Member Book & Video Reviews
The Lightweight Gourmet

The Lightweight Gourmet
Drying and Cooking Food for the Outdoor Life
by Alan Kesseiheim
Ragged Mountain Press, $10.95, 82pp

Reviewed by Tim Hewitt
June 1995 (Wooden Canoe Issue #69)

This is not just a cookbook, but a real down-to-earth methods book for preparing good tasting, nutritious, and really lightweight foods to take with you on any sort of trip. Alan has a very easy reading style of writing that carries over from his major works to this handbook, allowing him to fill the spaces between hard information with wonderful insights and short sojoums into the wild.

The book includes the standard recipe section and drying tips, but it also has well detailed meal plans, instructions on how to build your own dryer, a treatise on why you should consider drying food, and honest advice from real experiences like: don't bother to dry onions, just buy dried onions at your local health food store. Anyone who has dried more than a coupie of onions knows exactly what he means!

Rounding out his literary offering are tips on packaging, how to set up a camp kitchen, when it makes sense to use a fire instead of a stove for cooking, and the most important thing for me when it comes to cooking out-of-doors, spices and condiments that make a meal taste extra special.

This is a must read book for anyone serious about drying food and eating well in the woods. The next time you cross that portage trail on the third day out, with the can of tomato sauce and that chicken that has just about gone rancid pulling at your tumpline, remember that I said you need to read this book, and that my food pack is at least 80% lighter than yours, and tonight I am having Curried Chicken with Rice and Mixed Vegetables. Stop on by; there will be more than enough to go around.

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