How to eat well while travel: the cooking stuff

Because we love eating and because cycling is so energy consuming, we care a lot about meals :-)    In our opinion, to better endure and enjoy a long cycling trip, it is super important to provide ourselves sufficiently with vitamins, proteins.... Think about it, lots of people's routine is 8-hours-working day in an office, in front of a computer, and ours is to exercise all day long , ours muscles need to be fed accordingly:-) :-)
Food is also an interesting aspect of every culture, a must to discover wherever we go :-) It's also for those new tastes and flavors that we went for this trip.

During our trip, it happened that we spent some times with other cyclists and we realized that a lot of travelers think that it's complicate and difficult to make ourselves good food with our camping gears. That's why we decided to invest into this special chapter: HOW TO EAT PROPERLY AND WELL ON CAMPING.

We will give you ideas about very simple but good and nutritional meals, with some local spices you can easily find on your way. Those are meals we had during our trip so they also depend on the seasons and ingredients we find along our way, you can freely inspire and modify to adapt them to your own journey :-)

Here is our cooking material, what we've been bringing with us since September 2014

From left to right, top to bottom

First row

 Backpacking stove: our works with fuel, so far we use exclusively petrol. It depends on the quality of the petrol but half a liter can live long, up to 8 hours of cooking.

We recommend stove with fuel rather than with gaz because firstly, unlike fuel, you could not find gaz everywhere (we think about Central Asia for exemple) and by cold weather, it heats much less.

The refrigerated bag: very useful to store food and to keep them fresh (meat, fish...). They are also very easy to carry: light and can be kept behind the bike, between backward bags.

Second row

Flat chesse grater: very useful for making salad or to grate cheese  or aven onion and garlic. Very light and flat so doesn't take much space.

Alunium wrap: to protect the stove from the wind while cooking. It also protects the tent's ground in case of cooking inside the tent (when it rains for exemple)

2 plates: made of silicon, can be flattened. Can be also used to prepare salad. 

pan's handle: normally is sold along with the pan. If you could, chose one made of aluminium, more resistant to the heat.

frying pan and its detachable handle: made of steel, very resistant and easy to clean, especially after campfire!!! Its thickness makes it very suitable for roasting (eggs, fish, meat...)

accessories: 

an Opinel folding pocket knife, number 9. The lock system is very secure. Very useful to prepare fish, meat. Tiny, sharp and can easily be sharpened everywhere. You could take a bigger one but not smaller than number 9.

a swiss knife, of which usefulness is not to discuss anymore (can opener, saw, bottle opener, tweezers...). We do not recommend a big one because of the weight: it's better to have it always with you in the pocket. 

two forks, two spoons, which can be used to mix ingredients, to smash potatoes, carrots... for a puree... They should be light, strong but not too big. 

Third row

Chopping board: very useful to prepare veggies. You can find it for a very cheap price in local markets. Be careful: it should fit your bag, but not too small.

Towel: to clean your oily hands, to take a pan from the fire/heat, to put your burning pan on.... You can easily clean it in gaz station, with the pressurized water. They do it for free, with a smile. 

Pan and its lid: we can also use the lid as a second (frying) pan. It's better to have it in steel, a bit heavier but more resistant, easier to clean even when you let some food burnt (which happens!!!). Do not take aluminum, even they are really nice looking and light !!!

Accessories: 

two plastic cups (for tea, water, soup, beer and whatever :-) :-) . You can also have them in aluminium, bigger and you can heat them directly on the fire.

a small sieve, very useful for pasta or tea, to filter the cooking waste, to take the veggies out of the boiling water...

Those seem to be a lot but in fact can be stored in very little place. For exemple, here is how we store all the forks, spoons, cups, Opinel knife, plates and all the pans and their handles:

in the tiny pan

Note: we would have loved to have a bigger pan. With ours, sometimes it is difficult to cook 500gr of pasta, which is our portion for 2.

And here is how we store our food in the refrigerated bag

About food's stuff: we prefer buying from local markets and small shops (where you can have real local products and spices, fresh and organic, at least, with a small scale of production) than from supermarket (where everything is standardized with big scale of production). It's our way to support (slightly) local economy and agriculture but also in our opinion, it's a good way to feel the local culture and cuisine.

Along with the daily purchase, we carry with us some usual things: olive oil ( enjoy it in Greece and Turkey, they have very good and cheap olive oil, after it becomes more rare and more expensive), salt, pepper, vinegar (and butter) and a lighter (always very useful, a lighter :-)

And a small grill, perfect for campfire !!!!! You can cook meat, fish, veggies and use it as a pan support on the fire, by putting it between two rocks. Light, flat so easy to store.

Those things may be too much for very light-weighted travelers. In our opinion, it's worthy to take one or two kilos more, especially that we can split this weight for two, to guarantee a healthy diet on a long trip. It also helps us to save money: it's cheaper to cook ourselves than to eat even fast food or to buy prepared food.