My morning routine is... wake up..lean out of sleeping bag, put first brew on.. Make brew, top up water, reheat...make porridge and put into cosy. Drink brew. Eat breakfast get up...packup...go Lunch is scoff on the hoof
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I think we have the 'marmite' scenario here. You either think a Trangia is all part of the fun and love the rigmarole of setting it up, the smell of the fuel etc, in which case you use one. Like me! If not, you make an analytical decision based on the facts, and for long trip probably use gas. As a regular meths user Andy I suspect you may be in the first category?
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 skip breakfast and lunch and substitute an internediary "brunch" meal - hot cereal with favourite additions is always good. if you mess about with stuff you'll be able to find sweet/savoury combinations you like. a small cut loaf keeps for a couple of days and so adds a bit of variety with a cheese and pickle sandwich. as will an egg or two for a savoury brunch.
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 I'm with Warhippo regarding breakfast, hot muesli and a hot drink (coffee in my case), lunch is usually eat on the fly or possibly a cuppa soup. Evening meal when the tent is set-up is the main one, cuppa soup (again) while the main meal is rehydrating, usually followed by instant custard (in a ziplock bag with dried fruit) unless I feel like saving it for later followed by coffee. Usually have a hot drink (Hot Chocolate/Ovaltine/Horlicks) before bedding down. Birds brand instant custard is meant to be made with water, 1 packet is enough for 2 desserts, I put it in a ziplock and eat it from there so no washing up. I must say I like Parky's idea of a cheese & pickle sandwich, a bit of pickle might spice up a main meal too.
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Plus 840ml of meths is overkill. I can boil 300ml of water with 10ml of meths using my Cone. So 60ml per day plus a bit spare; 500ml. Having said that I'd still use gas. Meths is for playing with at home 
He's thinking of using a mini-trangia. From my experience of these they are inefficient and the burner takes a while to heat up too due to thicker walls I guess. Also this stove has negligible wind protection so without a decent windshield you are basically heating the environment in as little as a mild breeze. To give it some idea of its inefficiency I took a full trangia burner full of meths to boil enough water for my brew. It took two re-fills for my de-hydrated food to get enough water. That was in Feburary a year or two ago (albeit a mild february) and I was not impressed. It was only the Whitebox stove that has brought me back to meths burners since then. I really like the stove and windhield/reflector kit. I also have a little bottle that makes a good brew kit. Its good to brew up on a walk if you have the time. It all fits into a light mug and my AGG 3 cup pot sits in the bag.
Personally I skip breakfast altogether preferring to eat as I go after my stomach has woken up. Eating first thing in the morning makes me feel or be sick. So I'd skip breakfast then eat something about 1 hour into the day's walk. I then eat little and often throughout the day with perhaps a brew at lunch to take a break. Personally I find a coffee in the morning (300ml) another at lunch and maybe two at night with water for the meal about 500ml makes 1700ml of water to bring to the boil per day. For me and gas I got 6-7 days use out of a 100g can based on this plus another 350ml at lunch for supernoodles. That is with using a highly efficient Primus can top stove (not the eta express). Whichever system you use it pays to get out there more as it is the only way for you to work out for yourself the efficient use of the system.
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 I had a Trangia for years and loved it. Not the most economic stove nor the quickest but truly bullet proof. I only stopped using it as they're a lot heavier than my current stove / pot combo. I always wanted to try the mini-trangia setup but, hey I'm happy with my homemade kit.
Many years ago I actually destroyed one of the Trangia pots - I forgot to clean it after a trip and it corroded clean through - took a year or so in my tool shed : (
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 > Come on then. Let's hear the arguments for both options. I'm not too fussed about speed/convenience. I'm more concerned with weight/size. It's generally a trade-off between the weight of the fixed system (burner, pan, fuel container) vs the weight of the fuel. Gas has an energy content about twice that of meths (J/g). So, even though the fixed weight of a meths system can be lighter than that of a gas equivalent, if you need to carry a lot of fuel, gas eventually wins. And the break-even point comes after about three days. However, you need to make sure that you use both fuels equally efficiently. The lightweight meths systems (Caldera Cone, etc.) perform quite efficiently, as the meths burns relatively slowly (and at a largely fixed rate). A gas stove can be opened up so that it roars like a jet engine, but is wasting huge amounts of heat. As such, you might end up using the same weight of gas as you would meths. One of the problems of testing meths stoves (e.g. for magazine reviews), is that it's hard to set a comparable fuel valve setting for each stove, to ensure consistency. Thus, testers often operate the stove flat out, getting fast boil times, but poor fuel use (Chris Townsend confirmed this approach recently, IIRC). Sensible fuel valve settings and a windshield are essential for efficient use of gas.
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 The other option on the WHW is to leave the stove behind. There is always someplace to get food along the way. The thought of a bar meal and a few pints keeps you going. 
