma for a while and really enjoyed camping in Big Bend, which is one of a couple of good dark places. Another is Cherry Springs state park here in PA. Going to go visit that, now that we are out in PA

Love to see you on the trails or in camp, bring your telescope, I'll make some camp food up.


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## rodentraiser

roadfix said:


> What kind of focuser are you looking for?
> Astronomy has been an in and out hobby of mine for decades.   I also, on  occasion, head up to a popular, local dark site and camp with my  scope.



I think this one:

GSO 1.25" Crayford Focuser (with 176mm base plate) for Reflectors - Single Speed

I  have a helical focuser now and I'd like to upgrade it to a rack and  pinion one. However, the racked in height of the one I want to replace  is 2" and the cheap focuser from Orion I was looking at buying had a  racked in height of 3.25". 

That Agena one is the closest one  I've found so far. A Crayford would be even better, but staying under  $100 is pretty much a necessity.

The last time this happened I  had a 13" scope (Dobsonian) and replaced that helical focuser with a  rack and pinion one with a different racked in height. The result was I  couldn't focus in on anything, so the end of the telescope had to be cut off  and the mirror moved up, which necessitated moving up the altitude  bearings.

I'm not wanting to go through that again with this scope. What I have now is an old Orion 8" f/6, complete with sonotube, and I think it could be a really good scope for me with a few upgrades.




erehweslefox said:


> So, just cause this went out into astronomy... Wife and I lived in Oklahoma for a while and really enjoyed camping in Big Bend, which is one of a couple of good dark places. Another is Cherry Springs state park here in PA. Going to go visit that, now that we are out in PA
> 
> Love to see you on the trails or in camp, bring your telescope, I'll make some camp food up.



If I ever get to your neck of the woods, I'll take you up on that offer.

I always went to Fremont Peak when I lived in the Bay Area in California. I really miss that. Here the only viewing place I've found short of driving 70 miles to the top of a mountain is a place in the local cemetery. If the dead don't mind, I don't!


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## roadfix

I've purchased stuff from Agena before, including a 2" GSO focuser for my 12" Meade dob.   They are a good company to deal with.
Your f6 scope is a nice all around scope that's easy to lug around.    I had a Parks 6" f6 on a alt-az pedestal mount which I sold recently.  It had a horrible focuser but I didn't want to put money into it.   In a way I miss that scope.   It had a really good primary.


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## rodentraiser

Thanks! I was told the mirrors on those old Orions were pretty good. And yeah, with my back the way it is, I need my scope to be easy to lug around. There was a time I could lift that 13", but no more. Good to know that about Agena.

Oh, I thought I better keep this thread on topic - the telescope lives in the car and it is also part of my kit now.


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## roadfix

I took this photo yesterday before setting up camp.   Part of my kit is a 40oz Klean Kanteen water bottle (nested with my cooking pot)


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## erehweslefox

Nice looking bike! I just finally got mine fixed up, and my wife bought herself one. 

TBS


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## roadfix

Thanks, I found the bare, used frame on eBay about a dozen years ago.  It's a 20 year old Dean titanium and I built the bike up from new and spare parts.   This bike is only used for bikepacking now.


Sent from my iPad using Discuss Cooking


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## erehweslefox

roadfix said:


> Thanks, I found the bare, used frame on eBay about a dozen years ago.  It's a 20 year old Dean titanium and I built the bike up from new and spare parts.   This bike is only used for bikepacking now.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Discuss Cooking



I have a beat up Sterling (remember that bike company? No one does you won't be alone) frame with updated shifters and brakes. Good urban bike as it is theft resistant, looks like shite. Pretty stiff frame, it came from a time when 'mountain bikes' were in the ur stages, I used it as a mountain bike for years. I hate it sometimes because it is heavy, but it is 25 years old and still working. so there is that. It was a hybrid to begin with, and I feign to imagine what I've put that frame through. Keeps coming up well. 

Cheers,

TBS


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## cinisajoy

Quick reminder,
Check at the county lines for burn bans or with the park you are staying at before making a fire.
Astronomers,  McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains is open to the public on Tuesdays. 

Our kit is a small pop up camper.


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