Outdoor Sports and Games

by Claude Harris Miller

Be sure to take along plenty of tin boxes or tight wooden boxes to keep rain and vermin away from the food. Tell your grocer to pack the stuff for a camping trip and to put the perishable things in tight boxes as far as possible.

If you are going to move camp, have some waterproof bags for the flour. If you can carry eggs and butter, so much the better. A tin cracker box buried in the mud along some cold brook or spring makes an excellent camper’s refrigerator especially if it is in the shade. Never leave the food exposed around camp. As soon as the cook is through with it let some one put it away in its proper place where the flies, ants, birds, sun, dust, and rain cannot get at it.

Always examine food before you cook it. Take nothing for granted. Once when camping the camp cook for breakfast made a huge pot of a certain brand of breakfast food. We were all tucking it away as only hungry boys can, when some one complained that caterpillars were dropping from the tree into his bowl. We shifted our seats—and ate some more, and then made the astonishing discovery that the breakfast food was full of worms. We looked at the package and found that the grocers had palmed off some stale goods on us and that the box was fairly alive. We all enjoy the recollection of it more than we did the actual experience.

It is impossible in a book of this kind to say very much about how to cook. That subject alone has filled some very large books. We can learn some things at home provided that we can duplicate the conditions in the woods. So many home recipes contain eggs, milk and butter that they are not much use when we have none of the three. There is a book in my library entitled “One Hundred Ways to Cook Eggs” but it would not do a boy much good in the woods unless he had the eggs. If you ask your mother or the cook to tell you how to raise bread or make pies and cakes, be sure that you will have the same ingredients and tools to work with that she has.

It might be well to learn a few simple things about frying and boiling, as both of these things can be done even by a beginner over the camp fire. There are a few general cooking rules that I will attempt to give you and leave the rest for you to learn from experience.

You use bacon in the woods to furnish grease in the frying pan for the things that are not fat enough themselves to furnish their own grease.

Condensed milk if thinned with water makes a good substitute for sweet milk, after you get used to it.

To make coffee, allow a tablespoonful of ground coffee to each cup of water. Better measure both things until you learn just how full of water to fill the pot to satisfy the wants of your party. Do not boil coffee furiously. The best way is not to boil it at all but that would be almost like telling a boy not to go swimming. Better let it simmer and when you are ready for it, pour in a dash of cold water to settle the grounds and see that no one shakes the pot afterward to stir up grounds—and trouble.

A teaspoonful of tea is enough for two people. This you must not boil unless you want to tan your stomach. Pour boiling water on the tea and let it steep.

Good camp bread can be made from white flour, one cup; salt, one teaspoonful; sugar, one teaspoonful and baking powder, one teaspoonful. Wet with water or better with diluted condensed milk. Pour in a greased pan and bake in the reflector oven until when you test it by sticking a wooden splinter into it, the splinter will come out clean without any dough adhering to it.