robow

Part of the allure in touring, as I see it, is finding those little "greasy spoons" or out of the way diners/cafes and enjoying the local fare, hence why I cook as little as possible. Of course I'm sure none would be considered 5 star restaurants in fietsbob's eyes and suitable only for the non cultured or unrefined palates such as mine : )

cyccommute 

Chefs tend to set up shop where people are so that they can make money. Granted the last time I toured in Europe it was in Belgium which isn't France but I didn't run across too many "fine restaurants". France may have Michelin starred restaurants on every crossroad in the most remote parts of France but that's not the case most everywhere I've toured.

My other time of touring in Europe was in Scotland which, by definition, has zero fine restaurants but at least it's not England where they actively try to kill you with the food

fietsbob

Where I go , here, the cooks and waitstaff and bartenders go too mostly for drinks

they occasionally argue over the "best" burger, usually touting theirs of course.

SparkyGA

I use what I think is an Evernew Pot and its TI. Works great, I use it to boil water and cook simple meals. The insulation on the handles have melted off a long time again though. I believe the pot and pan weigh 191g together

pedlar

a set of british army mess tins,you can pack them with your brew kit,also use them for plates and bowls,cheap and lightweight

MichaelW

Titanium works well in thick cast metal cookware, lighter and better than cast iron. If you like using a dutch oven, you could save some weight.

fietsbob

Copper with a Pure Tin Lining but you wouldn't want to tour carrying that .

sprocketss

What is the view of heat exchange pots?

Erick L

I like the GSI Soloist. Small and light, a canister and stove fits in. The handle keeps everything closed securely and the lid with built-in strainer and sip hole also fits on the cup/bowl. It's so good MSR copied it.

3speed

That sounds all educated and nice on the surface, but there's a reason, backed by solid science of people who have studied it Way more than you ever will, that AL is banned for commercial use in other first world countries. There's a scientifically well supported reason that scientists who study such things say not to eat out of AL if another alternative is available. You even got the basic parts of your argument wrong. It's acidic foods which they say is worst to eat out of aluminum. Things like tomato sauce are what result in the most AL in your food. Also, the Earth's air is made up of 78% Nitrogen. That's way more than the amount of AL in the Earth's crust that you pointed out. That doesn't mean it's fine to just breath Nitrogen because it makes up most of the air anyway. You'll die at ~85% Nitrogen. Proportionately speaking, that's not very much. The fact that there is 8% AL in the Earth's crust doesn't mean you should start eating it. It will make you sick. It's not an opinion. It will. Why see if you can ride the line of not quite enough to get sick? As I said, just because a little bit of poison won't kill you doesn't mean it's a good idea to eat a little bit regularly. We don't need to argue about it. I'm just sharing my opinion, as asked. Titanium has worked great for me. Stainless cooks a little better, but I haven't had a problem with Ti, so I recommend it due to weight savings.

rifraf

I'm a fan of fortified wines......
Does that count?
As a fundamentalist methylated spiritualist I can confirm that the liver is evil and must be punished

I enjoy touring areas where there is some opportunities for sampling local food and beverages but equally happy to turn out my own mediocre cuisine on my hard anodised Trangia set.
A good excuse for needing some Tawny or Muscat to help keep my cooking "down"

fuzz2050

I'm sorry, but that sounds interesting, can you point me to some resources discussing it? I can't find anything in my cursory, pre-coffee google.

cyccommute 

Let's start with some of your "facts". The earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. So? You are talking about aluminum and its toxicity. Plants don't grow in just air. They grow in the soil. The lithosphere...the bit of earth we live on...contains 8% aluminum in that soil. You can't get away from it. Whether you like it or not, you are already "eating" aluminum. This article goes into depth about how aluminum exposure. Perhaps the most important bit among all the scary words is this

The point of this quote is that you are eating a "little bit of poison" every day. And that doesn't even include the other "poisons" that you need to ingest just to stay alive, like sulfur, sodium, chlorine, zinc, manganese, selenium and copper. All are "poison" in high enough concentrations and all are essential to mammalian life and all are "a little bit of poison" that are ingested and needed everyday.

