I am going camping in that Prius sometime, dangit.
In my mind, I have been camping in it several times. My precious daydreaming minutes have been spent creating the most minimalist packing: bedding/clothing/food/cooking. I will have a four-course dinner cooked in a soda can over one match!
Not really, but my heart skipped several beats once I read about how you can make a very, very simple alcohol stove with just a cat food can. The instructional video I watched used the smaller Fancy Feast can, but I happen to have several potential stoves lying around the house. Thanks, RWE.
The gist of it is that you feed your cat, then use a hole punch to punch holes around the top of the can. The video was all ‘be exact and measure’ but I was all ‘it just needs holes, right?’
(I added a second, offset row of holes above this row.)
My first test was with regular rubbing alcohol. Inside the house. This was stupid for many, many reasons. Reason 1: the plastic coating in the can burned off and it smelled bad in here all Labor Day long. Reason 2: the flames, they were leapy. Reason 3: the smoke, it was sooty. Reason 4: every time I would put my pot on it, the fire went out. Hmmm….. looking back on Reason 2, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
So, I ponied up the money for some denatured alcohol from the painting section at Wal*Mart and did a test run on the front sidewalk.
Ahhhh…… blue flames…. efficient blue flames…
An couple of tablespoons(?) of alcohol heated about three cups of water to a solid simmer before burning out. I sense some experimenting in my future! More holes? fewer holes? Different pan?
Kitties, time for dinner.
Cool arrangement! Just yesterday I was talking with someone about camping and such.
I would guess they said to make the holes regular so the heat would be even, but from the looks of the video, the wind makes that a non-issue.
LOVE the blue flames!! A bunch of them sitting around on a cool autumn night would be awesome!
And I would love to see more testing. How about you make an entire supper using this method.