I got one of my first cooking lessons from my uncle. He asked if I’d like to learn how to make spaghetti, and when I said yes — as he knew I would — he had me follow him to the kitchen. Once there, he dumped some macaroni from a box into a small pot of boiling water, stirred it occasionally for eight minutes or so, and then poured off the excess water. Next, he emptied a can of condensed tomato soup over the cooked noodles and returned the pot to the stove, where it simmered just long enough to bring the soup to a gentle bubble. That’s when he turned to me. “See?” he said. “Spaghetti! Now gimme your bowl…”

I was 10 years old. And the steaming spaghetti tasted great. Cooking, I concluded, really wasn’t as hard as my mother made it out to be.

Time passes. I’d forgotten all about this early lesson until recently, when In the Same Boat reader Bob Angel got in touch. He’d been working his way through the archives, and one of my early columns (“Food for Thought“) moved him to describe his signature style of cooking. Here’s what he had to say:

 
[C‑rations] are the ultimate in what I call Man Cooking. That’s anything that takes longer to eat than to prepare! Period.

 
Short and to the point, eh? And all the better for that. Just like “Man Cooking.” My uncle’s spaghetti fit the definition. It was unpretentious food — food that filled his belly without filling his day. But it had to be good food, too. Not great food. Good food. Good enough so he didn’t get tired of it. My uncle ate his own spaghetti for lunch at least twice a week. It was definitely “good enough.”

Of course, Man Cooking is also made to order for paddlers and backcountry travelers of both sexes. It’s just right for all those times when you don’t want to make a meal out of making a meal. At the end of a long, hard portage, say. Or when a big storm threatens to break, and you just want to hunker down. Or cold, wet days, when getting hot food into your stomach ASAP is Job One. Or warm midsummer evenings when the trout are rising, and you’d rather be fishing than tending a fire. Or anytime when your camera or sketchpad beckons. There’s a bonus, too. Man Cooking is easy on fuel. If wood is scarce or your stove is running on fumes, Man Cooking can save the day. Which isn’t to say that there won’t be times when you’ll be happy to spend a couple of hours preparing a meal. There will be. But it’s always nice to have a choice.

I’ve written about fast food for the backcountry before. Still, it’s a big subject, and Bob’s letter gave me all the excuse I needed to take another look. Here’s what I learned about preparing meals the man-cooking way… Read more…

 

 
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