Jetboil’s Personal Cooking System, now called the Flash Cooking System, includes a compact stove, windscreen, bowl and pot. When combined with a 100-gram fuel canister, the components create a small cooking system for one person. Jetboil designed the stove and fuel canister to perfectly nest into the pot. This creates a system that when packed is about the size of a Nalgene bottle. The compact nature of the stove drew me to it, and about a year ago, I received one from Jetboil to use on an expedition. Over the course of a year, I’ve used the stove for over 50 days, and feel confident in reviewing it.

Using a Jetboil Stove

Using the Jetboil couldn’t be easier. Once assembled, you open the plastic stove lid, pull the stove out, remove the plastic bowl from the bottom of the pot, attach the stove with a simple twist, fill the pot with two cups of water, turn on the fuel feed, and click the ignition. About two minutes later, you get boiling water. The pot is covered in a neoprene sleeve that protects your hands from the hot surface. It also has a built-in fabric handle that makes it easy to hold.

The small pot size works best for cooking soup, coffee, or freeze-dried meals while on solo trips. I found eating a meal directly out of the pot difficult. Towards the bottom of the pot, my knuckles and fingers tended to hit the side making it, depending on the meal, a somewhat messy affair. The provided bowl alleviates messy hands, but use it makes an other item to clean. If you normally eat freeze-dried, dehydrated, or Freezer Bag Cooking meals, the size of the pot and my issue with messy easing won’t be a problem–just cook your water and pour into your food’s bag.

Because of the ease of use, the stove excels at quickly serving up a hot cup of brew during a break. I found myself cooking a warm cup of soup for lunch on cold days. Normally, I wouldn’t bother pulling out the stove, pot, assembling the mess to get something warm at mid-day, because, I typically find cooking a chore to be avoided at mid-day and would prefer to only have to eat food bars. Jetboil’s ease of use has redefined what I carry for lunch and now soup often makes it into the pack.

On that same note, one of my favorite parts of using a Jetboil stove is not having to deal with the fuel canister until fuel runs out. Once the fuel canister is attached to the stove, it remains attached until you run out of fuel. Although, the saved labor from screwing on and unscrewing a canister, doesn’t save a lot of time when compared to stoves that you have to affix the canister for each use, the convenience of having the canister always attached to the stove makes using the stove a more pleasant experience. This feature alone endures the stove to me. The only disadvantage to leaving the canister attached is any water that remains inside the pot after you finish cooking will cause the canister to rust. Normally, I wouldn’t think this an issue, but because the stove is so efficient fuel canisters last a long time and they rust. A permanent rust coating rings the bottom of my pot.

Fuel Usage

Incredible. I didn’t perform any specific test to see how much fuel it takes to boil two cups of water, but I’ve seen numbers on the Internet ranging from 4.38 grams to Jetboil’s claim of 4.17 grams. This means about 24 two-cup meals. I found this consistent with the fuel usage that I experienced.

Weight

The Jetboil system weighs in at 14 ounces. A full 100g canister weighs 6.7 ounces. So, at the start of the trip, the system weighs 1 pound and 4.7 ounces. At the end of the trip,  if all the fuel is used, the system weighs 1 pound and 1.17 ounces.

Compared to my lightweight Red Bull photon stove system the Jetboil is heavy. My Red Bull stove system, including the pot, custom wind screen, and stove, weighs about 6 ounces. I figure for about 24 meals, I’d need about 16 ounces of fuel. So, the starting weight of the Red Bull system runs 1 pound 6 ounces. And the end weight,  is 6 ounces.

You can calculate the daily weight average over 24 days, and you’ll find that the Jetboil weighs about 19.53 ounces and the Red Bull system weighs about 14 ounces. For longer trips or trips with two meals a day, the Jetboil gets better, but on shorter trips, the Jetboil gains in weight. For a more detailed comparison visit, PMags.com and read his comparison between the weights of different stove systems.

Many paddlers don’t care that much about weight, but I do, because every ounce you add to your boat, increases drag, which slows you down. Even if you’re not looking for speed, extra ounces make it harder to paddle your kayak at whatever speed you’re traveling at. So lighter gear, means less work for the same distance traveled. Read more about this.

