Our backpacker oven arrived today and frankly it is pretty unimpressive. It is far from sturdy, the straps that hold it together when it is packed are useless (not as advertised either) and it doesn't collapse down well at all.

There are also several (in our opinion) bad design decisions, the biggest being that the oven is built so the door folds down instead of lifting up. This would be fine except that when it heats up the metal warps and the door falls open. I fixed this temporarily by bending the sheet metal a bit but it wasn't reliable. For what they are charging basic problems like this shouldn't be an issue.

We know these are hand made and we feel sure that if we asked the guys over at BackpackerOven.com to send us another they would but we've decided to just send it back for a refund.

Since nothing else like this is available on the market and Tara is now dead set on being able to bake pies on on the road we've set out to design our own.

More to follow as we engineer a better, more compact, stronger oven.