You can do a good deal by helping in the kitchen, and seeing how the food is got ready. Also get a baker to show you how to mix dough and to bake bread.
But it is no use merely to be shown how it should be done; the thing is to do it yourself. You will make a few mistakes at first. Your dough will come out like custard, and your porridge will be burnt, and milk smoked, but after one or two trials you will soon find yourself able to cook quite well.
The first thing that is necessary for cooking, even if it is only to boil a billy of tea, is to have a fire, and tenderfoot makes a pretty hash of lighting a fire until he knows how.
[Illustration: FIRE READY FOR LIGHTING.]
Begin in a small way by putting first some dry "kindling" or small splinters and shavings, dry grass, or a little paper, anything that will easily take fire, and over that stack a lot of small dry sticks, standing on end and leaning together, or leaning against a log on the windward side of it.
Remember, dry sticks are very different from sticks when it comes to lighting a fire.
Dry sticks are seldom found on the ground, they are generally best got from a tree. Find a tree with a dead branch or two, break these off, and you will have dry sticks. For "kindling," a number of sticks partly split or splintered with your knife are useful.
Do you know what "punk" is?
Well, "punk," or "tinder," is what a good many backwoodsmen carry about with them for lighting their fires.
It can be a small bit of cotton waste soaked in petrol or spirits, or very dry, baked fungus, or bark fibre, or anything that will catch fire from the slightest spark.