(Note: I understand the momentum argument, but there’s a point at which the momentum that carries speed between paddle strokes and the increased resistance meet. At this point, the increase in weight drowns out the gain from more momentum. Based on rough calculations, which need tank testing to confirm, for a lean and efficient paddler with no extra fat, the dead weight (including boat, gear, paddles, etc.) should weigh around 20% of the person’s body weight–anything more just slows the paddler down.)

Accessories

Jetboil offers many accessories for use with their stoves. The most interesting to me are the 1.5 liter pot attachment for the stove, the coffee press, and the hanging kit. The 1.5 liter pot makes the system usable for two people. The coffee press fits right into the standard pot and works as a French press. This is great of coffee lovers who are looking for an easy and light solution to the morning habit. I’m not sure what I’d ever use the hanging kit for, but if I was still into climbing, it’s such a geeky item that I’d have to figure out how to use it.

Conclusion

There are very few products that I keep using when a lighter and perfectly functional alternative is available. For solo trips or even tandem trips when we’re cooking freeze-dried or dehydrated meals, the Jetboil is one product that I now default to. The convenience, efficiency, and ease-of-use outweigh all of its deficiencies. This product is a winner.

That said, I’d like to see just a few changes in the product. The main one is weight. If Jetboil could get the system without fuel down under 10 ounces, I feel like it’d be a better product. The second is the lid, it’s hard to remove and when taken off after boiling and it’s easy to scald your hand from the escaping steam. It’s a winner now, but there’s always room for improvement.

If you’re looking for a simple cooking system for solo travel, this is one of the best. Highly recommended!

I was walking through an REI store, and I noticed that they offer a plethora of different camping cups. They caught my eye, because when I’m traveling lightweight, I tend to just carry along lightweight platypus bottles, but I like to drink a cup of hot chocolate spiked with a little Baileys Irish Cream and in the morning, I like to start the day with Java Juice. I hate using my platys for this type of drink, because the bottles end up tasting like whatever you put in it, so I considered buying a lightweight titanium camping cup.

I just couldn’t stomach the titanium options, because they were so expensive–they ranged in price from $25 to whopping $40. They ranged in weight from 2.4 ounces to the 1.9 ounce MSR Titan Mug. Although I liked the weight, the price was just too high.

I was about to walk away when I ran across the REI Polypropylene Cup. This lightweight camp cup weighs 2.5 ounces and costs $1.95. At only 0.1 ounce heavier than the heaviest titanium mug and only 0.6 ounce heavier than the lightest, this mug is a bargain.

Then I remembered that I already have a cup similar to REI’s plastic cup, so it must be close to the same weight. I went home and put my GSI Camping Cup on the scale and found it weighed only 1.7 ounces. It’s a full 0.2 ounce under the 1.9 ounce lightweight MSR Titan Mug and a $38 less. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Sometimes the lightest and best isn’t the most high-tech and expensive.

Know any items where the less expensive version trumps the high-tech high-end version?

Part of the Nessmuking philosophy is being proficient in fire starting in all conditions. Many products attempt to address the need for this skill, but none are as interesting as ChemFire Fire Starting System.

The Reaction

ChemFire uses a combination of potassium permanganate and glycerin. When these two chemicals are combined they react to produce fire. These items were/are often found in military survival kits and in many emergency kits sold in Europe. Back in the day, potassium permanganate was used to treat water and as a disinfectant, but it’s messy and stains skin and clothing purple, and if mixed incorrectly it can lead to death or violent illness.

The Product

The Ohio based company that manufactures ChemFire packages the potassium permanganate into small pill capsules and provides the glycerin in a small eye dropper. The weight of the kit they sent me for testing was 0.8 ounces for 10 capsules and one dropper bottle. So, it’s pretty light. This package is a unique way of providing the two chemicals and it seems like the capsule helps in producing the reaction.

The Test

To make the reaction work, the capsule is opened and two drops of glycerin are added to the capsule. The capsule is closed and placed under the tinder. A few seconds later the magic begins with instant fire. The reaction produces fire for up to 30 seconds, which with a good dry tinder pile should get your fire started with no problems. I found that sometimes the reaction would only last around 10 seconds.

During my home testing, I found that often excess potassium permanganate would be left over after the reaction finished. And as shown in the following video just emptying the capsule and adding glycerin doesn’t work nearly as well as using a capsule. After testing the capsules on cement at home, I cleaned the pad with a hose and it turned everything purple. My only concern when testing was that I didn’t want to hold on to the capsule too long after the chemicals were mixed.

When lighting a real fire, I first used dry cedar tinder, and it burst into a hot flame very quickly — much more quickly than if I had used just a lighter. With birch bark, this produces a very hot and fast fire, but I didn’t think it was significantly faster than using a match or lighter. In wet weather, which I didn’t get to test the product in, I think this product would produce enough of a flame to start a well tindered fire.

The Conclusion

ChemFire is a fun light product that is easy to use. Starts a fire quickly. I found that I couldn’t be sloppy with my fire building; I still had to gather good dry tinder. For campers with kids or scouts this product would provide entertainment and a science lesson. The weight and size is small, so it’d take up little room. If I were to carry this on trips, it’d be more for fun than as a replacement for a lighter or matches, but it might just come in handy on those wet cold days were I want a fire to warm up, and the tinder is just damp enough to make fire starting a hassle.

This is a product worth trying out.

Product’s Website: ChemFire Fire Starting System

At least, for me, rationing is a pain. On one hand, you can plan every meal for every day, and then go out an buy the ingredients that you need, or, one the other hand, you can buy bulk food and put together specific meals each day when you’re out in the woods. I’ve always fell into the first camp, I’d go to the store, buy enough oatmeal for each morning, enough Lipton dinners for each evening, and peanut butter and bagels for lunch and candy and granola bars for snacks, and enough mix for gorp, plus hot cocoa and maybe some sports drink mix. After all these years, this plan has gotten old on me, so for my trip across the BWCA, I decided to ration slightly different. I decided to buy in bulk and make my meals from the resulting ingredients.

12 days of food using the NOLS ration planning system.

I planned twelve to thirteen days of paddling, but ended up spending only nine days completing the trip. Living in a small town with two big grocery stores and one Co-op, buying the food is actually more difficult than it sounds, and as it turns out, much more expensive than I anticipated. For almost all that I had to go out and buy, which didn’t include sugar, flour, cornmeal, hot cocoa, and a few other items, it cost over $100. I guess I should have driven two hours to a big town to get a price break. Even with gas at $2.90 a gallon, I’d have probably come out ahead. Moral of the story, plan ahead on bulk food buying.

Anyway, for this planning I used NOLS Rationing system based on 2 pounds per person per day for food. Claudia Pearson outlines this in the Nols Cookery book, which is available from Amazon.com.

This is my bulk list:

Breakfast

• 1 pound Oatmeal
• 1/2 pound Couscous
• 1 pound Grape Nuts
• 1 pound Fry Bread
• 5 ounces Hash Browns

Dinner

• 1/2 pound Instant Beans
• 1 pound Pasta
• 1 pound Rice
• 1/2 pound Falafel
• 1/2 pound Instant Potatoes
• 1/2 pound Ramen noodles
• 3 Lipton dinners (Just in case)
• 1/2 pound Hummus

Cheese

• 1 pound Sharp Cedar

Trail Foods

• 2 ounces Sunflower Seeds
• 8 ounces Mixed Nuts
• 12 ounces Dried Fruit
• 5 ounces Raisins
• 2 ounces Corn Nuts
• 14 ounces M&Ms
• 4 ounces Goldfish
• 22 Granola bars
• 11 ounces Crackers

Baking Goods

• 1/2 pound Sugar (50/50 white and brown)
• 3 ounce Cornmeal
• 8 ounce Flour

Drinks

• 6 servings of Tang
• 6 servings of Crystal Light Lemonade
• 12 Tea bags

Soups, Bases, Deserts

• 2 ounces of Jell-O Pudding
• 6 beef Boulin cubes
• 1/2 pounds Cups of Soup
• 11 ounces Cheesecake
• 5 Pasta Sauces (alfedo, 2 x pesto, chili, spaghetti)

Milk, Margarine, Cocoa

• 1/2 pound Powdered Milk
• 12 ounces Margarine
• 10 ounces Cocoa

Meats

• 1 pound Tuna
• 1/2 pound Summer Sausage
• 1/2 pound Pepperoni

Because I finished three to four days early, I had some left over food. This is the list of leftovers:

Leftovers

• 5 ounces Raisins (Used none.)
• 1/2 pound Couscous (Used none.)
• 1/2 pound Falafel (Used none.)
• 4 ounces Fry Bread
• 6 ounces Pasta
• 5 ounces Hash Browns (Used none.)
• 3 ounces Grape Nuts
• 4 ounces Milk
• 5 ounces Sugar
• 5 ounces instant Potatoes
• 10 Flour and Cornmeal (Used none.)
• 4 ounces Rice
• 2.5 ounces Sunflower seeds
• 3 packs of Pasta Sauce
• 6 ounces cups of soup
• 2 ounces pudding (Used none.)
• 4.6 ounces of hot choc
• 6 servings of Tang (Used none.)
• 6 servings of Lemonade (Used none.)

This comes out at just over five pounds of food, which means that at 2 pounds of food a day, this would give me two and a half days of food, but because I knew I was ahead, I ate bigger meals towards the end of the trip. So, two pounds per person per day would seem to be the right amount of food.

There are a few changes that I’d make, I had planned on using the flour and cornmeal to make tortillas for the falafel, but with the high mileage days that I paddled from 7:30 to 5:30 almost every day, I didn’t really have the energy or time to prepare the tortillas before sunset. I think I would substitute out all the baking goods, except some of the sugar, which got used on Grape Nuts and in Cinnamon and Sugar for the fry bread. The baking food weight, I’d move to snack and lunch food. Margarine should be cut in half, and I didn’t list my spice kit above, but I would take only the oil, olive oil, cinnamon and sugar mix, and the hot sauce next time. And I’m not sure what I was thinking about when I decided Couscous and Raisins for breakfast, because I’m not a fan of either, so they didn’t get eaten – Grape Nuts would have been fine.

The meal making went very easily, except a mess up with making Mac & cheese from cheese blocks. I didn’t let the cheese melt enough so it was more like Mac and cheese chucks. Reminded me of the dinner that Lieutenant Henry was eating before he was hit by a mortar shell in Hemingway’s Farewell To Arms.

Overall, I like meal planning this way. It’s much easier than planning each day’s menus, and I ate better on this trip than most of my other trips. Certainly, I ate better than the North Men leaving Grand Portage for the northland who were issued rations of corn and fat for the journey home. The book mentioned above outlines this plan nicely, and I highly recommend buying the book just to learn this system.

It seems every year; a new company seems to come out with a product that claims to solve a problem for Ultralight paddlers. This year, the product getting all the press is a set of lightweight dishware made from plastic that assemble like origami and fold flat for transport and storage. After examine all the products I decided to give the Fold Flat Bowl a go, and skip the Cup and Dish. (The Cup was too complicated to put together and the bowl can be used as a cup, and I carry water bottles anyway, and the Dish had snaps that seemed to spell certain problems in the field, such as breaking or getting jammed.)

Orikaso Fold Flat Bowl

To Be or Not to Be

The first question I asked myself was “Do I really need a bowl, when I can just eat out of the pot I cook food in?” I quickly answered the question with “maybe.” Although, I wouldn’t carry this item when solo, it shines when paddling with a friend. It actually saves having to carry a second and heavier pot or a lexan bowl for the second person. At 1.2 oz., it comes in 1.7 oz. lighter than the titanium pot I bring with me when a second person comes on the trip. When a third person is along for the ride, we generally bring a third pot, but on the trip I tested this out on, we carried both titanium pots and three Fold Flat Bowls for .7 oz more weight than our two person set up. This also allowed us to cook two menu item meals. For example, Mac and Cheese with Ham, and Cheesecake.

All that and More

Besides saving weight, the bowl has several other features going for it. The plastic it is made from is similar to a plastic that I have from a cutting board designed for camping. I’ve had this cutting board for over five years and although I don’t use it camping, I do use it weekly at home. After five years, it has held up perfectly, so I expect these bowls to do the same. Also, because the plastic is similar to my cutting board, I’ve decided to use the bowl as a cutting board for the woods, in addition to using it as a bowl. Also, if you’ve ever done any origami, you know how hard it can be, but this bowl is simple to set-up and stays set-up in use.

The Bad and the Not Really Ugly

The only downside that I found in use is that it is hard to clean. Food tends to get trapped in the folds if you leave it together and if you disassemble for cleaning, then water doesn’t stay in. It’s much easier just to clean a pot.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now

But the added ability to cook multi-pot meals with little weight gain, the addition of a cutting board and cup, and the low cost combine to make this bowl a nice gem for multiple person trips. This gets a Nessmuking approval, but skip the cup and dish.

Review: Orikaso Fold Flat Bowl
Date Reviewed: 7/25/05
Price: $7.99