My name’s Anthony. I live in Sydney, Australia, with my wife Jackie and our three kids.
Jackie and I love bushwalking and camping (still trying to convince the children). We do a lot of day walks close to home, but we’re happiest on multi-day hikes. We’ve walked in New Zealand, Nepal, Turkey, England, USA, and have done many hikes in Australia’s incredible national parks.
Another thing, we enjoy eating good food! We don’t follow the ‘food is fuel’ philosophy. Even when we’re somewhere wild, we still want a dinner that delivers in terms of flavour and satisfaction.
This has led us to discover new cuisines, ingredients and recipes that can work well in a lightweight format – everything from simple pasta dishes and risottos, to rich curries, soups and stir fries.
On our travels, we have met walkers with many different approaches to food. We’ve camped with people who have prepared their own dehydrated three-course meals beforehand, rehydrating them with boiling water. We have sat around the fire with hikers who survive on instant noodles and muesli bars. And we’ve even met people who fill their backpacks with heavy cans of beans and tomatoes.
Our approach is pretty simple. When we go hiking, we take food that:
- Is fairly lightweight, allowing us to enjoy the walk without feeling like an overburdened packhorse.
- Keeps well in a backpack, ideally with a few fresh ingredients from time to time.
- Is delicious and filling at the end of a long day of walking.
- Doesn’t require hours of preparation before the walk. We generally don’t have time to pre-cook and dehydrate our hiking meals.
- Involves the pleasure of cooking. Commercial dehydrated meals are fine, but we think camping is always so much better with the smell of frying onions and the gentle bubbling of a simmering stew.
Over the years, we’ve discovered some amazing lightweight ingredients, and have developed a range of recipes that are tasty and fun to cook on the trail. We hope you enjoy them.