As for the pots themselves, as I've said above, I doubt that you will find any aluminum pot that hasn't been anodized or even teflon coated on the market. That anodization and/or coating limits the amount of aluminum that can be dissolved during cooking. Pans made of aluminum don't corrode into nothingness very quickly, mostly because any aluminum exposed to air oxidizes immediately to form an oxide which is inert to the kinds of materials you would put in your mouth as food.

Aluminum can be dissolved and exposed aluminum is reactive with water (produces hydrogen) but the oxide layer gets in the way. To dissolve aluminum, a strong base is needed to continually refresh the aluminum surface so that water can react with the aluminum. Otherwise the reaction just stops.

Even if you could dissolve an aluminum pot with your cooking...I suggest lutefisk since it is cured in lye...you aren't likely to eat much more aluminum during a bike trip of a few days or even a few weeks than normally and it won't kill you today or tomorrow or 20 years in the future.

cyccommute 

I can't find anything other than a few internet rumors that state that aluminum is banned in "other first world countries". The countries where the cookware is supposedly "banned" are Germany, France, Belgium, Gr. Britain, Switzerland, Hungary and Brazil. Oddly enough, this article from the Telegraph says not one word about "banned cookware". If it were banned in Gr. Britain, you'd think the article would mention it. The other often cited study is "Dr. A. McGuigan's Report on Findings for the Federal Trade Commission
In Docket Case No. 540 Washington, D.C" which appears to be a study done in the 1920s that is also linked to an urban legend about how Rudolph Valentino died of aluminum poisoning after eating out of aluminum cookware. Snopes has deemed it false. I even saw some conspiracy posts about how that report is still "secret" to this day

Apparently the report says that deadly aluminum hydroxide poison is formed when vegetables are cooked in aluminum cookware. The problem is that aluminum hydroxide isn't much of a poison. On the NFPA chart it is listed only as an irritant. It's oral LD50 in rats is >5000mg/kg. For comparison, oral LD50 in rats for sodium chloride...table salt...is 3000mg/kg. It's not really all that toxic.

fietsbob

specifics? jet boil or the MSR accessory you wrap around the pot you got ? or something else?

some things for backcountry and mountain ascent packers is not needed
because you are able to stop and Buy More Fuel without carrying it all up a Mountain in one trip.

MadKaw

The food reserved for the French gentry was pretty bad. In fact any food before the Age of Refrigeration was pretty bad.

bikemig 

Trangia cookware comes in both non-anodized and anodized AL. Both the 25 and 27 series comes in UL and UL HA (hard anodized AL) flavors, Trangia Kök - Trangia Stoves 27 Series UL.

So I know that the toxicity of AL is in dispute. Are you saying that it matters worth a hill of beans whether you get anodized AL or not? I tend to like the anodized mainly because it is easier to clean and works a bit like non-stick.

bikemig 

I like to cook and have used a lot of different types of cookware. My vote goes with anodized AL as it is reasonably light weight, reasonably non-stick, and does a nice job of cooking up your food. I use calphalon's hard anodized at home to cook with.

Trangia has a good selection of anodized AL cookware and I find the alcohol system pretty bullet proof as well. It is not the lightest cook system but it is lightweight and tough. It's easy to find fuel for as well.

MSR has a pretty good line of anodized AL cookware as well; I'm sure that there are others out there.

chrisx

Leaching is the loss or extraction of certain materials from a carrier into a liquid (usually, but not always a solvent).
Titanium leaches the least .000000018 ( from memory, 30 year old research.)
Stainless steel leaches very little. 1 or 2 less zeros than ti.
Aluminum, not a bunch of zeros. Hard anodized GSI stuff has black paint on it. The paint comes of if you cook on a fire.
Plastic is the worst. Plastic leaches into hot food. The leached plastic lodges in your brain, and prevents communication between brain cells.

