Kingfisher wrote on May 8^th, 2012 at 5:54pm:

Trangia!  Nothing to break.  Nothing to repair. 

stove all the time.  I don't cook, just boil water

total weight for 12 day solo tirp = 35 ounces  add to that 2 or 3 ounces for my bowl, cup and spoon, and that's all I need.
goes up to about 50 ounces for two people
have never gone to Quetico with a group larger than 4 people - still use a stove for that if it happens.

no fuss, no muss;  no need for heavy duty saw and maybe axe for splitting wood.  I've done trips where it rained 10 out of 12 days - that makes it a fair bit harder to gather dry wood unless its split sawn logs.

Travel every day but one (or maybe 2 layover days) on a 12 day trip, so I want to be able to hit camp, set up the tent, and be eating as quickly as possible, especially if I don't get there till 7 - likewise in the morning, I want to be up and moving as soon as I can to beat the wind.  I may build a fire most nights, or not, if its not too much trouble - but if wood is scarce, or its raining, or I just don't feel like it, then no fire.  Aside from not wanting to cook over a fire, I don't have the equipment for it - except cooking fish on a stick.

Fire almost all of the time.  I do bring a small one burner stove in case I want quicker coffee or it is too wet to want to make a fire or too late and fire wood is scarce.
Fire in mid-summer is often too hot to stand near to cook.  I would say my fire cooks faster or as fast as a stove regarding boiling water; however trying to cook on a BWCA grate is not so easy...takes a long time to heat the grate up enough to really start cooking.  I put a flat rock under my fire to raise it closer to the grate and cut down on how big the fire has to be.  I might be the one you are cursing when you have to drag the rocks back out of the fire pit.     I also sometimes take an S hook of sturdy wire (coat hanger) and hang the pot from the grate and over the fire to get it closer to the heat.
It's nice to have a little smoke from the fire to hide in when the bugs are bad.
I don't soap my pots but I do wrap each one in a rag from an old sheet.  They still nest into a tidy package but don't make each other sooty or my pack.  When I get home I either just clean the inside and wrap in a fresh rag or if I really want them clean something like Zip-strip paint remover will take the black off pretty easily.

Gathering firewood = loss of fishing time.   down

On layover days and when the kids are with, we almost always have a fire both morning and evening which is then used for cooking.  Personally there are few things more enjoyable to me than the dawn experience, having a pot of cowboy coffee, and working the immediate shoreline for whatever is swimming by.

On the more serious fishing and distance trips, the stove is used on almost every meal, excluding the fishfry.  Campfires might be made later on before dark.

-YB