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Feel free to post your product reports here. Anything you may have found useful (or useless).

====Jack Link's Fully Cooked Ground Beef* ====

I've long been a fan of pouched tuna and salmon. It's easy to use, easy to open (just tear open the pouch) and it tastes OK. The texture might leave something to be desired, but all in all, it's a great compromise for travel.

So when I heard about the ground beef available at Wal-Mart, I was curious. The product is Jack Link's Fully Cooked Ground Beef, it's apparently available in several flavors although I was only able to find one at my local Wal-Mart.

The beef is fully cooked. I tried it as if I was hiking - cold, straight out of the pouch on a roll with some ketchup. It's OK. Slightly spicy flavor, a little overcooked, but very low in fat. It comes out looking and smelling like cat food, though. All in all, not bad. I would not want to try on a cracker, though.

I think that if you were to use a bit of imagination - spagetti sauce, perhaps heated with eggs, mixed with an instant creamy soup, or almost any place where you would warm it up - it would be very good.

Not at the top of my list for cold foods, but certainly great for those trips when complex cooking is not in the plan. Recommended.

====Zodi Extreme Shower* ====

Recently, I got a Zodi Extreme shower http://www.zodi.com/extreme.html. The "Extreme" stands for extreme markeing hype - the shower is basically a steel can with a pump and a small shower head. You fill up the can with water, heat it up, screw in the pump, pump up the pressure, and hose yourself off.

You're still taking an outdoor shower, but you've got hot water. The can holds 2.5 gallons; in my experience, two adults can get very clean on one charge.

I don't have the propane burner; the shower can fits on the Westy stove. The stove heats up the water very quickly.

I like the Extreme because it is so simple, light, and doesn't really take up much space or clutter the interior with loose parts.

====Black Diamond Ion Flashlight* ====

I have a Black Diamond Ion headlamp - http://www.bdel.com/gear/lightware/ion.php. For scale, the whole light is sized between a quarter and a half-dollar; that picture is about actual size. There's really only one word to describe stuff like this - incredible. The light weighs less than an ounce, a battery lasts several months of fairly sustained use, and it puts out enough light to walk by, do some work by, and in general get around.

It is fairly fragile - my kids dropped it on a hard surface, and the battery bent the contacts so it would no longer work. A simple repair - open the light, then pry the contacts back with a tiny screwdriver - but not something I would want to attempt in the dark under field conditions.

====Big Jeff Coffee Filter Holder* ====

I took the folding coffee filter holder that Ann Mackay told us about http://store.proline.com/yhst-13225100171324/ with me on my recent trip to the Sierra Nevada. Here's my report:

It worked fine inside the warm, windless van -- but when I tried it outside, in the dry, chill and flowing air of a Sierra morning, the coffee was tepid at best by the time it finished brewing. The coil provides no insulation, and exposes the wet filter paper to evaporation. It worked better if I stuck a plastic bag over it while the coffee dripped through, but still wasn't as warm as I'd like it to be. It was also a little harder to manage when pouring water in. I think I'll go back to my plastic holder. Since I only make one cup at a time, the small size works for me, and really doesn't take up much room. If I needed to use the larger size holder, and did most of my camping in hot, humid Florida (heaven forefend====) I might make a different choice. ====

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