Metro to Mountain Journal

So I was trying to decide which was my favorite super bowl. There was my original Boy Scout mess kit bowl. It made me feel good as I opened the handle to reveal the bowl, but I didn’t seem to like it that much.

My next bowls were enamel coated. The bowls were heavyish but looked very rustic. Daniel Boone would have been proud to have eaten out of one.

The seventies were the age of plastics and everything which was metal was shaped out of the space age technology. I had a variety of plastic bowls in different sizes, none really any better than the other. They were made of thin plastic and with heavy use they cracked.

In the eighties I returned to the metal and tried a variety on coated aluminum bowls. Then I found out that the teflon coating wasn’t good to eat and the aluminum bowls could be toxic. I reverted back to the plastic.

In the nineties it was a quest for lightweight. Titanium cookware became available and I acquired a collection of eating vessels. I eventual settled on a small pot/kettle that allowed me to cook and eat out of the same pot. When I was trying to save weight and/or space I also used the pot as a mug.

After the turn of the century the origami bowls became the current fade. Sheet of plastic could be folded, as per instructions, into cups, bowls, or plates. These were lightweight and took up no space. I liked these bowls but soon replaced them with squishy bowls. After a time experimenting with the new bowls I became less enamored with them and am now currently applying situational bowl selection. I use the squishy bowls for car camping, the origami ones for car and backpacking, and finally I bring out the old "ti" pot/kettle/cup/bowl for the lightweight trips.

Over the years I have decided that the most super bowl is the one filled with the most super food, all else is superfluous.

Happy trails.