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The Lightweight Gourmet
The Lightweight Gourmet
Drying & Cooking for the Outdoor life.
By Alan S. Kesselheim
Ragged Mountain Press/McGraw-Hill. Camden, ME 1994. 88 pp. $10.95
Review by MICHAEL PEAKE --
Che-Mun Editor
Canoelit Home Page
The article on drying food in Outfit 78 prompted Che-Mun subscriber and outdoor author Alan Kesselheim to thoughtfully send along a copy of his latest effort. Of many books on drying food, The Lightweight Gourmet, has the advantage of being written by an able and experienced canoe tripper.
Kesselheim, along with wife Marypat Zitzer, made two long excursions into the north both involving wintering over near Lake Athabasca. The couple are now producing children at a prodigious rate, two boys have arrived, and another child is on the way, Alan tells us. Which explains why they haven't been tripping in the Barrengrounds recently. But their children have been canoeing already (including Lake Superior) and doubtless will be heading north with the 'old folks' when the time is right.
Rather than just fill the book with the usual mundane orders and lists, Kesselheim starts each chapter off with a little vignette from his northern experience which certainly adds to the flavour of the book.
In a wonderfully thorough and organized manner he explains the mystique of food drying - which are relatively few - and even imparts some truly common sense advice; that things like onions can be cheaply bought already commercially dried. Alan relates their lung-busting, eye-goggle episode of cutting up a 50 lb. bag of onions. He also advises that dried potatoes - a real cooking treat - are also easily available in stores. This type of common sense advice is refreshing in such a book. Why waste a lot of effort on items easily obtained. It's your spaghetti sauce and home grown tomatoes and other veggies that will benefit from home drying.
Quite simply this is an excellent book about drying food written by a canoe tripper with field tested recipes. It's all you need for discovering food dehydrating- one of the great secrets to successful expedition provisioning.
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