Baked Potatoes
Wrap each potato in wet leaves and place them all on hot ashes that lie over hot coals, put more hot ashes on top of the potatoes, and over the ashes place a deep bed of red-hot coals. It will require about forty minutes or more for potatoes to bake. Take one out when you think they should be done; if soft enough to yield to the pressure when squeezed between thumb and finger, the potato is cooked. Choose potatoes as near of a size as possible; then all will be baked to a turn at the same time.
Bean Soup and Baked Beans
Look over one quart of dried beans, take out all bits of foreign matter and injured beans; then wash the beans in several waters and put them to soak overnight in fresh water. Next morning scald 1½ pounds salt pork, scrape it well, rinse, and with 1 teaspoonful of dried onion or half of a fresh one, put on to boil with the beans in cold water. Cook slowly for several hours. When the water boils low, add more boiling water and boil until the beans are soft.
To make soup, dip out a heaping cupful of the boiled beans, mash them to a paste, then pour the liquid from the boiled beans over the paste and stir until well mixed; if too thin add more beans; if too thick add hot water until of the right consistency, place the soup over the fire to reheat, and serve very hot. To bake beans, remove the pork from the drained, partially cooked beans, score it across the top and replace it in the pot in midst of and extending a trifle above the surface of the beans, add 1 cup of hot water and securely cover the top of the pot with a lid or some substitute. Sink the pot well into the glowing coals and shovel hot coals over all. Add more hot water from time to time if necessary.
Beans cooked in a bean hole rival those baked in other ways. Dig the hole about 1½ feet deep and wide, build a fire in it, and keep it burning briskly for hours; the oven hole must be hot. When the beans are ready, rake the fire out of the hole; then sink the pot down into the hole and cover well with hot coals and ashes, placing them all over the sides and top of the pot. Over these shovel a thick layer of earth, protecting the top with grass sod or thick blanket of leaves and bark, that rain may not penetrate to the oven. Let the beans bake all night.
Bacon
Sliced bacon freshly cut is best; do not bring it to camp in jars or cans, but cut it as needed. Each girl may have the fun of cooking her own bacon.
Cut long, slender sticks with pronged ends, sharpen the prongs and they will hold the bacon; or use sticks with split ends and wedge in the bacon between the two sides of the split, then toast it over the fire. Other small pieces of meat can be cooked in the same way. Bacon boiled with greens gives the vegetable a fine flavor, as it also does string-beans when cooked with them. It may, however, be boiled alone for dinner, and is good fried for breakfast.