If you provide yourself with the following articles and insist upon having them reserved for you, and then let the cook furnish everything else, you will be all right:—
An aluminum plate made double for hot water. This is a very little trouble to fill, and insures a comfortable meal; otherwise, your meat and vegetables will be cold before you can eat them, and the gravy will have a thin coating of ice on it. It is always cold night and morning in the mountains. And if you do not need the plate heated you do not have to fill it; that's all. I am sure my hot-water plate often saved me from indigestion and made my meals things to enjoy instead of to endure.
Two cups and saucers of white enamel ware. They always look clean and do not break.
One silver-plated knife and fork and two teaspoons.
One folding camp chair.
N.B.—Provide your husband or brother or sister precisely the same; no more, no less.
Japanese napkins, enough to provide two a day for the party.
Two white enamel vegetable dishes.
One folding camp table.
One candle lamp, with enough candles. Then leave all the rest of the cooking outfit to your cook and trust in Providence. (If you do not approve of Providence, a full aluminum cooking outfit can be bought so that one pot or pan nests in the other, the whole very complete, compact and light.)