Did you ever get to a camp fire or log-cabin stove at eleven o’clock and know that there must be a hearty meal by twelve? I have lots of times. The only way to do, if one must meet these emergencies on short notice, is to have what I call “stock” on hand. In using this word I do not mean soup stock, either. What I mean is that there must be some vegetables or cereals or other articles of food at least partially prepared for eating.
I remember one summer when I was very busy with my writing. I was chief cook and bottle washer, besides being my own secretary, and I had three members in my family to look out for—a friend with a hearty appetite, a big dog with a no less hearty appetite and a rather greedy little Maine cat. The question was how to carry on the work which was properly my own and at the same time attend to cooking and other household work. I hit upon a plan which served excellently with me. I do not recommend it to any one else, especially to girls who will be going into the woods for a vacation and will have no duties except those connected with their camp life. But this plan of mine demonstrated to me once and for all that, even if one is very busy, it is possible to have a bountifully supplied table.
The first day I tried the experiment I went into the kitchen at eleven o’clock. Never had I been more tired of the everlasting question of what to have to eat. It seemed to me that there was never any other question except that one, and I determined, with considerable savage feeling, to escape from it. At eleven o’clock I chopped my own kindling, started my own fire, and began twirling the saucepans, frying pans and baking tins which I wanted to use. I was set upon cooking up enough food to last for three or four days, and I did. At two o’clock not only was all the food cooked and set away for future consumption, but also we had eaten our dinner. In that time what had I prepared? There was a big double boiler full of corn meal. After this had been thoroughly boiled in five times its bulk of water and a large tablespoonful of salt, I poured it out into baking tins and set it away to cool. Various things can be done with this stock; among others, once cool, it slices beautifully, and is delicious fried in butter or in bacon fat, and satisfying to the hungriest camper. Also a large panful of rice had been cooked. This had been set aside to be used in croquettes, in rice puddings and to be served plain with milk at supper time. So much for the rice and the corn meal. I had broken up in two-inch pieces a large panful of macaroni. This was boiled in salt water, part of it cooled and set away for further use, some of it mixed with a canful of tomato and stewed for our dinner and the rest baked with tomato and bread crumbs, to be heated up for another day. On top of the stove, too, I had a mammoth vegetable stew. In this stew were potatoes, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, beets, turnips, plenty of butter and plenty of salt. The stew remained on the stove, carefully covered, during the time that the fire was lighted and was put on again the next day to complete the cooking, for it takes long boiling to make a really good stew. Inside the oven were two big platefuls of apples baking. These had been properly cored and the centers filled with butter and sugar and cinnamon; also two or three dozen potatoes were baking in the oven, some of which would serve for quick frying on another day. In addition to the food mentioned, I set a large two-quart bowl full of lemon jelly with vegetable gelatin. It took me exactly fifteen minutes to make this jelly and during that time I was giving my attention to other things besides. I made also a panful of baking powder biscuits which, considering the way they were hustled about, behaved themselves in a most long-suffering and commendable fashion, turning out to be good biscuits after all.
Now, the import of all this is that, with planning, a little practice and some hopping about, a good deal of cooking and preparation of food can be done in a short time. Unnecessary “fussing” about the cooking is not desirable in camp life. The simpler that life can be made and kept the better. The more we can get away from unwholesome condiments, highly seasoned foods, too much meat eating and coffee drinking, too many sweets and pastries, the better. The girl who goes into the woods with the idea of having all the luxuries—many of them wholly unnecessary and some of them undesirable—of her home life, is no true “sport.” The grand object for which we cook in camp is a good appetite and that needs no sauce and sweets.
