• HOW TO MAKE ASH CAKE, PONE, CORN DODGERS, FLAPJACKS, JOHNNY-CAKE, BISCUITS AND DOUGHGOD
• MAKING DUTCH OVENS
• VENISON
• BANQUETS IN THE OPEN
• HOW TO COOK BEAVER TAIL, PORCUPINES AND MUSKRATS
• CAMP STEWS, BRUNSWICK STEWS AND BURGOOS

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When America gave Indian corn to the world she gave it a priceless gift full of condensed pep. Corn in its various forms is a wonderful food power; with a long, narrow buckskin bag of nocake, or rock-a-hominy, as parched cracked corn was called, swung upon his back, an Indian or a white man could traverse the continent independent of game and never suffer hunger. George Washington, George Rodgers Clark, Boone, Kenton, Crockett, and Carson all knew the sustaining value of parched corn.

The pioneer farmers in America and many of their descendants up to the present time, dry their Indian corn by the methods the early Americans learned from the Indians. The corn drying season naturally begins with the harvesting of the corn, but it often continues until the first snow falls.

Selecting a number of ears of corn, the husks are pulled back exposing the grain, and then the husks of the several ears are braided together (Fig. 165). These bunches of corn are hung over branches of trees or horizontal poles and left for the winds to dry (Fig. 166).

On account of the danger from corn-eating birds and beasts, these drying poles are usually placed near the kitchen door of the farmhouse, and sometimes in the attic of the old farmhouse, the woodshed or the barn.

Of course, the Indians owned no corn mills, but they used bowl-shaped stones to hold the corn and stone pestles like crudely made potato mashers with which to grind the corn. The writer lately saw numbers of these stone corn-mills in the collection of Doctor Baldwin, of Springfield, Mass.

In the southwest much grit from the stone used is unintentionally mixed with the corn, and hence all the elderly Indians' teeth are worn down as if they had been sandpapered.

But the reader can use a wooden bowl and a potato masher with a piece of tin or sheet iron nailed to its bottom with which to crush the corn and make meal without grit. Or he can make a pioneer mill like Figs. 163 or 164, from a log. The pestle or masher in Fig. 164 is of iron.

There is a way to preserve corn which a few white people still practice just as they learned it from the Indians. First they dig long, shallow trenches in the ground, fill them with dried roots and small twigs with which they make a hot fire and thus cover the bottom of the ditch with glowing embers. The outer husks of the fresh green corn are then removed and the corn placed in rows side by side on the hot embers (Fig. 167). This practice gave the name of Roasting Ear Season to July and August.

As the husks become scorched the ears are turned over, and when browned on all sides they are deftly tossed out of the ditch by means of a wand or stick used for that purpose.

The burnt husks are now removed and the grains of corn are shelled from the cob with the help of a sharp-edged, fresh water "clam" shell; these shells I have often found in the old camping places of the Indians in the half caves of Pennsylvania.

The corn is then spread out on a clean sheet or on pieces of paper and allowed to dry in the sun. It is "mighty" good food, as any Southern born person will tell you. One can keep a supply of it all winter.

When I was a little shaver in old Kentucky, the children were very fond of the Southern field corn parched in a frying pan (Fig. 161), and then buttered and salted while it was still hot; we parched field corn, sugar corn and the regular pop corn, but none of us had ever seen cracked corn or corn meal parched and used as food, and I am inclined to think that the old pioneers themselves parched the corn as did their direct descendants in Kentucky, and that said corn was crushed or ground after it had been parched. Be this as it may, we know that our bordermen traveled and fought on a parched corn diet and that Somoset, Massasoit, Pocahontas, Okekankano, Powhatan, all ate corn cakes and that it was either them or the squaws of their tribes who taught bold Captain Smith's people on the southern coast, and the Pilgrims further north, the value of corn as an article of diet. The knowledge of how to make the various kinds of corn bread and the use of corn generally from "roasting-ears" to corn puddings was gained from the American Indians. It was from them we learned how to make the

This ancient American food dates back to the fable times which existed before history, when the sun came out of a hole in the eastern sky, climbed up overhead and then dove through a hole in the western sky and disappeared. The sun no more plays such tricks, and although the humming-bird, who once stole the sun, still carries the mark under his chin, he is no longer a humming-birdman but only a little buzzing bird; the ash cake, however, is still an ash cake and is made in almost as primitive a manner now as it was then.

Mix half a teaspoonful of salt with a cup of corn meal, and add to it boiling hot water until the swollen meal may be worked by one's hand into a ball, bury the ball in a nice bed of hot ashes (glowing embers) and leave it there to bake like a potato. Equalling the ash cake in fame and simplicity is

Pone is made by mixing the meal as described for the ash cake, but molding the mixture in the form of a cone and baking it in an oven.

