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I spent last week at Burning Man, which was totally WOW. It was also my first time. Since Burning Man is held in the desert, there is no water supply, and no water drainage, so you must literally take everything in and take everything out with you, including your water. It is forbidden to dump grey water anywhere - it would be damaging to the environment, and not to mention quite muddy and gross if people did so!

I was camping in a tent, so I needed a way to take food in, that wouldn't require a lot of water to wash up, since I really had no way to take the waste water out with me.

To the rescue comes Lipsmackin' Vegetarian Backpackin' by Christine and Tim Conners. This cookbook has lots of dehydrated recipes for the trail, including a lot of freezer bag meals. For the uninitiated, FBC (Freezer Bag Cooking^TM) involves putting a cup of boiling water into a freezer bag of prepared food, squishing it up to mix and waiting a little while for it to 'cook', and then consuming it straight from the bag! Excellent! Now I have a simple, efficient way of cooking with no cleanup, and minor waste to take out with me.

Some of my favourites:

1. Pine Valley Couscous - simple and delicious, with sun-dried tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, pinenuts and basil.
2. Green Dragon Pad Thai - superb! With raw peanuts and shredded coconut. I omitted the suggested Kool-Aid for flavour and instead put in lemongrass.
3. Soul Food - rice with beans, imitation bacon bits, and a cajun blend of my own making... spicy!
4. Leahi Trail Rice - with walnuts and cranberries, mm-mmm!

I take particular exception to bottled water in general (please see the film Flow), and I shudder to think about the waste produced by the regular 'burner' in terms of plastic bottles. I took in my lovely Sigg bottle, a hydration pack, and about 9 gallons of water in trusty, collapsible Reliance Fold-A-Carriers. (BPA free!)

While I was there, I also caught up with some of the crew from the Vegan Camp, which was good fun.