What are some of the recipes a girl should have with her for log-cabin cooking? In the first place, we must take with us a good recipe for bread-making. There are so many I will give none. The best one to have is the one used at home, but let me say here that no flour so answers all dietetic needs in the woods as entire wheat. Delicious baking powder biscuits can be made from it as well as bread. Also know how to boil a potato. You think this is a matter of no importance? It would surprise you then, wouldn’t it, to know that there are some people devoting all of their time teaching the ignorant and the poor the art of boiling a potato. You can boil all the good out of it and make it almost worthless as food, as well as untempting, or you can cook it properly, making it everything it ought to be. Know, too, how to clean a fish. Oh, dear, you never could do that! It makes you shiver to think of such a thing. Very well then, camp is no place for you. Your squeamishness which might seem attractive some place else will only be silly there, making you a dead weight about somebody else’s neck. Does your brother Boy Scout know how to clean a fish? Did you ever know a real boy who did not know how to clean a fish? Why not a real girl, then, perhaps a Camp Fire Girl? Oh, but the cook—no, you will be the cook in camp or the assistant cook. Then get your brother to show you how to cut off its head and to scale it, if it is a scaly fish, how to slit it open, taking out the entrails, how to wash it thoroughly and dry it, how to dip it in flour or meal and to drop it into the sizzling frying pan, how to turn it and then finally the moment when, crisp and brown, it should be taken out and served. Know, too, how to pluck and clean a partridge.[5] One day this last summer I went up the cut behind my camp, intent upon finding a partridge for our supper. I hadn’t gone far before I found one and with the second shot of my rifle brought the poor fellow down. I took him home to the cook whom I had with me then, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. I gave her the bird and told her to get him ready for supper. She said she couldn’t; she didn’t know how.
[5] If your mother and brother have not taught you how to clean fish and pluck partridge, then it would be best to go to the butcher and fishman and take lessons of them. If it is possible to go on your first expedition with a good guide, that will settle the whole difficulty, for your guide will know the best way and be glad to teach you.
“Don’t know how?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
She said that she did not know how to pluck and clean a partridge.
“Well,” I replied, “you know how to clean a chicken, don’t you?”
“Mercy me, no!” she objected, looking pale and silly. “Mother always cleans the chickens.”
Mother always cleans the chickens! Mother does a good deal too much of the things that are somewhat unpleasant in this American home life of ours. This girl had been perfectly willing that her mother should do all the work which seemed to her too disagreeable or unpleasant to do herself. But I am glad to say, and her mother ought to have been grateful to me, she helped in dressing that partridge and I did not care a tinker when, after it had been cooked, she seemed to feel too badly to eat very much of it. I wonder how her mother had felt after all the hundreds of chickens she had killed, plucked, cleaned and cooked for that very girl of hers.
You must know, too, how to boil an egg, and do not do as I saw that same incompetent farmer’s daughter do—I suppose because she had left almost everything to her very competent mother—do not boil your eggs in the tea kettle. The water in the tea kettle should be kept as clean and fresh as possible. There is no excuse for a dirty tea kettle. We should be able in the woods, too, to know how to scramble eggs, if one has them, and to make omelets, and to boil corn meal, and the best ways for cooking rice and of baking fruits. Good apple pies, too, if you can make pastry without too much trouble, will not go amiss.
There are a few recipes which you must get out of the home cook book, besides the few which I will now give you. Baking powder biscuits are not easy to make. Even very good cooks sometimes do not have success with them. Do not be discouraged if at your first effort you should fail. Keep on trying. You must learn, for I think it can be said that baking powder biscuits constitute the bread of the woods. I know farming families in northern Maine who do not know what it is to make raised bread. They have nothing but baking powder or soda and cream of tartar bread. Use one quart of sifted flour, one teaspoonful of salt, three rounding teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one large tablespoonful of butter and enough milk, evaporated or powdered milk, or fresh if you have it, to make a soft dough. Mix these things in the order in which they are given, and when the dough is stiff enough to be cut with the top of a baking powder can or a biscuit cutter, sprinkle your bread and also your rolling pin with flour and roll out the dough. It will depend upon your oven somewhat, but probably it will take you from ten to fifteen minutes to bake these biscuits.
A recipe for corn meal cake, too, should be in one’s camp kit. The simpler that recipe the better. Some forms of corn bread take so long to prepare that they are not suitable for the woods. The one I shall give you will prove practicable. You might take one from your own home cook book, too, if you wish. Mix the ingredients in the order in which they are set down and bake them in a moderately hot oven. If you haven’t anything else to use, bread tins a third full will serve. One cup of whole corn meal, a half a teaspoonful of salt and a cup of sugar, a whole cup of flour, three teaspoonfuls of baking powder—these should be level—one egg, one cup of milk and a tablespoonful of melted butter.
