"Extreme picnicking," jokes Brendan Leonard (Sixty Meters to Anywhere), is the subject of Best Served Wild: Real Food for Real Adventures co-written by Anna Brones. A collection of recipes for hiking meals or camping trips organized by length, it is also a handbook on how to approach eating in nature, threaded with wry advice about how best to enjoy cooking outside.
Among the tastiest-looking single-day recipes are Nutella Crepes for Peak Baggers Who Can't Make Crepes, a recipe for a DIY "Nutella" and Mile 5 Iced Coffee. For overnights, highlights include Car Camp Chilaquiles and the delightfully named Skip the Family Reunion and Go Camping Pasta Salad. For multiday trips, dishes center on dried fare such as oatmeal, pastas and quinoa, with dried fruits and vegetables as well, but Close-Enough-to-Pad-Thai and falafel pitas offer an appealing change of pace. All the recipes are vegetarian, but there is no shortage of protein.
Leonard offers wisdom about campfires versus camp stoves, as well as honest responses to some seemingly silly but relevant questions camping might raise. Among those explored: Why does the tent smell? Knife, fork, spork or spoon? (Spoon, concludes Leonard: "A tiny shovel for your face.")
Above all, the goal is to achieve practicality without sacrificing a nod to the culinary. The inspiring photos of the foods and the authors eating them, at cozy campfires or majestic mountainsides, will make readers hunger to get on the trail. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer