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Breakfasts

How often on trips do you complain about foul breakfasts? How often do you find yourself suffering from the dreaded hunger bug about an hour after breakfast? Too often. As a result, "Heels" this year is bringing you a list of tramping breakfasts, shown below in order of chunderability.

1. Fried Eggs and Sausages. "The finest of them all". This is the Only breakfast to be used on a weekend trip. It is produced in minimum time and gives maximum energy. Recently, I was able to plough through soft snow from Field's to Alpha on five sausages alone. This should demonstrate the calorific value of sausages amply.

2. Last Night's Stew. "Waste not, Want not". Should your bloat of the night before be such that your stew remains unfinished then this should be your breakfast next morning. This breakfast also contains large numbers of calories and goodness.

3. Rice and Raisins. "Ye speak of rice and raisins and great shall be your dissension, for on its preparation no two of you shall agree". A breakfast which contains both calories and nutrition in reasonable quantities, this is the best breakfast for use on long trips. Everyone uses a different method for preparing rice and raisins.

4. Macaroni Cheese. "Feed them this and great shall be their hunger". This is a breakfast which gives you little nutrition, contains practically no calories, and tastes like rubber soaked in glue. If you tramp after a meal of this you can be sure to get the hunger bug any time after an hour after breakfast. Should you get sick of (or from) this breakfast, as you undoubtedly will, it can be varied by adding tomato soup or honey instead of cheese.

5. Porridge. "Le grand pog, le grand bog". There is absolutely no truth in the Scottish theory that a good plate of porridge each morning is good for you. [A good plate of porridge is a contradiction in terms - porridge being an evil substance - Ed.] Porridge is a food which contains little goodness, few calories and tastes foul. For these reasons, don't eat it.

Misery is socks frozen irrevocably into your boots.

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6. End of Christmas Trip Breakfast^* "And they ate and foul was their food. And soon they did chunder and they did chunder a mighty chunder for great was their disgust". This is the type of breakfast you eat at the end of a Christmas trip when all that you have left is dried apples, custard powder, milk powder, and a few saccharine tablets. The result on cooking is better left to the imagination.

- K.G.J.

Extract from "The Dominion", Friday 13th October, 1984:

"A spokesman for the Hydro Department said today that the proposed dam in the upper Waiohine had been given "the green light" by the Government. The dam would be one of the highest in the country, rising to a height of 2000' between Cone Ridge and High Ridge. It was stated that this move was to begin early next year, and would transform a hitherto valueless area into a place of beauty, as well as supply the North Island grid with almost 400 more kilowatts of power. The spokesman, Mr. Snurd, added that, because the timber in the area was "not worth milling", it was not proposed to cut the trees below the waterline. In order to facilitate the construction, all persons except the Arabian workmen would be barred from the district.

From an article in "The Evening Post", 1st April, 1994:

"... According to a recent geological survey, the three Tararua peaks known as Mts. Hector, Mitre and Arete, have all risen in altitude by about 20feet over the last two years. This is apparently due to the increasing size of the heaps of beer cans, broken bottles and other trash in the locality, which, it is believed, emanates from the hotels erected for the Tourist Hotel Corporation on these peaks severalyears [sic] ago."

Happiness is a dry trog.

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A note from the editor -

Other tramping club annuals have editors who moralize about safety in the mountains; or why you should pull your weight in the club. This editor moralizes enough at other times, and as he can't think of anything else to say, will cut his editorial short.