In the North they also call this camp corn bread "Johnny-cake," but whatever it is called it is wholesome and nourishing. Take some corn meal and wheat flour and mix them fifty-fifty; in other words, a half pint each; add a teaspoon level full and a teaspoon heaping full of baking powder and about half a teaspoonful of salt; mix these all together, while dry, in your pan, then add the water gradually. If you have any milk go fifty-fifty with the water and milk, make the flour as thin as batter, pour it into a reflector pan, or frying pan, prop it up in front of a quick fire; it will be heavy if allowed to cook slowly at the start, but after your cake has risen you may take more time with the cooking. This is a fine corn bread to stick to the ribs. I have eaten it every day for a month at a time and it certainly has the food power in it. When made in form of biscuits it is called "corn dodgers."

Take two cups full of flour and one level teaspoonful and one heaping teaspoonful of baking powder and half a teaspoonful of salt, and mix them together thoroughly while dry. To this you add milk and water, if not milk straight water, mixing it as described for the flapjacks. Make a dough soft but stiff enough to mold with well floured hands, make it into biscuits about half an inch thick, put them into a greased pan, bake them in any one of the ovens already described, or by propping them up in front of the fire. If the biscuits have been well mixed and well baked they will prove to be good biscuits.

Fred tells me that he makes this the same as he would biscuits and bakes it in a frying pan. The frying pan is heated and greased before the dough is dropped into it, making a cake about a half inch thick. The frying pan is then placed over the slow fire to give the bannock a chance to rise and harden enough to hold its shape, then the frying pan is propped up with a stick and the bannock browned by reflected heat, it must be cooked slowly and have "a nice brown crust." I have never made bannocks but I have eaten some of Vreeland's, and they are fine.

A fellow who cannot throw a flapjack is sadly lacking in the skill one expects to find in a real woodcrafter. A heavy, greasy flapjack is an abomination, but the real article is a joy to make and a joy to eat.

Put a large tin cupful of flour in the pan, add half a teaspoonful of salt, also one heaping teaspoonful and one level teaspoonful of baking powder; mix the salt and baking powder well with the flour while it is dry. Then build your little mountain or volcano of flour with its miniature crater in the middle, into which pour water little by little; making the lava by mixing the dough as you go. Continue this process until all the flour is batter; the batter should be thin enough to spread out rapidly into the form of a pancake when it is poured into the skillet or frying pan, but not watery.

Grease the frying pan with a greasy rag fastened to the end of a stick or with a piece of bacon rind. Remember that the frying pan only needs enough grease to prevent the cake from sticking to the pan; when one fries potatoes the pan should be plentifully supplied with very hot grease, but flapjacks are not potatoes and too much grease makes the cakes unfit to eat. Do not put too much batter in the pan, either; I tried it once and when I flapped the flapjack the hot batter splattered all over my face, and that batter was even hotter than my remarks.

Pour enough batter into the pan to spread almost but not quite over the bottom; when the bubbles come thickly in the middle and the edges begin to smoke a bit, it is time to flap the flapjack. Do so by loosening the edges with a knife blade, then dip the far side of the pan downward and bring it up quickly, sending the cake somersaulting in the air; catch the cake as it falls batter side down and proceed to cook that side.

The penalty of dropping a flapjack in the fire is to be made to eat it without wiping off the ashes.

First fry some bacon or boil it until it is soft, then chop up the bacon into small pieces quite fine, like hash. Save the grease and set the bacon to one side; now take a pint of flour and half a teaspoon of salt, a spoonful of brown sugar and a heaping spoonful of baking powder and mix them all while they are dry, after which stir in the water as already described until it is in the form of batter; now add the chopped bacon and then mix rapidly with a spoon; pour it into a Dutch oven or a pan and bake; it should be done in thirty-five or forty minutes, according to the condition of the fire.

When your campfire is built upon a hearth made of stones, if you brush the ashes away from the hot stone and place your doughgod upon it, then cover it with a frying pan or some similar vessel, and put the hot cinders on top of the frying pan, you will find that it will bake very nicely and satisfactorily on the hearthstone.

