Stormberg Sarek cooking kit and other toys

Stormberg pot, Fire Maple Fms-102 burner, Biltema gas, plastic base

A potpourri of items and experiences around the Trangia theme.

Compared to the Trangia 27, the Stormberg "Sarek" kit has a larger sized pan and a pot, and a coffee-pot style pot as an addition. And a protective bag. 

These are made from anodized aluminum, and the pan has the usual teflon coating.

The first motive was that as Primus Mimer Stove distributes flames on a wider area, it would be better to have wider cookware surfaces to work with. Other than that, I guess the original Trangia kit serves 1-person needs as well as before.

Primus Mimer Stove and the Stormberg pot bottom.

The above diagram shows the Mimer stove in relation to the pot bottom. The burner and its relation to the pan bottom is quite accurate, but the less important details are not as precise.

The flames emanate from the burner in roughly 45 degree angle and outwards. I can still imagine some of the heat gets "lost" from the sides.

The pan isn't really that much wider than the Trangia 27 pan. In fact with the edges the Stormberg pan does not fit inside the 27, unless forced, which I'm not going to try. The pot is considerably wider than its Trangia counterpart.

The Stormberg kit and a Tarmo gas cartridge

The integrated handles are an attractive detail. Maybe I'm also trying to distance myself from the Trangia set, which is so complete that it deprives me from the joy of building a kit from parts.

Yet at the same time I more and more appreciate the total design of a Trangia-style storm cooker kit. All the components make a nice package where the pans and pots are well enough protected.

Can these be carried safely without them scratching each other? It would be at least good to avoid breaking the teflon and the anodized surface from too many places. Pieces of cloth or cardboard may be enough.

On the Mimer. The bullar tended to slide, burning them from one side. Photo by Marq

My small backpack is barely able to accommodate these larger pots. I will still hold to the principle that the 11L bag should limit the load, and this in turn the nature of the excursions, at least when moving about on my own.

After fiddling with the separate handle in Trangia-type kits, the integrated folding handles seem like luxury. But the handles also add a tiny amount of weight, they look a little fiddly, and when cleaning they usually need to be at least dried.

The loose handle-less pans and pots are extremely minimal items and simple to clean.

In practice, the pan and pot were easy to use and I was quite thankful of the handles. No problems with positioning and searching for the loose handle.

Teachable moment

A slightly dangerous and hilarious incident needs to be reported! I tried, without prior practice, to use the tinder on the Gerber Stakeout Spark (perhaps featured later) to light up the Mimer stove.

This meant figuring out how to use the tinder as close as possible to the burner element. This requires some extra coordination as the Gerber is quite huge. 

The gas sure lit eventually, but not without bumping the stove over. A huge yellow flame blew out and ignited my hair while I quickly set the stove up again. Then it kind of fell over once more, and again I stood it up.

Gerber Stakeout Spark

After a moment we noticed the burning didn't seem normal, so the Mimer was shut down and the gas was lit using another method.

The plastic base triangle didn't prevent this from happening, which is another lesson learned.

I'm reflecting that in a situation like this, a high priority is to shut down the gas, which should have been done the moment the cooker was stood up again, if not before.

When the base triangle is attached, it might be good to establish beforehand the directions the stack can fall, in relation to the adjustment knob.

Spirit test

As the weather gets warmer, it should be easier to work with the spirit burner. I did this on the balcony though, with about 14 degrees Celsius.

It took roughly 15+ minutes from starting the fire to snuffing it out. Setting up and cleaning of course took its time too. I boiled 0.5L water and added a 6 minute pasta carbonara bag contents as ingredients.

The Wildo combo utensil was enough here.

The flame grew quite strong in the process. The pasta threatened to overflow, which I initially countered by raising the pot. This wasn't such a good idea as the heat begins to extend to the aluminum handle, and generally the flames were wildly throwing about the pot.

So, I took the pot off and added the simmer lid, nearly all open. The effect looked too harsh initially, but it actually worked fine⁠—the pasta was really simmering. The heating was now more obviously centered so I kept the pasta moving.

At no point was the food in danger of sticking to the aluminum pot. The Knorr carbonara wasn't especially good though, their other products have tasted better.

I was interested how fast it could be without adding water to the spirit. Boiling the water that had been stored in room temperature, took around 6-7 minutes. Sure, with good gas burner it would be closer to 2 minutes, but it's hardly a deal breaker.

Uh Oh

Without the water, the pot ended up quite sooty though.

As noted before, when not trying to find the maximum speed, adding water could also tame the spirit burning. So, the simmer lid might not be needed.

Another idea is to add the simmer lid when the water is boiling and it's time to add the ingredients. This would be a more "natural" moment to do it and the flame might not yet be frighteningly high.

Spocking around with ChatGPT images

I watched the Star Trek Animated episode Yesteryear, where Mr. Spock travels in time to meet his younger self on planet Vulcan.

It's one of the few decent episodes on the animated show. This story, written by D.C. Fontana, is considered to have an authentic glimpse into the life on Vulcan, even if I'm not sure if the story of Spock's time travel is considered canon.

It's more nostalgic to me because for the longest time I have had the Alan Dean Foster novelization of the first two episodes of the series, including Yesteryear. It is likely within the ten first book-sized texts I read in English language.

Watching the episode now, I felt that if Foster's adaptation was again made into animation, it could be superior than the somewhat sparse plotting of the original.

This then suggested to me that nowadays AI could probably make that new adaptation. Then I asked, what if AI remade this story in live action?