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Bump on Cap'n P but I must just add that it isn't all down to fuel weights and efficiencies. Many meth stove designs have no output control - it really is all or nothing (even to the point of putting the thing out - some have to burn dry as you can't extinguish the flame) so gas certainly wins out on burner control. Financial cost is also a factor - gas stoves are nearly always more expensive than meths burners (especially as making your own half decent meths burner is pretty darn easy). Gas canisters are also more expensive than meths and some would argue less easy to procure (though I've not really experienced that myself). Meths is usually more fiddly as well, measuring (or guesstimating) how much meths to pour, the danger of volatile spills and so on. As I've said before, for me since I only make overnight / weekend trips, I only ever need to boil water and I'm happy to mess around with flammable liquids meths burners suit me fine just fine. If any of this changes over time, I'll be more than happy to move over to gas.
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a meths stove may have no output control but you have pan input control instead - just lift the pot up - by hand or stand on some tent pegs.
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.JPG) The other option on the WHW is to leave the stove behind. There is always someplace to get food along the way. The thought of a bar meal and a few pints keeps you going. I managed the whw followed by the great glen way on just 350ml of meths......  I have calculated that allowing for a brew/hotbreakfast plus brew/hot dinner per day, for me the crossover between meths (caldera cone/red bull chimney stove) and gas(Coleman f1 lite stove plus same pan as meths) being lighter is 7 days. Realistically 6 days. Have managed this rate of meths usage for 3 days in summer whilst walking 52 miles.
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> One of the problems of testing meths stoves (e.g. for magazine reviews) Oops. I meant "One of the problems of testing gas stoves". Not sure if this influenced Warhippo's comment about lack of control of meths, which I fully agree with. I'd also agree with the comments about cost and cooking style (control): no-control burners are best for rehydration cooking where you just need to boil water, rather than fry or simmer.
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> a meths stove may have no output control but you have pan input control instead - just lift the pot up Lifting the pan in a very lightweight support such as a Caldera Cone is a bit of a pain. And there's also the issue of fuel efficiency; when you turn a gas flame down, you're using less gas. If you lift the pan off a fixed meths burner, you're still burning the same amount of fuel. Not a big issue, but if you're counting grammes, and doing a lot of simmering, it will have an effect.
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capt, you are quite right but i was in a world where boiling water isn't the sole aim. for boiling water you don't need any control and for simmering i've used tealights which work just fine for the purpose - frees up the stove for more serious water heating duties aka a cuppa soup. more "delicate" or "proper" cooking is acheived by lifting the pan up to control heat.
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A chemistry teacher mate worked out the calorific value of various fuels for me some time ago. From memory, petrol, paraffin, diesel and gas had similar values per gram, but paraffin is a little denser than petrol, so more in a bottle - partly why I use it. Meths had just over half the value of the other fuels, so you'd need so much more on a long trip. Interesting to see others' observations on this, including Mole's 6 or 7 day break point. It'll be interesting to see what you end up with. Enjoy it, whatever!
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Lifting a pan off a burner to control the cooking speed is not always practical, nor is it a particularly elegant solution. I would argue that it defeats one of the main points of meths burner cooking in the first place (conserving weight) and that since many users of meths burners only wish to boil water, is also unnecessary. If you need burner control then a simmer ring is far more suited to the task (obviously I'd recommend changing the burner in order to accommodate this feature if it were required). As Cap'n P has suggested, close fitting windshields can make lifting a pan off a burner a faff (probably even a dangerous one with the possibility of pressure stove blow outs and the like). There is also the fact that not every 'pan' comes equipped with a useable handle (my pan is a mug with a handle that becomes heated by the burner, I lift it up once and put it down to cool so I wouldn't be happy about lifting it up and down to control cooking speeds). Finally many burners (especially pressure stoves such as side-burners) most certainly do not like having the pressure seal repeatedly broken - in cold weather this action can cause a side-burner stove to go out and as I have already mentioned, there are other dangers associated with this practice. Just my opinion of course but having seen what a poorly used meths burner can do to a person's tent in a matter of seconds, I prefer to keep my cooking as simple and as safe as possible
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> capt, you are quite right but i was in a world where boiling water isn't the sole aim. Yes, my concise comment about 'cooking styles' was meant to address that. Maybe too concisely... > and for simmering i've used tealights I sometimes flip my red bull burner over, and use the dimple; it simmers pretty much the same as a tealight, although not quite the same burn time (smaller volume).
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warhippo. you use a simmer ring to simmer. you lift the pan up when you're cooking something that's getting a bit too hot. any potential simmering stage hasn't been reached yet.
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parky. Not disputing that - I'm suggesting that lifting a pan off some types of meths burner / stove setups is not a great idea.
If I'm cooking on a hike (not simply boiling water) then I prefer to cook in much the same way I do at home (ie I don't lift a pan off the hob in my kitchen to cool it, I turn the gas down instead).
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> you use a simmer ring to simmer. That assumes your meths burner has a simmer ring. It may not be a Trangia burner. As WH says, some meths burners object to removing the pan; side burners, for instance, can flare unpleasantly (one of the reasons I don't use them). Different stoves are suited to different styles of cooking; I think that's the best message for the OP to take away. Some meths stoves can be fitted with a simmer ring to tame them, and some pan support systems allow the user to control the heat by lifting the pan. You need to find out what each burner/stove is best suited to, and what style of cooking you wish to do. Or need to do.
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