In the old-fashioned open fire-places where our grandparents did their cooking, a Dutch oven was considered essential. The Dutch oven is still used by the guides and cowboys and is of practically the same form as that used by Abraham Lincoln's folks; it consists of a more or less shallow dish of metal, copper, brass or iron, with four metal legs that may be set in the hot cinders. Over that is a metal top which is made so as to cover the bottom dish, and the edges of the cover are turned up all around like a hat with its brim turned up. This is so made to hold the hot cinders which are dumped on top of it, but a

Slice bacon as thin as possible and place a layer over the bottom and around the sides of the Dutch oven like a pie-crust. Slice venison, moose meat or bear steak, or plain beef, medium thin and put in to the depth of 2½ inches, salting each layer. Chop a large onion and sprinkle it over the top, cover with another layer of bacon and one pint of water and put on the lid. Fill the hole half full of hot embers, place the Dutch oven in the center and fill the space surrounding the oven full of embers. Cover all with about 6 inches of dirt, then roll yourself up in your blanket and shut your eyes—your breakfast will cook while you sleep and be piping hot when you dig for it in the morning.

The bean hole is far from a modern invention and the dried droppings of animals, like "buffalo chips," were used for fuel away back in Bible times; in ancient Palestine they stewed their meat in a pot set in a hole filled in with stones over which burned a fire of "chips" gathered where the flocks pastured.

When the wood is of such a nature that it is difficult to obtain a bed of live coals for toasting, meat may, in a pinch, be cooked upon a clean flat stone (Figs. 116, 117, and 128). Be certain that the stone is a dry one, otherwise the heat may burst it. If satisfied that it is dry, heat it good and hot and spread your thick slice of venison, moose, bear or sheep or even beef upon the very hot stone; leave it there about twenty minutes and allow it to singe, sizzle and burn on one side, then turn it over and burn the other side until the charred part is one-quarter or even a half inch deep. Now remove the meat and with your hunting knife scrape away all the charred meat, season it and toast some bacon or pork on a forked stick and, after scoring the steak deeply and putting the pork or bacon in the cuts, the meat is ready to serve to your hungry self and camp mates.

If you want to know how real wild meat tastes, drop a sleek buck with a shot just over the shoulder—no good sportsman will shoot a doe—dress the deer and let it hang for several days; that is, if you wish tender meat. Cut a steak two inches thick and fry some bacon, after which put the steak in the frying pan with the bacon on top of it, and a cover on the frying pan. When one side is cooked, turn the meat over and again put the bacon on top, replace the cover and let that side cook. Serve on a hot plate and give thanks that you are in the open, have a good appetite and you are privileged to partake of a dish too good for any old king. The gravy, oh my word! the recollection of it makes me hungry! I have eaten moose meat three times a day for weeks at a time, when it was cooked as described, without losing my desire for more.

When you need a real warm fire for cooking, do not forget that dry roots make an intensely hot fire with no smoke; look for them in driftwood piles, as they are sure to be there; they are light as a cork and porous as a sponge, and burn like coke.

No one with truth may say that he is a real woodcrafter unless he is a good camp cook. At the same time it is an error to think that the outdoor men live to eat like the trencher men of old England, or the degenerate epicures of ancient Rome. Neither are the outdoor men in sympathy with the Spartans or Lacedemonians and none of them would willingly partake of the historic and disgusting black broth of Lacedemonia. Woodcrafters are really more in sympathy with cultured Athenians who strove to make their banquets attractive with interesting talk, inspiring and patriotic odes and delightful recitations by poets and philosophers. As a campfire man would say: "That's me all over, Mable" and he might add that like all good things on this earth

Wash the beans first, then half fill a pail with them, put them over the fire and parboil them until their skins are ready to come off; they are now ready for the pot. But before putting them in there, peel an onion and slice it, placing the slices in the bottom of the bean pot. Now pour half of the beans over the onions and on top of them spread the slices of another onion. Take some salt pork and cut it into square pieces and place the hunks of pork over the onions, thus making a layer of onions and pork on top of the beans. Over this pour the remainder of the beans, cover the top of the beans with molasses, on the top of the molasses put some more hunks of pork, put in enough water to barely cover the beans. Over the top of all of it spread a piece of birch bark, then force the cover down good and tight.

Meanwhile a fire should have been built in the bean hole (Fig. 105). When the fire of birch has been burnt to hot cinders, the cinders must be shoveled out and the bean pot put into the hole, after which pack the cinders around the bean pot and cover the whole thing with the dead ashes, or as the lumbermen call them, the black ashes.

If the beans are put into the bean hole late in the afternoon and allowed to remain there all night, they will be done to a turn for breakfast; the next morning they will be wholesome, juicy and sweet, browned on top and delicious.

A bean hole is not absolutely necessary for a small pot of beans. I have cooked them in the wilderness by placing the pot on the ground in the middle of the place where the fire had been burning, then heaping the hot ashes and cinders over the bean pot until it made a little hill there, which I covered with the black ashes and left until morning. I tried the same experiment on the open hearth to my studio and it was a wonderful success.

