Call me old school, but I have an attachment to the portable cooking gear that lets me ply my limited chef skills as the outdoor setting dictates. It might be perched on a picnic table, inside a screen shelter where I'm cooled by a bug-free breeze, or under a tarp if the weather is uncooperative, but I'm partial to being outdoors when I cook. This may be because I've always been a tent camper, and that's been the natural order of things. On the other hand, when a piercing wind is driving raindrops at a horizontal angle, the idea of cooking indoors begins to have more appeal.

The world of camp cooking has changed since the days when virtually the only stove you could buy was a two-burner job that burned white gas. (Coleman fuel if you were a purist, and didn't mind paying a little more.) Even simpler, I once owned a military surplus (the olive-drab color was a dead giveaway) camp stove fueled by Sterno. Where the gas or propane burners are found on most stoves, it had two round holes, into which you placed a can of Sterno.

Sterno is also known as "canned heat," not to be confused with the rock band of the 1970s. It came in a container about the size of a tuna can, and was a jelly-like, flammable substance that I remember as being pink. As someone who grew to maturity (or missed that goal, depending on who you ask) during the Vietnam war era, the stuff always made me think of napalm. The real downside to this stove was the long cooking times, and the lack of flame control; no doubt why it did not endure on the camping scene, and also, why I had acquired it so inexpensively.

But the classic, standard-issue camp stove was the green Coleman: two burners, fueled by a red tank that mounted on the front. You poured in your fuel, pumped air into the tank, adjusted a lever and a valve, and you got flame! One burner seemed always to burn hotter than the other, probably due to its being first in line for the gas coming from the tank and the generator.

Most of the time it worked quite well. But I recall one incident when my friends and I somehow failed to follow the proper lever-valve-pumping procedure, and the burner released a tower of flame that might have justified calling in Red Adair, the famous Texan known for his ability to cap burning oil wells.

Still visible in my mind's eye is my friend Randy, trying to distance himself from the firestorm, held fast by the stub of a birch branch that had snagged his jacket. When the flaming burner was shut down, it was minutes before we, "the bystanders," could quell our convulsive laughter long enough to string two syllables together in speech. I'm not sure that our parents, who were not too keen on their sons winter camping by themselves in the first place, would have seen the humor in it that we did.

These days, the green Coleman is still around. But you're likely to find it as a dual-fuel model, meaning that it will burn both Coleman fuel (white gas) and unleaded gasoline from your corner gas station. Somehow, growing up with a lifetime of warnings about the dangers of the fuel we used in our lawn mower and snow blower, I have what may be an irrational fear of anything that comes out of a hose at a gas station. Old fears die hard.

If you were to judge by the shelf space devoted to stoves in many camping stores these days, one would definitely get the impression that the future belongs to compressed propane gas, rather than liquid fuel. On the shelf where I most recently shopped were single, double and triple-burner propane stoves, but just one liquid gas burner. The great advantage of propane, as I see it, is that it is already under pressure, and a stove tank need not be pressurized by hand pumping. Even, controllable heat is the outcome.

If the seal goes bad in the pump mechanism of your liquid gas stove, you may be out of business. Not so with propane. I suspect there are safety issues favoring propane, too. On the other hand, if I had neglected to fill my vehicle's gas tank and wondered whether I would make it back to civilization, it would be nice to know that the same fuel I was burning in my camp stove might get me an extra 20 miles, in a pinch.

Another hint that the future of camp stoves belongs to propane is the innovation in design that is happening on that front. Griddle tops, designed for making such things as pancakes, bacon, sausages or hash browns right on the stove surface, are available in propane model stoves. How about a combo grille and standard burner? A triple-burner stove for those big camping parties, or gourmets who need three heat sources at once? Propane once again. For the camper who must keep weight and space to a minimum, there are also small single burner propane stoves. I'm still burning liquid gas, but I think I'm swimming against the tide.

Campers who want to go low tech in their cooking, and enjoy the smoky flavor of charcoal grilled food, can find a number of miniature charcoal grills that are as easy to pack as a camp stove. One is a scaled-down Weber with a no-spill feature. Its lid snaps down tight to prevent ashes from making a mess inside your vehicle if it tips over.

And, not to be forgotten, are those who use wood to generate the heat for their cooking. On a number of canoe trips I've taken, this was the mode of cooking. The big drawback of cooking this way is the time it takes to manage the heat source. You can attempt cooking with a young, restless fire dancing all over your fire pit, but the best cooking is done when the wood has burned down to coals.

Many do their cooking on a stove that can give them controlled heat immediately, and limit their wood fire cooking to marshmallows and s'mores after the main course. That, and the ritual of fire gazing, reminiscing about the events of the day, thinking deep thoughts and solving the world's problems. That's pretty hard to do looking into the blue flame of a gas or propane stove.

Last are a couple more camp cooking accessories worth mentioning. One is a carafe-style coffee maker that fits right over a burner of a standard gas or propane stove. In most ways it looks identical to the coffee makers we have at home. I might expect it to be a little less predictable in brewing time than your trusty old Mister Coffee, but have never used one. On the other hand, it's likely to please the die-hard coffee drinker who wants a little more consistency than tossing a handful of coffee grounds into a pot of boiling water.

If you're really into the finer camp cookery arts, you may want to try a small baking oven, built to fit on top of a standard camp stove top. It may seem like an extravagance to bake in camp. Then again, imagine flaky biscuits accompanying a hearty stew, or perhaps with strawberry shortcake as a dessert.

Now you're cookin'.