Touring - Useful Kitchen Tools to Have on Tour?

For making salads, some kind of lightweight shredding tool might be useful.

Has anyone found anything that's good to have along while touring (for salads, or for other meal-prep purposes)?

I read where someone takes a small square of plastic to use as a cutting board. That sounds useful.

http://www.bakepacker.com/

I've found a battery powered hand mixer useful for whipping up a quick Angel Food cake at the campground. I never tour without my olive pitter and my melon baller.

You are kidding, ...aren't you?

I carry non-stick (titanium) pots when I tour. To make sure that I don't scrape any of the non-stick coating off, I carry a small wooden spoon for stirring things.

I carry a tiny bit of sponge for cleaning things. The sponge is about 1 inch wide and about 2 inches high.

I carry a pot cozy that I made with aluminum foil covered plastic furnace pipe insulation. Whenever I cook something that requires simmering, I boil the water, put in the ingredients, stir, cover, and then put the pot inside the pot cozy, which keeps it warm enough for the water to absorb into the pasta, oatmeal, polenta, or whatever you are cooking without needing any more fuel. It really stretches your cooking fuel.

A way to measure amounts. I use a metal drinking/measuring cup. Some people use marks on their pots.

I also take a 3 inch by 3 inch piece of plastic cutting board.

Ray

aluminum pot because it does a good job of transferring heat and it weigh pretty much the same as titanium. 1.5 liter size with lid for solo. (titanium is a waste of money and gas since it doesn't transfer heat as well as aluminum)

Spoon

pot grabber

stove

olive oil and spices

If I can't make it with the above................. it isn't going to be made.

I prefer to keep it simple.

I read where someone takes a small square of plastic to use as a cutting board. That sounds useful.

Rowan takes something like that.

I carry a knife. Sometimes I will hang on to a plastic spoon for a few days.

For fancy utensils, chopsticks can be easily made out of sticks. For a pot, I took the smallest cheapest pot I could find, chopped the handle off and used some old tin foil as a lid. Old pop cans make great stoves, and a bigger tin can makes a nice pot stand and wind guard.

For making salads, some kind of lightweight shredding tool might be useful.

Has anyone found anything that's good to have along while touring (for salads, or for other meal-prep purposes)?
I tend to concentrate on thinking of ways to not carry stuff and find that thinking of stuff that might be useful leads to carrying too much. Each go round I try to either eliminate stuff or replace stuff with something lighter that will still do the job. When it comes to meal prep I find you can get by handsomely with very little and extra gadgets really don't enhance the trip.

I dunno about the rest of you, but I shred salad ingredients by hand (as in, no knife, no cutting board, just hands). It doesn't take very long to rip apart a head of lettuce. I can't see why I would need a special tool on tour all of a sudden. A collapsable salad bowl or strainer might be useful, but I'd have to think pretty hard about it...

I would still want a knife and a small cutting board for a long tour, but that's because a knife is safer and more flexible than a microplane grater. At home I grate a lot of things, but I can chop a *lot* more with a knife. Onions don't grate well, nor do tomatoes, bok choi, almonds or chile peppers. For a short tour, it's probably easier to make vegan meals of dried foods at home.

I carry one of those flexible plastic cutting sheets - they come 2 to a package for like $5, I cut it so that it fits the size of my food pannier. Other than that, small utility knife with cover, small fork & spoon, 2 nesting titanium pots. That's it for utensils. When I bought the Ti. pots, I picked up the box in the store and thought I was holding the empty box from the display model, that's how light they are.

I carry the MSR folding spatula and strainer as well as a cutting sheet from the $store
My salad dressings come from my companies lunchroom in individual bags.
I get a lots of single use stuff from minimus

Effective, lightweight ways of finely shredding cabbage, carrots, beets, and other salad ingredients might be useful to have along. Light mandolines? A grater? Skills with using a very sharp knife and a good cutting surface?

a bottle of rooster sauce

I've found a battery powered hand mixer useful for whipping up a quick Angel Food cake at the campground. I never tour without my olive pitter and my melon baller.

You are kidding, ...aren't you?

I think it makes great sense to bring along little items that make life easier. I've heard it said, "any fool can go out camping and be perfectly miserable."

aluminum pot because it does a good job of transferring heat and it weigh pretty much the same as titanium. 1.5 liter size with lid for solo. (titanium is a waste of money and gas since it doesn't transfer heat as well as aluminum)

Spoon

pot grabber

stove

olive oil and spices

If I can't make it with the above................. it isn't going to be made.

I prefer to keep it simple.

Kyak, that's pretty much our system too.

I use one of these (http://www.bikeblender.com/) to shred salads, make margaritas and what not.

http://www.craphound.com/images/byerleybicycleblender.jpg

flexible plastic cutting sheet can be cut with decent scissors into circles, and stored between abigger pot and a smaller one, to lessen chafing.

There are some small graters - maybe 2" x 3" - that can be handy for shredding cheese.

+ ziplock bags

+ pot cozy, great way to keep one dish "cooking" while you heat up the second one. Get a few feet of the bubble/reflective insulation and experiment.

Platypus makes some nice, flat when not filled, liter and 2-liter water bottles -- saves multiple trips to the tap.

For me, my coffee mug and a spoon are two essential items.

I used to take a back packer's rigid cutting board, about 5"X9." It always been a pretty handy thing to have. This last trip though, I replaced it with a flexible cutting board that I use in my kitchen. I roll it and put it in my front pannier. It unrolls and take the shape of the pannier, and then I put all my stuff in the bag. Takes almost no space at all, but in camp it is a usabel working surface. This will be something I use on all my trips.