Well, the tools to do that are not available to me, but at least I could fiddle with ChatGPT image generation, just like everyone these days. Now it's possible to upload a source image and base the prompt on that. "Natural language" image processing.

For reference, I used Google to find this image. This was hasty because it is cropped and in the wrong aspect ratio. But it doesn't matter that much.

Could you remake image so that it looks like a live action scene from the Star Trek show from 1960s, showing adult Spock with you Spock.

This messy and grammar-challenged question was followed with a question from ChatGPT:

To turn this animated scene into a live-action version in the style of the 1960s Star Trek show—featuring adult Spock with young Spock—I can generate a realistic reimagining for you. Please confirm:

Would you like me to create the live-action version using the visual style and costumes from the original Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969), with realistic human likenesses and appropriate lighting/costumes?

Despite all the mistakes, ChatGPT sounded like it had understood the task, so I answered Yes.

The first image is in some ways the best of the bunch, but the content is incorrect. Mr. Spock surely could not appear as a time traveler to his younger self, while wearing his Starfleet uniform of later years. 

This is just speculation, but I think this is in part because "appropriate costumes" probably led ChatGPT to use the iconic uniform.

Another tiny problem might be the "realistic human", making the younger Spock look far more human than in the animation.

However, I let this be because I thought it would be a nice touch if Spock as a child had a more human-looking phase. It would then make more sense the Vulcan kids would tease him. (The nasty and ugly Vulcan kids made little sense in that story in the first place.)

I can also see the child Spock is facing another direction than in the source image, but I kind of like it. I'm not going to work with Spock's hand position, I just want to get an overall feel for the result.

I follow up:

This is near perfect, but the older Spock ought not to wear the Starfleet uniform, but a plain blueish garment. The clouds and sky in the background could be somewhat more purple, to give a hint of a more alien atmosphere. They are on the planet Vulcan.

This was the interesting step to me. Would the engine remake the image exactly as before, only changing the required details?

ChatGPT understood everything very well, but the picture is now missing the shoulder bag. Note the image is more sketch-like in details.

I continue:

The shoulderbag should be preserved on the older Spock, now it is missing. The garment ought to have a hood, which however is not pulled over his head. Also the garment is full body length.

I was quite satisfied with this result, and impressed on the engine's ability to alter small details while sticking to the same image as a whole. The Vulcan garb is pretty good.

The sky is too purple for my taste, but at this point I don't care about it too much. I'm running out of goes for this session.

I can see there's some fluctuation in Spock's face, he doesn't quite look like Leonard Nimoy, and the hairline is a little weird. But whatever. The first iteration had a better face, and it might be ChatGPT is channeling resources away from the task once I begun asking revisions. 

To me it's quite nice, if bland, approximation of how the scene might have looked with the resources of the day.

More Primus, More spirit

Mimer in action 1

First, a solo effort with the Primus Mimer stove. Here I could choose a more pit-like enclosure near Alppipuisto and Linnanmäki, hoping the trees and stones would protect from the wind. This also allowed more secrecy, as the trees are still lacking leaves. This did mean the view was not all that impressive, though.

The area has a reputation of attracting weirdos, but in this weather, in the late morning hours, no-one interfered.

Watch out for those low branches

I did some bag pasta, Coop-variety Fusilli Cheese. Primus Mimer did well here, but I have to say it's tricky to keep the flame down enough while protecting it from the wind. 

Even this enclosure wasn't enough to prevent occasional gusts from reaching the stove. So, the solution is to move the food around very quickly while keeping the flame a little larger than I'd want to.

The Coop Fusilli Cheese was ok, but perhaps not as good as the Knorr bag foods.

I forgot to take my plasma igniter and the aluminum handle with me. This wasn't too problematic as the aluminum pot edge doesn't get all that hot, it can be handled with gloves. A pan would have been different matter. As for ignition, I fortunately had some matches.

Pornaistenniemi

Another session with three enthusiasts in Pornaistenniemi recreational area, the eve of May Day. We could use the covered tables, so a lot of gear was on display and in use.

Here I finally used the spirit alcohol burner again, as it could be trusted to boil 0.5 liters of water. It did feel slow after all the experiences with gas, but it got there in the end.

A tiny bit of water was added to the alcohol mix, to prevent soot. The pot wasn't all that dirty after the spirit burning, which was a relief compared to the winter experiences.

Also the ignition was much faster, even with the plasma igniter.

Trangia windshield and various utensils. Alcohol burner at the right, actual alcohol in the middle.

After winter, I had figured of some premature pros and cons between spirit and gas. I had seen gas in operation only a few times, mostly in extreme weather, and it looked like this sputtering thing that needed constant adjustment.

Spirit appeared more reliable and was easier to handle, and the spirit bottle was smaller than a gas cartridge, which needed to be connected to the burner.

Since then I've worked more with gas and although adjusting it is kind of volatile, it really is faster and I've not been able to burn my food yet. 

With spirit there's no adjusting what you can't adjust! I'm looking forward to using it during the summer more, but it might be useful to have the gas burner at hand too.

Mimer in action 2

I chose to use the Mimer again to fry some vegetable sausages, which was quite effective. Again I would have preferred to have a more nuanced flame, but no such luck.

As with the pasta, I just kept moving the sausages constantly in the oil. Also, I occasionally moved the pan a little further away from the flame, as if with working with a tiny campfire. It has to be said the mimer gives a good flame spread, so I never get a feeling it's only heating the center.

One more picture from the Linnanmäki site