Ti is harder to clean than Stainless steel. Stainless steel is heavier than ti. Both are healthy for cooking.

After years of REi garage sales, I have a good collection of ti pans, spoons, and cups.
I am using a 600ml Stainless steel cup I bought from a Mayan women for $2, and a wooden spatula, (pine), I bought in Oaxaca for 10 pesos.

How safe are wooden spoons? Some are good some are bad. What kind of wood is it. But that is another thread.

chrisx

Use a wooden spoon. A metal spoon scrapes aluminum particles from the pan into your food.

bikemig 

I like wooden spoons just fine but I'm not convinced I need one for cooking with anodized AL. My understanding is that anodizing AL makes it non-reactive to food and makes it quite a bit harder than stainless steel.

cyccommute 

I stand corrected but that may be the only example of non-anodized aluminum camping cookware around. (Note: aluminum is abbreviated Al)

Anodized is easier to work with and I would suggest it over bare aluminum. "Bare" aluminum really isn't bare at all. Aluminum is a reactive metal. It's reaction with oxygen in the atmosphere is extremely rapid and it forms an oxide layer on any exposed surface instantaneously. When aluminum is "anodized" it also forms the same oxide layer on the surface of the metal but it is much thicker. The only other difference between the processes is that dyes are added to the commercial process.

Another reason to get anodized is for protection of the cookware. Aluminum is soft with a Mohs hardness of about 2.4 (about as hard as chalk or marble). Steel utensils can easily scratch it. The oxide layer has a hardness of about 9 (on a scale of 1 to 10) but brittle. In the natural oxidation, the layer is too thin and too brittle to really protect the soft aluminum underneath so it can be damaged. The commercial anodized cookware's oxide layer is still brittle but it is much thicker and doe a better job of protection.

In plain language, you can scrap and scrub anodized with more vigor than you can plain aluminum.

The oxide layer has a Mohs hardness of 9 while stainless steel has a Mohs hardness of about 5.5. But the oxide layer is much more brittle and it is covering a soft metal. You might break through the layer with enough force using metal utensils and scratch the cookware. It's tough but not impossible to damage.

Personally, I wouldn't be carrying metal utensils on tour because of the weight.

cyccommute 

You really don't have to bold everything.

So much here is so wrong. First a "solvent" has a much broader definition. Aluminum or titanium in cookware is a "solvent" since both are solid solutions we call alloys but alloys meet the definition of a solution in that they are homogeneous mixtures of chemical compounds or elements. Both have other metals dissolved in them when they are in the liquid form and the metals remain as a homogeneous mixture when the liquid solidifies.

Second, if a liquid leaches out materials from a vessel, it is again the definition of a "solvent" because it dissolves the material.

Third, .000000018 what? You need units on the value or it is meaningless. Also, depending on 30 year old research from memory is hardly a strong argument. Find the article and then we can talk.

I'll agree that titanium is inert to most chemicals and that aluminum could be more reactive to more materials than titanium. However, 30 years ago cookware for camping wasn't generally anodized. And we have to look at the materials being leached out of the cookware. Based on what I've found (see above) aluminum hasn't been found to be toxic except in narrow populations with large exposures. Even in those populations, it's not all that deadly. Stainless steel leaches nickel and chromium into foods, both of which are toxic at far lower concentrations.

Finally, you might want to reassess your comments about "plastic". Plastic is a very broad category of materials...on the order of millions of very different polymers... and, if the material has any health effects (not all of them do), the target organs are very broad. Frankly I've not heard of any "plastics" that target the brain specifically and "prevent communication between brain cells".

chrisx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaching
do I belive you or the dictionary
Oregon Health and Science University did a 10 year research project on the effect plastic has on humans
Plastic is cheap, and sold for a giant profit. Plastic coats your brain and makes you stupid. Have you been microwaveing food in a plastic bowl all these years? It shows.

cyccommute 

Wow! The level of thought, understanding and civility you put into your response is truly astounding.