A Simple Outdoor Meal
The ingenious and resourceful motor camper can cook a great variety of very appetizing food with almost no utensils to help him, using simply an open camp fire. Any one who has been a boy in the country knows how to roast potatoes in hot ashes. If not careful the potatoes will be burned, but probably not so badly as to entirely spoil them for food. But a burnt potato will not taste bad by a camp fire. Why, after the camper has been out for a week he will almost be able to eat, like, and digest gravel.
If the camper has taken along a few packages of prepared self-raising flour, let him cut a green club about four feet long. Then peel off the bark at one end for about the distance of a foot. Next hold or prop the bare end of this club slant-wise over the fire until it is roasting hot. Take some of the prepared flour and mix it with water into a very stiff dough. Mold this dough into a long strip, and when the club is almost burning hot wrap the strip [[105]]of dough around it. Replace the club over the fire, turning it now and then to prevent burning, and to get the dough cooked evenly. In fifteen minutes or so—depending upon the heat of the fire—you will have as fine a piece of hot biscuit as any one could wish.
For successful camp cooking one should know how to make fresh breadstuffs, palatable soups, good, nourishing stews, and a few tasty desserts. The camper should know also how to make such beverages as tea, coffee and cocoa; how to broil wild meats and fish of all kinds; how to make flapjacks and fritters without burning them or getting them greasy. Furthermore, the camp cook should know how to serve these things without letting them get cold and indigestible.