This may sound funny, but I have experimented, unintentionally, by seating myself upon a porcupine quill. I can assure the reader that there is nothing humorous in the experience to the victim, however funny it may appear to those who look on.

After thoroughly singeing the porcupine you roll it in the grass to make certain that the burnt quills are rubbed off its skin, then with a sharp knife slit him up the middle of the belly from the tail to the throat, pull the skin carefully back and peel it off. When you come to the feet cut them off. Broiled porcupine is the Thanksgiving turkey of the Alaskan and British Columbia Indian, but unless it has been boiled in two or three waters the taste does not suit white men.

After it has been parboiled, suspend the porcupine by its forelegs in front of a good roasting fire, or over a bed of hot coals, and if well seasoned it will be as good meat as can be found in the wilderness. The tail particularly is very meaty and is most savory; like beef tongue it is filled with fine bits of fat. Split the tail and take out the bone, then roast the meaty part.

Porcupine stuffed with onions and roasted on a spit before the fire is good, but to get the perfection of cooking it really should be cooked in a Dutch oven, or a closed kettle or an improvised airtight oven of some sort and baked in a bean hole, or baked by being buried deep under a heap of cinders and covered with ashes. Two iron pans that will fit together, that is, one that is a trifle larger than the other so that the smaller one may be pushed down into it to some extent, will answer all the purposes of the Dutch oven. Also two frying pans arranged in the same manner.

Always remember that after the porcupine is skinned, dressed and cleaned, it should be put in a pot and parboiled, changing the water once or twice, after which it may be cooked in any way which appeals to the camper. The

On top of the porcupine lay a nice slice or two of fat pork and place another layer of soaked hard biscuit or hard-tack on the pork, put it in a Dutch oven and place the Dutch oven on the hot coals, put a cover on the Dutch oven and heap the living coals over the top of it and the ashes atop of that; let it bake slowly until the flesh parts from the bones. Thus cooked it will taste something like veal with a suggestion of sucking pig. The tail of the porcupine, like the

A man who was hunting in North Michigan said, "Although I am a Marylander, and an Eastern Shore one at that, and consequently know what good things to eat are, I want to tell you that I'll have to take off my hat to the lumber camp cook as the discoverer, fabricator and dispenser of a dish that knocks the Eastern Shore cuisine silly. And that dish is beaver-tail soup. When the beaver was brought into camp the camp cook went nearly wild, and so did the lumbermen when they heard the news, and all because they were pining for beaver-tail soup.

"The cook took that broad appendage of the beaver, mailed like an armadillo, took from it the underlying bone and meat and from it made such a soup as never came from any other stock, at the beck of the most expert and scientific chef that ever put a kettle on."

At Dover the writer has had it served at the hotel under its own name; the dish was "muskrats and toast." For the benefit of those who revolt at the muskrat as food, it is well to state that it is one of the cleanest of all creatures, that it carefully washes all its own food and in every way conducts itself so as to recommend its flesh even to the most fastidious. As a matter of fact the flesh of the muskrat, though dark, is tender and exceedingly sweet. Stewed like rabbit it looks and tastes like rabbit, save that it lacks a certain gamy flavor that some uneducated persons find an unpleasant characteristic of the latter. But to the writer's way of thinking, while the muskrat is good to eat, there are many things much better; the point is, however, that everything which tastes good and is not indigestible is good to eat no matter what its name may be.

Of all the camp stews and hunters' stews of various names and flavors, the Kentucky burgoo heads the list; not only is it distinguished for its intrinsic qualities, its food value and delicious flavor, its romance and picturesque accompaniment, but also because of the illustrious people whose names are linked in Kentucky history with the burgoo. One such feast, given some time between 1840 and 1850, was attended by Governor Owlsley (old stone-hammer), Governor Metcalf, Governor Bob Letcher, Governor Moorhead, General George Crittenton, General John Crittenton, General Tom Crittenton, James H. Beard, and other distinguished men.

All Kentuckians will vow they understand the true meaning of the word "burgoo." But an article in the Insurance Field says, "It is derived from the low Latin burgus, fortified (as a town) and goo-goo, very good." Hence the word, "burgoo," something very good, fortified with other good things, as will be found in "Carey's Dictionary of Double Derivations": "Burgoo is literally a soup composed of many vegetables and meats delectably fused together in an enormous caldron, over which, at the exact moment, a rabbit's foot at the end of a yarn string is properly waved by a colored preacher, whose salary has been paid to date. These are the good omens by which the burgoo is fortified."

