Collins Complete Hiking and Camping Manual: The essential guide to comfortable walking, cooking and sleeping

Salt

3 cups instant rice

1 onion, chopped

2 green bell peppers, chopped

2 apples, chopped

Curry powder

Ground cinnamon

Soak the lentils and barley for about 2 hours by putting them in a water bottle (you can do this earlier in the afternoon and they will be rehydrated by the time you get to camp). Add salt to a large pot of boiling water. Stir in rice, barley, and lentils. Reduce to a simmer, then add onion, green peppers, apples, and spices. Cover tightly and simmer for 30 minutes.

Serves 6

CURRIED CHICKEN WITH RICE

3 cups instant rice

Salt

1 onion, diced

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon margarine

30 ounces canned/foil pack chicken

2 apples, chopped

/

cup raisins

1 to 2 tablespoons curry powder

Boil 2

/

cups water, add rice, and boil for 1 minute with 1 tablespoon salt. Simmer, covered, until done. Drain excess water, if necessary. In a fry pan, sauté onion and garlic in 1 tablespoon margarine until tender. Add the chicken, apples, raisins, and curry and heat for a few minutes. Add chicken mixture to rice and serve.

Serves 6

OUTDOOR BAKING (#ulink_5db7dbea-4294-52df-af90-834e854c60f8)

Baking in the outdoors is an art that requires patience. In order to bake, you need to be able to provide heat on both the top and the bottom of your pan. There are a number of cooking pans and devices that enable you to do this. Another technique is to create a Dutch oven using a pot with a lid. You can do this on a fire (if building a fire is appropriate) or on a backpack stove: place coals from the fire, or build a twig fire, on top of the pot lid. (Lids designed with a rim to contain the fire make this much easier.) Hold your hand about 6 inches above the pot-lid coals. Your hand should feel hot but not burn. Once baking begins, gently remove the lid periodically using pot grips and check your progress, and then quickly replace the lid. You will have to continue to feed the coals to maintain heat.

FOOD EQUIVALENTS (#ulink_f5e01e53-2ee1-5b11-894d-bae6082e6557)

Here are some common menu items with information on how weight or volume converts to the number of servings:

MEASUREMENT EQUIVALENTS (#ulink_08c9afc0-a354-52df-8e03-00dafa0df713)

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_8dd8ad7c-6a1b-5368-a856-8d98f75ecbab)

Hygiene and Water Purification (#ulink_8dd8ad7c-6a1b-5368-a856-8d98f75ecbab)

KEEPING CLEAN ON THE TRAIL (#ulink_96a22810-b342-5426-9650-848008dd9bf4)

Handwashing (#litres_trial_promo)

Personal Bathing (#litres_trial_promo)

WASHING CLOTHES (#litres_trial_promo)

WASHING DISHES, POTS, AND UTENSILS (#litres_trial_promo)

WOMEN’S HYGIENE ISSUES (#litres_trial_promo)

Tampons vs. Pads (#litres_trial_promo)

Disposing of Tampons, Pads, and Towelettes (#litres_trial_promo)

WATER PURIFICATION (#litres_trial_promo)

Boiling (#litres_trial_promo)

Chemical Purification (#litres_trial_promo)

Mixed-Oxidant Solutions (#litres_trial_promo)

Ultraviolet Light (#litres_trial_promo)

Filtration (#litres_trial_promo)

COLLECTING AND STORING WATER IN COLD WEATHER (#litres_trial_promo)

Preventing Your Water from Freezing (#litres_trial_promo)

Maintaining proper hygiene is a challenge in the wilderness. After hiking down a muddy trail all day you are just covered with gunk. Add sweat, sunscreen, and bug repellant and you can be a mess. While part of the joy of backpacking is returning to a more basic existence, giving up the luxuries of hot and cold running water, toilets, showers, and the like, sometimes we surrender too much to the dirt that surrounds us and that can lead to actual health problems. Dirty and open blisters or cuts and scrapes are a ripe environment for infection. Bacterial infections can spread through poor cleaning of cookware and poor personal hygiene before handling food. Get into the habit of using good cleaning practices for a safer and more enjoyable trip. It’s not just your cleanliness; someone else’s lack of good hygiene could cause you to become sick. (See below.)

KEEPING CLEAN ON THE TRAIL (#ulink_2ac371b4-aed3-5f32-9b28-babedceb8f11)

One of the most common health problems when backpacking is gastrointestinal illnesses like diarrhea, which are spread by fecal-to-oral transmission. Fecal-borne pathogens get into your system through one of several routes: