Five-minute read: Craig Sheather reckons when it comes to cooking in the outdoors forget the two-minute noodles and hike with a chef!
We would all love a three-course gourmet meal after a long day of trekking. In reality, unless you have Jamie Olivier as your sherpa most of the time your diet will consist of bland food and basic staples. I’ve completed a few treks which required me to be totally self-sufficient. The Overland Track in Tassie is not regarded as a difficult trek but with the added burden of carrying a 25kg pack with all supplies, there were times when I thought a beach holiday to Thailand would be nice right now.
I attempted to keep our food in some kind of easy-to-find order. I became obsessed with filling those small and awkward gaps in my pack with muesli bars, nuts, biscuits and our beloved tube of Vegemite. And then when we would stop for a snack I would forget where the food was and I would need to pull everything out and repack it. Finding an apple in the front compartment with a pair of three-day-old sweaty socks is not a fond memory.
After setting up camp each night we would meet our fellow trekkers in the hut to prepare dinner. We would cook our two-minute noodles or packet rice with two dried peas on our little gas burner and stir through a sachet of tuna. The meal was washed down with an uninspired cup of iodine- flavoured water.
At the time the meal was bliss but then I would look over to our new friends chowing into a commercially produced freeze-dried meal and sipping red wine and I would immediately turn green with envy. Who says you can’t enjoy the good things while trekking?
My food experience on the Overland Track was worlds apart from trekking the Lares Trek in the Peruvian Andes thanks to the remarkable local porters. The food was amazing considering the chefs have limited cooking supplies and utensils. Breakfast consisted of omelettes, fried eggs, porridge and toast. Lunch and dinner was a buffet of soup, rice, pasta, chicken, beef, curries, vegetables and stuffed peppers. And always bucket loads of cocoa tea which helped negate any symptoms of altitude sickness. After hours of exhausting trekking a hearty feed was always welcomed.
The porters and cooks were amazingly fit and permanently acclimatised to the altitude. Each day they prepare breakfast before dawn, then clean up and pack everything, take down the tents and load the alpacas. It's not long before they catch up to the gasping trekkers and overtake the group.
The porters then also prepare a cooked lunch and afterwards push on to set up camp for the night and prepare dinner. Forget Jamie Oliver... these guys take the cake and make it too!