Break the eggs into a cup to insure their freshness, and throw them into the frying pan with a lump of butter and salt and pepper. Stir over a fire of coals until they are almost hard. Do not break the yolks at first.
PART II.—CAMP COOKERY.
CHAPTER I.
Outfit.—Go Light as Possible.—Carriage of Provisions and Utensils.—Camp Stoves, Ice-boxes and Hair Mattresses.—The Bed of "Browse."—How to make a Cooking Range Out-of-doors.—Building the Fire.—A Useful Tool.—Construction of Coffee Pot and Frying Pan.—Baking in Camp.—Fuel for Camp-fire.—Kerosene and Alcohol Stoves.—Camp Table.—Washing Dishes, etc.
The remarks given on outfit in Chapter I. of Part I. are, many of them, as well adapted to camp as to canoe cookery. The utensils carried for cooking in a permanent camp, and for more than one person, will of course exceed in number those used by the canoeist, but there will be few additional articles really necessary, even with the varied and extensive bill-of-fare that the possibilities of a three weeks' camp in one place suggest. Even if you have teams and lumber-wagons to carry your outfit into the woods it is better to go light as possible. With few things to find places for the camp can be kept neat and ship-shape, and everything will be handy; while the chances are that a portion of a large and varied outfit will be wasted. Two friends and myself go regularly into camp for three weeks with no added utensils to those mentioned in the canoe outfit except an iron pot and a Dutch oven, and even these additions are seldom used. A large cooking outfit for a camp can be best packed in a large pack basket, such as is generally used in the Adirondacks and Maine woods; but these receptacles are not waterproof, therefore I would recommend that the eatables themselves be carried in waterproofed muslin bags, each variety having its own bag. All together may then be packed in basket, chest or knapsack, as desired. Butter will keep sweet longer in an earthen jar with water-tight cover, as described on page 11, than in any other receptacle I know of. It can be enveloped in a net and lowered to the bottom of a lake or river, or set in a cold spring, or tucked away in the coolest corner of a little cellar dug into a side hill and lined with clean birch bark. If I carry a dozen or two of eggs into the woods with me I let them ride in a tin pail along with plenty of corn meal, and seldom find a broken one among them.
A good many campers—and especially lady campers—think it necessary to carry a camp stove; some people go into the woods with an ice-box and a ton of ice; and others bring with them bedsteads and hair mattresses. I do not camp with such people, and I think every true woodsman will agree with me that these deluded persons do not enjoy to the full the pleasure and wholesome exhilaration of real camp life. A bed of spruce or hemlock browse, properly "shingled" and of a good depth, is the cleanest, softest, most fragrant and healthful couch in the world. If I never camped for any other reason, I would go once a year for the express purpose of enjoying for a brief season the delicious odor and natural elastic softness of this best of beds.
I have never felt the need of ice or ice-box in all my camping experience. A cold spring of water keeps my butter sweet, and I never send to town for butchered meat; if I did perhaps I should find a refrigerator useful.
Now as to camp stoves. A camp of lumbermen will find a stove of some sort a time-saving utensil, for but little time can be spared from their work in the woods to prepare meals, and a dinner can be unquestionably got quicker on a stove than with an open fire. But to a party of pleasure outers whose time in camp is not of so great importance, a camp stove is a superfluous piece of furniture. It is unwieldy to carry, smutty to handle, and makes a camp look like a summer kitchen in a back-yard. Every necessary culinary operation can be performed equally well or even better without it, if the camper knows how to properly make a cooking camp-fire.