Anything from an ordinary pail to one or many big caldrons, according to the number of guests expected at the camp, will serve as vessels in which to serve the burgoo. The excellence of the burgoo depends more upon the manner of cooking and seasoning it than it does on the material used in its decoction.

To-day the burgoo is composed of meat from domestic beasts and barnyard fowls with vegetables from the garden, but originally it was made from the wild things in the woods, bear, buffalo, venison, wild turkey, quails, squirrels and all the splendid game animals that once roamed through Kentucky.

As this book is for woodcrafters we will take it for granted that we are in the woods, that we have some venison, moose, bear meat, rocky mountain goat, big horn, rabbit, ruffed grouse, or some good substitutes. It would be a rare occasion indeed when we would really have these things. If, for instance, we have a good string of grouse we will take their legs and wings and necks for the burgoo and save their breasts for a broil, and if we have not many grouse we will put in a whole bird or two. We will treat the rabbits the same way, saving the body with the tenderloin for broiling. When cleaned and dressed the meat of a turtle or two adds a delicious flavor to the burgoo; frogs legs are also good, with the other meat.

Cut all the meat up into pieces which will correspond, roughly speaking, to inch cubes; do not throw away the bones; put them in also. Now then, if you were wise enough when you were outfitting for the trip to secure some of the ill-smelling but palatable dried vegetables, they will add immensely to the flavor of your burgoo. Put all the material in the kettle, that is, unless you are using beans and potatoes as vegetables; if so, the meats had better be well cooked first, because the beans and potatoes have a tendency to go to the bottom, and by scorching spoil the broth.

Fill your kettle, caldron or pot half full of water and hang it over the fire; while it is making ready to boil get busy with your vegetables, preparing them for the stew. Peel the dry outer skin off your onions and halve them, or quarter them, according to their size; scrape your carrots and slice them into little disks, each about the size of a quarter, peel your potatoes and cut them up into pieces about the size of the meat, and when the caldron is boiling dump in the vegetables. The vegetables will temporarily cool the water, which should not be allowed to again boil, but should be put over a slow fire and where it will simmer. When the stew is almost done add the salt and other seasonings. There should always be enough water to cover the vegetables. Canned tomatoes will add to the flavor of your broth. In a real burgoo we put no thickening like meal, rice or other material of similar nature, because the broth is strained and served clear. Also no sweet vegetables like beets.

When the burgoo is done dip it out and drink it from tin cups. Of course, if this is a picnic burgoo, you add olive juice to the stew, while it is cooking, and then place a sliced lemon and an olive in each cup and pour the hot strained liquid into the cups.

The burgoo and the barbecue belong to that era when food was plenty, feasts were generous and appetites good. These historic feasts still exist in what is left of the open country and rich farming districts, particularly in Kentucky and Virginia. In Kentucky in the olden times the gentlemen were wont to go out in the morning and do the hunting, while the negroes were keeping the caldrons boiling with the pork and other foundation material in them. After the gentlemen returned and the game was put into the caldron, the guests began to arrive and the stew was served late in the afternoon; each guest was supposed to come supplied with a tin cup and a spoon, the latter made of a fresh water mussel shell with a split stick for a handle. Thus provided they all sat round and partook of as many helps as their hunger demanded.

Since we have given Kentucky's celebrated dish, we will add "Ole Virginny's" favorite dish, which has been named after the county where it originated.

"Take two large squirrels, one quart of tomatoes, peeled and sliced, if fresh; one pint of lima beans or butter beans, two teaspoonfuls of white sugar, one minced onion, six potatoes, six ears of corn scraped from the cob, or a can of sweet corn, half a pound of butter, half a pound of salt pork, one teaspoonful of salt, three level teaspoonfuls of pepper and a gallon of water. Cut the squirrels up as for fricassee, add salt and water and boil five minutes. Then put in the onion, beans, corn, pork, potatoes and pepper, and when boiling again add the squirrel.

"Cover closely and stew two hours, then add the tomato mixed with the sugar and stew an hour longer. Ten minutes before removing from the fire cut the butter into pieces the size of English walnuts, roll in flour and add to the stew. Boil up again, adding more salt and pepper if required."

The above is a receipt sent in to us, and I would give credit for it if I knew from whence it came. I do know that it sounds good, and from my experience with other similar dishes, it will taste good.

I am not writing a cook book but only attempting to start the novice on his way as a camp chef, and if he succeeds in cooking in the open the dishes here described, he need not fear to tackle any culinary problem which conditions may make it necessary for him to solve.