Pancakes you must also know how to make. One can’t very well get along in the wilderness without some sort of griddle cake, the simpler the better. Sour milk pancakes are the best, particularly as it is not necessary to use eggs if one has sour milk, but that is not always feasible, as frequently you will have to use evaporated milk. Mix a pint of flour, a half a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of soda, one pint of sour milk, and two eggs thoroughly beaten. See that your frying pan, for in camp you will cook your cakes in the frying pan, has been on the stove some time. Grease it thoroughly with bacon fat or butter; never use lard unless you have to. Cook the cakes thoroughly. You will find turning your first hot cakes something of an adventure.
There should also be among our log-cabin recipes some directions for telling you how to make at least two kinds of nourishing soup without stock. Soup with stock in camp life is not practicable. Pea or bean soups are the most satisfying and satisfactory. The peas or beans must be soaked in cold water over night. Pea or bean soups take a long time to make, so that it is not always practicable to have them in camp. I will give you a recipe for split pea soup. Take with you, if you are likely to need it, also, a recipe for black bean soup. After soaking over night, pour the water off the split peas and add to the cup of peas three pints of cold water. Do not let the liquid catch on the sides of the pan in which the peas are simmering. When the peas are soft, rub them through a strainer and put them on to boil again, adding one tablespoonful of butter, one of flour, one-half teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of salt. You don’t need pepper—better leave pepper at home and if you get so that you don’t miss it in camp, then you need never use it again. It is wretched stuff, anyway, doing more to harm the human stomach than almost any other food poison in use.
Baked beans, too, make a prime dish for camp life, partly, I suppose, because, like corn meal and pea and bean soups, potatoes and the heartier kinds of food, they are so satisfying to the camper’s appetite. It isn’t necessary to cook your beans with pork, substitute some kind of nut butter, peanut butter or almond butter, or plenty of fresh dairy butter. The quart of pea beans should be soaked in cold water over night. In the morning these beans must be put into fresh water and allowed to cook until they are soft but not broken. Empty them into a colander and then put them in the bean pot, or if you haven’t a bean pot, a deep baking dish will do. Put in a quarter of a cup of molasses and a half cup of butter and pour a little hot water over the beans. Keep them all day long in an oven that is not too hot. Don’t put any mustard in your beans; mustard is as great an enemy to the human stomach as pepper, and that is saying a good deal.
Against a rainy day when you may wish to amuse yourselves with additional dishes, or a hungry day when you are cold and ravenous, I will add a few more recipes. Corn pone is good. This is just corn bread baked on a heated stone propped up before the fire till the surface is seared. Then cover with hot ashes and let it bake in them for twenty minutes. After that dust your cake and eat it. I have told you how to make corn meal mush. With butter and sugar (in case you have no milk) it is excellent. What do you say to some buckwheat cakes on a cold, rainy night? If you say “yes,” all you have to do is to mix the self-raising buckwheat flour with a proper amount of water and drop some good-sized spoonfuls into a hot, greased frying-pan. The turning of hot cakes is the next best fun to eating them. Mash your boiled potatoes, season with butter and salt and milk if you have it. After that, call it mashed potato. It is good to eat and keeps well for patÉ cakes or a scallop. When hungry, fried potatoes can be eaten with impunity by the most zealous dietarian. Fried potatoes are naughty but nice. Mushrooms are nice, too, but dangerous. If you have a trained botanist or someone who has always gathered mushrooms for eating, then perhaps it will be safe to cook this bounty the woods spread before you. If you must have bacon you cannot get bacon that is too good. Ferris bacon and hams are the finest and most reliable cured pork in this country. And since we are speaking of pork and therefore of frying, let me give you one caution: Never use the frying-pan when you can avoid doing so. No amount of care can make fried foods altogether wholesome. Even an out-of-door life cannot altogether counteract the bad effects of fried food. You can make good broth from small diced bits of game or whatever meat you have, when the meat is tender, add vegetables and allow the whole to boil for some time. Chowder, too, is a standard dish for camp life. Take out the bones from the fish and cut up fish into small pieces. “Cover the bottom of the kettle with layers in the following order: slices of pork, sliced raw potatoes, chopped onions, fish, hard biscuit soaked (or bread). Repeat this (leaving out pork) until the pot is nearly full. Season each layer. Cover barely with water and cook an hour or so over a very slow fire. When thick stir gently. Any other ingredients that are at hand may be added.” (Seneca’s “Canoe and Camp Cookery” and Breck’s “Way of the Woods.”) A white sauce for fish and other purposes will be found useful. Melt tablespoonful of butter in saucepan; stir in dessert-spoonful of flour; add 1/2 teaspoonful salt; mix with a cup of milk. Except for the ginger, gingerbread is not a bad cake for the woods. One cup of molasses, one cup of sugar, one teaspoonful of ginger, one teaspoonful of soda, one cup of hot water, flour enough to form a medium batter, 1/2 cup melted butter, and a little cinnamon will make it. You might experiment with Chinese tea cakes made with 1/4 cup butter, one cup brown sugar, 1/8 teaspoonful soda, one tablespoonful of cold water, and one cup of flour. Shape this mixture into small balls, and put on buttered sheets and bake in a hot oven. Molasses cookies are good and substantial, not a bad thing to put in the duffle bag on a day’s tramp. Use one cup of molasses, one teaspoonful of ginger, one teaspoonful of soda, two teaspoonfuls of warm water or milk, 1/2 cup of butter, enough flour to mix soft. Dissolve the soda in milk. Roll dough one-third of an inch thick and cut in small rounds. Two well known candy recipes will add to the pleasures of a rainy day and a sweet tooth. Penuche: Two cups brown sugar, 3/4 cup milk, butter size of a small nut, pinch of salt, one teaspoonful of vanilla, 1/2 cup walnut meats. Boil the first four ingredients until soft ball is formed when dropped in water. Then add vanilla and nuts, and beat until cool and creamy. Fudge: 2 cups sugar, 3/4 cup milk, 3 tablespoonfuls cocoa, a pinch of salt, butter size of small nut, 1/2 cup walnut meats if desired. Cook same as penuche.
Perhaps, in conclusion, I should advise you to learn something about the boiling of vegetables and tell you not to cut the top off a beet unless you want to see it bleed, and lose the better part of it. Put your beet in, top and all. When cooked, it will be time enough to cut it and pare it. Be sure if you cook cabbage that it is cooked long enough, and has become thoroughly tender. The same is true with parsnips and carrots. If you are in a hurry slice up your carrots or parsnips or cabbage or potatoes and they will cook more rapidly.
Be sure that your camp dietary has plenty of stewed fruits in it. That will be so much to the good in the camp health. A bottle of olive oil also will prove a great resource; in fact, a can of olive oil would be even more practical and the oil is always capital food. Although the most elaborate recipes are given for making a mayonnaise dressing it is really very simple to make, and once made can be kept on hand as “stock.” I have been making mayonnaise since I was a little girl, and, as I cook something like the proverbial darky, I do not know that I am able to give you any hard and fast directions for making the dressing. With me it is an affair of impulse; I use either the white of an egg or the whole egg, it does not make any difference—the shell you will not find palatable—beating it up thoroughly, gradually adding the oil, putting in a little lemon juice from time to time and plenty of salt. Cayenne pepper is ordinarily used in mayonnaise, but if the dressing is properly seasoned with salt and lemon it needs neither cayenne nor mustard. What it does need is thorough and long beating, a cool place, and a few minutes in which to harden after it is made.
You will learn one thing in the woods which perhaps will be a surprise. In that life it is men who are the good cooks. Indeed, it is surprising how much cleverness men show in domestic ways when they are left to their own devices and how helpless they become as soon as a woman is around. If you go astray any woodsman, any guide, almost any “sport” can help you out in the mysteries of cooking.
