Another entry from our website, called things we love to carry:

We don’t really carry many things that we don’t like, but we thought it would be a good idea to point our a few things that really seem to be great. These combine our four key criteria: they were cheap, light, multi-functional, and durable.

P’s 3 ½ inch Buck knife, with one pointy blade for cleaning fish, and a broader blade that we’ve used for everything from coring apples and cutting salami to shaving Romano cheese and spreading peanut butter. A beautiful knife made to last. 2.5 ounces.

Our cutting board—sliced out of a larger thin plastic cutting board we bought at a local supermarket. It’s flexible, fits in our bearbox, and keeps us from mashing the edge of the knife on rocks, logs, and slicing into our thighs. And it’s just big enough to hold two pieces of bread, so that we can assemble sandwiches on it. 0.5 ounces.

Our chairs—two pieces of an old closed-cell foam pad that P cut down to about 6X12 inches. We slide them into the bungies on the back of our packs, and use them both on the trail and in camp to make rocks and logs much softer on our old behinds. 2 ounces each.

Our tiny micro-lights, which put out a ton of light, weigh nothing, and come with both an elastic band for your head and a clip for the tent, shirt collar, etc. Truly light, bright, and clever. 2 ounces each.

Our Crocs—lightweight shoes that also fit in those bungie cords. We slip them on to cross streams, keeping our boot and socks dry. And we slip into them in camp, keeping our feet happy. And P has been known to use them to wade while he is fishing. 11 ounces. Worth it.

Our MSR “Pocket Rocket” stove. M is a chef, and she likes her BTUs. This tiny stove does a great job of heating water…and that’s really all we need when we use backpacking food. And it is really efficient—we use about a canister of gas a week on the trail. Sure, we are miserly with the amount of water we heat, and we don’t cook things that need to simmer…but still. Light, hot, and very cool. 3 ounces or so?

Our plastic Monmessin Beaujolais Nouveau bottle—a lightweight wine bottle that has been re-used many times to take a nice bottle of wine on a short trip. On longer trips, we don’t take wine—it’s too heavy.