I had two birthday wishes this year. One was to do absolutely nothing and recharge (films, personal projects, nice food etc) and the other was eating breakfast in the forest. On the Sunday morning, we stuffed supplies and a stove into our rucksacks, laced our boots and headed for the trees.
We bought a Biolite CampStove (first generation) a little while ago and decided my birthday breakfast was the perfect time to give it a whirl. Twigs or bits of wood are packed into the chamber and as they burn, generate enough electricity to charge small devices… while cooking your food. It’s an amazing little stove.
There was no shortage of twigs on the forest floor; the strap on my rucksack doubled up as the perfect twig holder.
Since this was our first time using the stove, we kept things simple and just cooked baked beans with toast. Scott made me giggle when he said,
“I picked up some posh ones as they’re for your birthday”
A double treat because we hadn’t eaten baked beans in ages!
We snapped twigs and packed them into the BioLite chamber along with a cube of firestarter. It really didn’t take long for them to catch and they kicked out a suprising amount of heat.
Forgot to pack a fork so the bread was toasted with a knife instead. Baked beans were next up…
Our beans were lovely and hot within a few minutes. The spot we settled in was pretty windy so anyone watching from a distance probably had a good laugh. We had to keep running after things like our plates, napkins and cutlery! It was a great meal once everything was weighed down and the pine needles had been picked out of the beans.
We also filmed a few clips of our bean feast.
I would love to do this more often and now we know what we’re doing, our next outdoor meal will be a bit more adventurous.
We packed up our gear, leaving no trace of us ever being there and walked along the trails towards home.
Video Soundtrack: The Impalers, Metro Azul
Looks fabulous! Glad you had a lovely birthday treat xx
Thank you Sophie! Cracked open your wedding bubbly too. xx
Looks amazing, I love the colour coordinated plates and napkins even though you are dining in the forest, can tell you are both designers, beautiful 😍xx
I’d love to say the plate and napkin combination was carefully thought out… but it was a complete accident 🙂
No zombies?
They probably stayed away because I’m old flesh now. Not even good for zombie bait!
She’s not afraid of zombies. She carries a Cold Steel machete 😀
I would not trust myself with one of those!!
A Biolite?! Well done for that – I always fancied one but could never justify it. Just out of interest, do they take a long time cool down? I have an MSR pocket rocket stove which I can’t often use in summer as it tends to melt backpacks…
The stove cooled down really quickly actually. We finished eating, packed up and it was cool enough to put in a rucksack. There was also hardly any ash left at the end so that doesn’t stay hot for long.