I love to discuss meal planning, packing food, cooking, and serving meals for PCT trail maintenance crews, so, here it goes... I volunteer in the Central California area, which includes the Sierra Nevada segment of the PCT. This means that I tend to cook for remote, backcountry "spike" camps of large crews working for a week or longer. The logistics of such an endeavor can be daunting but are doable if you take the following into consideration.

A trail worker needs approximately 2 ½ pounds of food per day. For a 15-member crew, that's a minimum of 350 pounds of food for a week project. Often the food ends up weighing even more because it includes fresh fruits and vegetables, appetizers, casseroles, pan-sautéed or grilled meat dishes, and desserts. The quality of food from my camp kitchen is equal to at home; I don't do dehydrated and I don't do freeze-dried.

My kitchen equipment includes a three-burner Coleman® stove on a stand (so it doesn't take up counter space). The stove runs off 20-pound propane bottles. I bring two of these to a spike because although one can last a week, cooking on windy days requires more propane (due to heat loss at the bottom of the pan) and I'd hate to run out. For food prep and service, I bring two roll-up slat tables and extra panels for extending the tabletops. I use pots and pans of restaurant quality and size. All cooking equipment is packed in two 25-gallon Rubbermaid® tote boxes.

I use one of my two tables for food preparation. On it I place two gray bus tubs side by side with my cherished square of regular kitchen counter lying on top. A bus tub is a shallow plastic tub used in restaurants for carrying dirty plates to the dishwasher. You can purchase bus tubs places at like Smart & Final. The combination of these tubs and my counter slab create a raised surface so that I don't have to bend over to chop vegetables. While I chop, I use one tub to store my untrimmed vegetables and then, as I cut the veggies, I push the refuse into the other tub.

In the Sierra, as in other mountain and forest areas, food must be protected from bears. The Forest Service and their packers use bear-proof panniers - aluminum boxes that are carried by mule and left in camp with the food locked inside. Some of these panniers are insulated for packing in perishables on blocks of ice. Six regular and two insulated boxes are about right for a week of food for a 15-person crew. Four horses or mules can usually handle this load.

We filter lake or stream water daily to avoid becoming ill from water-borne pathogens. To manage this chore, a water crew is designated. The crew will filter five or ten gallons of water per day.

In addition to the above, here are some of my rules for camp setup and maintenance:

- First, for efficiency, aim to set up your spike camp only once.

- Place perishable foods on ice in panniers. Avoid cheap ice chests; they're not strong enough for the task.

- Have crewmembers bring their own mess kits. Avoid paper plates.

- Identify volunteer food service assistants (FSAs) to help with food prep and cleanup. FSAs shouldn't be asked to do morning cleanup but should be able go work the trail instead.

- Plan on spending a lot of time draining ice panniers, re-arranging ice and rotating food to keep it cool and fresh.

- Expect to do routine camp chores so the trail crew can relax after their day of work. Being camp cook is a big job. You probably won't have time to do trail maintenance yourself.

Not sure you've got the training for the task? Don't worry. I believe that anyone who can read can cook. Now, I'm not talking about "gourmet cooking", but practical, good cooking. If the numbers intimidate you, you can gain experience cooking for a crowd by volunteering as a helper in a large kitchen. Occasionally, I work as a volunteer in a senior center.

Breakfast, it has been said, is the most important meal of the day. On most days, eggs play a large role in spike camp breakfasts. Then there is the bacon, ham, sausages, or leftover meat from the night before that may end up in the eggs or as a side dish. I serve a dense and filling morning meal, like breakfast burritos. I'm not sure whether an Appalachian Trail crew would like my Tex-Mex stuff, but it goes over well here.

Breakfast juice, while initially fresh-poured, will be mixed with Tang® or powdered Gatorade® later in the week. I keep two coffee percolators going until interest wanes. For some people, like me, coffee is more important than food first thing in the morning. A big blue enameled hot water pot satisfies the tea, cocoa and instant oatmeal people.

After breakfast, crewmembers make their own lunches using ingredients I put on a table. These include sandwich-makings, cookies, fruit, chips, drink packets, and candy or power bars.

Around 4:30pm the crew returns from work. Cold sodas and beers are waiting for them -- kept in the shade in a cooler without ice. Prior to dinner, I like to serve chips and salsa, veggie sticks, or specialty crackers and dip. These snacks hold the folks in conversation until dinner is ready. FSAs do the salad prep, set out condiments, and make sure that an adequate supply of cooking and drinking water is on hand.

Dinner usually begins around 6pm. Food-filled pots and bowls are placed on the stove and on a serving table. I let the folks dish out their own portions. There's no coffee in the evening but I encourage hydration with water, juice and hot beverages. There is a meat dish almost every evening, made during the day using meat that I cooked at home and then stored on ice. Desserts include Mother's® Glazed Ginger cookies (yum!) as well as fruit, fruit cups, canned tapioca or chocolate pudding, and applesauce.

One of the first things I was told (by Jerry Stone) when I was a novice cook for the PCTA in Southern California, was that camp food doesn't have to taste particularly good, but to make the crew happy you must be absolutely sure that there is enough of it! Of course, we cooks do our best to make the food appetizing. With that in mind, here are some tips:

- The camp cook should plan the menus and purchase the food.

- Ask project participants about food preferences and limitations (like allergies) ahead of time.

- Cook meat at home. Store it on ice.

- Wash vegetables at home.

- Bring a large bag of onions and of apples. I use apples in anything cooked in a pot and onions are a staple.

- Bring butter, eggs, cheese, mayo, mustard, relish, and ketchup. These items will last at least a week without ice.

- Cook with ghee and/or olive oil.

-Don't serve beans of any kind. I'm serious. Likewise, be careful with cabbage.

- A tossed leafy salad, varied by the toppings and croutons, is always popular.

- Control insulin abuse; plan on no more than two pasta dishes for the week.

- For vegetarians, provide full, wholesome meals. These are called side dishes by omnivores.

- Don't try to cook for vegans. Loan your kitchen for their use.

- Tapatio® Sauce is an essential condiment.

- Never run out of coffee, tea, bread, mayo, mustard, peanut butter, Tapatio®, garlic salt, or TP.

- Put your recipes in a binder. Type them in large print for easy reading in dim light.

Food shopping is misery but a routine helps. I put my shopping list on a spreadsheet. I divide the food to be purchased into blocks based on the six food store departments: grocery, produce, bakery, meat, dairy, and frozen foods. I shop in each of these departments in turn, checking off each item as it goes into the basket.

The final store trip is to buy the perishable foods that are to be kept on ice. I bring ice storage coolers, and then I buy enough blocks of ice for the week. Blocks of ice last longer than cubes or crushed ice.

Want to hear a bear story? Well, I hate to disappoint you but in spite of my several bear "close approaches," I have yet to see one on a trail project -- especially while I'm cooking. But I'm prepared. I rehearse climbing a nearby tree! And, I keep all the food locked up at night and I sleep near the kitchen. I also tell the crew to come running when I holler, "Bear in the kitchen!" The plan is for us to gather on one side of the kitchen (I figure it's best not to surround a bear), do a dance routine like the Rockettes, wave our flashlights, and sing "Don't Roll those Bloodshot Eyes at Me." That should make any bear hold its paws over its ears and decide that hanging around my kitchen isn't time well spent. Bon appétit!

Stuffed Bell Peppers: Campy's Camp Version

With this backcountry version of an old favorite, you'll be cooking the ingredients and stuffing the peppers at home. Pre-cooking meat prolongs storage time. Then, in camp, all you need to do is re-heat. Please read the entire recipe before you start cooking. But you knew that.

At home:

· Make sure that bell peppers will be okay with the crew. Some people hate bell peppers.

· Find your favorite stuffed bell peppers recipe and modify amounts based upon the number of crewmembers you'll be serving. In my stuffed peppers, I use ground beef, finely chopped onion, celery, an apple, ketchup or tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and some seasonings. Many stuffed pepper recipes call for an expander like cooked rice or crushed crackers. I use chow mein noodles. These are the little dry curly noodles that come in a bag or a can. Follow your recipe except for the modifications I mention here.

· Cook and stir this whole mixture until the meat is just done, then set aside.

· Cut the caps off the peppers leaving the stems on. Clean out the webs and seeds. Slip the caps inside the peppers and cook them for 10 minutes in boiling water. After they have cooled down, remove and drain out the water, handling them carefully.

· Load the peppers with filling all the way to the top and place the caps on top.

· Find the proper size Tupperware® storage box that will hold anywhere from nine to a dozen of the bell peppers. Use more if you have a large crew. One large bell pepper per person, plus a side dish makes a satisfying dinner but make a few extra just in case.

· Put the peppers in the freezer (I use a rented freezer drawer at a meat market in town when it's trail project season.) Make sure they are put on ice when brought to the mules.

In the Wilderness:

· On stuffed bell pepper night, pull out the peppers and put them on a bed of crinkled foil in a large two-handled pot.

· Pour 3/4 inch of water in the bottom of the pot and turn up the stove heat.

· Crinkle a layer of foil between each layer of peppers and start heating them up - you'll see the steam coming out from under the lid.

· Lower the flame to a simmer for a half hour or so (by this time during the week the stuffed peppers should already be thawed).

· Help serve the peppers using a pair of large spoons to lift them from the pot and onto the crew's mess kits.

· Dig in!