Roughing It Easy [Mass Market Paperback]

Dian Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1981

The ingenious, million-selling camping and cooking guide, now revised and expanded. Thomas shares simple yet astounding outdoor tips.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Warner Books (October 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446324892
• ISBN-13: 978-0446324892
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,725,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is not just a book for camping, November 17, 1999

By 

pat wiklund ([e-mail]) (San Francisco Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roughing It Easy : A Unique Ideabook for Camping and Cooking (Paperback)

This book is super. It has practical and down to earth suggestions for real families, who use the local supermarket for their supplies. Thomas reassures you that you don't have to be a super jock camper or a back packer to enjoy the outdoors in comfort, or with small children.

I especially liked her suggestions for adapting camping tools, supplies and techniques to emergency conditions. It cuts through all the hype and doomsday scenario planning for Y2K with thoughtful and sensible suggestions.

I found her directions for putting together a family emergency kit with specific suggestions for the amount of food, water and sanitary supplies very helpful. In earthquake country we need to be prepared now.

So many of her tips were so simple, but so elegant. The constant hot water tank, the grooming apron and the nifty night time toilet tissue container were worth the price of the book alone. Then add the emergency toilet in a five gallon bucket...and the source phone number for getting a snap on toilet seat, and I was a convinced.

This is a must have book...not just for campers but for all of us that need to be prepared to use what we have around the house to keep ourselves and our families warm, fed and clean when our regular services are non-operable.

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ideas galore to save money, February 16, 2003

By 

microjoe - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Roughing It Easy : A Unique Ideabook for Camping and Cooking (Paperback)

I first read this book as a teenage boy scout. I had camped once a month for many years and had tried all kinds of tricks to save money when camping, make your own gear, fun outdoor recipes, etc. but this book had tons of new ideas I had never heard of. 20 years after the first edition of this book means the author has updated it to our times, but it still great. This has always been indespensable to me. It really has made camping more fun and I reccommend it to anyone that takes kids camping, but you don't have to have them to try this stuff.
Lots of delicious recipes and methods to cook, but other stuff on first aid and making your campsite comfortable in many ways is featured. Features many ways to build a fire, how to make firestarters to speed up your firestarting, make your own waterproof matches, make your own campstove.

She shows you how to make a meal in a hollowed orange (cake in an orange!)or onion nestled in the coals! Cook eggs on a flat rock, recipes to cook on sticks, in foil, etc. Lots of ideas for home made items that will save you time and money in the woods. A hot water tank that sits in the fire; an outdoor sink made in seconds with a shovel and garbage bag; how to keep your pans clean the easy way; packing lists; use a can for a rolling pin in a pich; how to make lanterns from cans. One of my favorits was the tiny stove you make out of a coffee can. How to make a reflector oven for the woods, and 3 more types of ovens. (how about a cardboard box for an oven, it works).

Other books published since have borrowed some ideas from this one, but they were here first. Pictures and sketches on nearly every page are very helpful. The writing style is fun and easy to read.

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Uneven re-hash of her 70's books of same titles, May 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Roughing It Easy : A Unique Ideabook for Camping and Cooking (Paperback)

"Roughing It Easy", volumes 1 and 2, were originally published in the 70s; this book is a combination of those two books in a "slick" package, but some of the information has been updated very little, if at all, and, in some cases, is still impractical or too complicated for most families. The "completely revised and updated" statement on the book's cover seems to refer to a section on solar cooking (with detailed instructions on constructing a parabolic-shaped solar cooker) and an "updated" recipe for s'mores. Most of the illustrations and several of the cooking/camping techniques are from the original editions of the books, and more than one shows its age - a wooden crate (p. 36 - haven't seen one of these in years); cutting "green sticks" for cooking? (hardly environmentally sound and illegal in all public campgrounds that I know of); aluminum muffin tins for open-fire cooking? (the light-gauge aluminum now available melts too easily for this technique); tent illustrations and other product-content descriptions that are outdated and non-specific (no dome tents? no specifics or name mentions on "synthetics", e.g., Polartec, Quallofill, Supplex, etc.); thread spools on a coat hanger for hot dog, etc. cooking? ( p. 140 In the 70s, wooden spools were available, but they've been plastic for a long time now, and wire coat hangers usually have a coating on them that can be unsafe when in contact with food).

The "new" book also leaves out some of the better recipes that kids like, e.g., "campfire stew", but includes heating a TV dinner! The recipes rely heavily on additive and preservative-laden "convenience foods", and canned foods, and fresh vegetables/fruit are rarely mentioned. And, my favorites, cooking on the car manifold, cooking hamburger on a shovel and hot dogs on a pitchfork!

There IS good information in the book - the old "tin can" stove, fire building, "oven" baking, different cooking techniques, and several other things - but impractical ideas and "equipment-rich" or complicated techniques, e.g., the "vertical spit", pp. 144-145, are too common.

Unfortunately, there are few, if any, books of this type available to the "novice" camping public; the book's continuing popularity confirms this. Perhaps a thorough "update" and revision of the book's material, photographs, and techniques is planned; it would be welcome, in my opinion.