The potatoes take longest to cook. When these are soft (which you try with a fork) enough not to lift out, the whole stew is cooked.
BREAD MAKING.
To make bread, the usual way is for a scout to take off his coat, spread it on the ground, with the inside uppermost (so that any mess he makes in it will not show outwardly when he wears his coat afterwards); then he makes a pile of flour on the coat and scoops out the centre until it forms a cup for the water which he then pours in hot; he then mixes the dough with a pinch or two of salt, and of baking-powder or of Eno's Fruit Salt, and kneads and mixes it well together until it forms a lump of well-mixed dough. Then with a little fresh flour sprinkled over the hands to prevent the dough sticking to them, he pats it and makes it into the shape of a large bun or several buns.
Then he puts it on a gridiron over hot ashes, or sweeps part of the fire to one side, and on the hot ground left there he puts his dough, and piles hot ashes round it and lets it bake itself.
Only small loaves like buns can be made in this way.
If real bread is required, a kind of oven has to be made, either by using an old earthenware pot or tin box, and putting it into the fire and piling fire all over it, or by making a clay oven, lighting a fire inside it, and then when it is well heated raking out the fire and putting the dough inside, and shutting up the entrance tightly till the bread is baked.
Another way is to cut a stout club, sharpen its thin end, peel it and heat it in the fire. Make a long strip of dough, about two inches wide and half an inch thick: wind it spirally down the club; then plant the club close to the fire and let the dough toast itself, just giving the club a turn now and then.
Ration Bags.—Very often on service they serve you out with a double handful of flour instead of bread or biscuits, a bit of meat, a spoonful of salt, one of pepper, one of sugar, one of baking-powder, and a handful of coffee or tea. It is rather fun to watch a tenderfoot get this ration and see how he carries it away to his bivouac.
How would you do it?
Of course you could put the pepper into one pocket, the salt into another, the sugar into another, the flour into your hat, and carry that in one hand, the bit of beef in the other hand, and the coffee in the other.