Bike, Camp, Cook: An Authentic Romanian Cycling Adventure
‘Buna!’ my partner Tyler shouted cheerily in Romanian, greeting a pair of fellow bike tourists who were cycling toward us. As the four of us came to a halt on the riverside road we’d been pedalling, we smiled and began chatting in a motley mixture of French and English.
And that’s how we met David and Oussman, the French cyclists. We spent some time talking about our routes, and how we all found ourselves cycling on this one winding Romanian road on this grey day, sandwiched between a craggy green mountain and the Blue Danube.
After joking about a massive headwind we’d been battling (which was a fabulous tailwind for them) I steered the conversation towards my favourite topic: food. ‘How have you been enjoying the local cuisine?’ I asked. ‘Found anything good at the grocery stores? Do you make it past the steely-eyed glares of the shopkeepers? What have you been cooking?’
They smiled a bit sheepishly, then pulled out a bedraggled loaf of bread in a plastic bag, half smashed from being shoved in a pannier. ‘We eat bread,’ David said. My eyes grew wide and I balked. ‘Just bread?’ I asked. They nodded. No butter, no jam, no peanut butter, no soup to dunk it in. Bread alone.
As a food-adoring traveller – and one who loves to cook more than almost anything else in the world – I had trouble imagining the Spartan existence of our fellow cyclists. I simply couldn’t fathom choosing to live on bread alone unless I had to. And yet, these men weren’t opting for their smashed, stale loaves because they couldn’t afford to jazz up their menu. Instead, they seemed to be living on bread because they were unaware of other options.
Two years prior to meeting David and Oussman in Romania, Tyler and I were living fairly regular lives, when he asked me if I wanted to sell everything and bike around Africa with him. I offered up a tentative yes, and we began saving and planning. Our route shifted and changed as time went on, and eventually became a two-year adventure that began in Glasgow, Scotland, and ended in Southeast Asia.
Though I’d said yes to the adventure, I really didn’t have many practical skills to offer our bicycling duo. I wasn’t a cyclist, and I had only been camping a handful of times in my entire life. I’d never set up a tent, blown up a sleeping mat, made a fire, or biked more than a few miles at a stretch. What I did have going for me, however, was my adaptability, hardiness, and enthusiasm – and, of course, the many years I’d spent pottering in the kitchen and working in bakeries.
Cycling, I discovered early on in our journey, paired well with food. Throughout our trip, I filled our ravenous bellies with decadent feasts prepared on my one-burner stove: I made soups galore, from potato leek stew, to brothy chicken soup with homemade dumplings, to hearty chili con carne. I whipped up broccoli stir-fries and orange chicken and apple crumble. There were satisfyingly spicy peanut noodles, and some delicious pasta with an array of camp-made sauces. Our favourite breakfast was one of buttery crepes, served with jam or honey.
As we travelled and met other touring cyclists like David and Oussman, I eventually learned that what I assumed were common practices – cooking real meals every night, scouring markets for local culinary treasures, and adding to my spice collection as we travelled – weren’t as common as I’d thought. In fact, during our two years on the road, most of the cycle tourists we met didn’t cook very much. I met some folks who subsisted on mushy bananas and peanut butter, while others lived on ramen packets, or freeze-dried meals in a bag. The adventurous ones cooked bland pasta, night after night.
Meanwhile, the people we met raved about my food, and found themselves inspired to cook a bit more. Others claimed we ate better on the road than they did at home. And through it all, I found that I loved sharing my love of camp cooking with the other travellers we met.
When Tyler and I returned home, I remembered those two cyclists in Romania, and all of the others we’d encountered, and began writing a cookbook documenting everything I’d learned about cooking on the road. Bike. Camp. Cook: The Hungry Cycle Tourist’s Guide to Slowing Down, Eating Well, and Savoring Life on the Open Road is the result of my efforts. I filled it with photographs and stories, loads of practical advice, and fifty well-tested recipes. My goal was to help anyone, even those with no experience in the kitchen, gain all the skills they need to become competent and confident camp cooks.
Here’s a recipe from my cookbook that I first made in Romania, shortly after meeting my favourite pair of bread-eating cyclists. Tyler and I were free-camped in an open field, under a massive oak whose branches stretched almost as wide as the tree was high. While Tyler set up camp and then nimbly ascended the great oak for a view from the top, I spread out my cooking gear and began making a sort of pan-fried focaccia from scratch.
I suppose one could argue that this focaccia, too, is ‘just’ bread. But oh, with its crisp edges and blistered pockets, the herby spice of its rosemary leaves and chili flakes, and its chewy warmth, fresh from the stove … there is nothing ‘just’ about it.
Ingredients
