Kitchen for Two

2006 September

Kitchen for Two for under 10 ounces

Em and I have been using the following cooking kit for a while, and since it's a big improvement over my previous kit so I thought I'd add a page showing the specifics. The weight of all of the items you see below, except for the water bottle, is 9.4 ounces.

The bag contains the pot, lid, cozy, stove, matches, etcetera and is stored within my backpack.

The windscreen/pot stand is aluminum flashing which is wrapped around the 1 liter water bottle with a Velcro band and is stored in an external pocket. The weight of the water bottle is not part of the total kitchen weight.

The fuel container is a Platypus Lil' Nipper which I also store in an external backpack pocket, just in case it leaks.

Opening the bag we see the spork and pot support, stainless steel bicycle spokes, on top of the lid. I used to use 1/8" diameter steel rods which were very heavy and rusted. Your local bike shop will sell you a spoke for about $1.

Within the pot I have a water (not denatured alcohol) measuring cup with goodies inside that are described in the picture below.

Outside of the pot is the cozy. It is made out of bubble wrap sandwiched between aluminum foil (the brand name is Reflectix, I think) and held together with aluminum tape.

The water measuring cup was made from a water bottle and holds the following items:

RedBull alcohol stove
alcohol measuring cup (get it from a cough medicine bottle)
wood matches (about 20)
aluminum foil heat reflector

The stove and windscreen has been assembled. One need only put a bit of alcohol into the stove, light it, and put the pot on.

Here we see the pot on the stove. My cookery of choice is an Evernew 0.9 liter titanium pot with a non-stick coating. It is big enough (barely) for chili-mac for two and small enough for one. The annular space between the pot and windscreen is very small, approximately 1/4". With this setup the handles never get too hot to handle.

Once most items are brought to a boil the pot can be removed from the stove and placed in the cozy where your dinner will continue to cook. During this time, I put the windscreen back around the water bottle and place the stove, alcohol measuring cup, matches, and heat reflector back in the water measuring cup.