Confessions of a Camping Cook

Although I was noted as a potential pyromaniac by my parents, who were careful to keep matches and other combustible materials out of my grubby little hands until well past the age of eight, I remain to this day a clumsy fire starter.

On the few camping expeditions I have participated in I always volunteered to do the cooking, figuring that it was the easiest job in camp and the only one guaranteed to keep me well fed. 

Gathering the necessary lumber for a hearty blaze never proved much of challenge to me in the wild; I simply poked around at the base of trees and shrubs and came up with plenty of damp twigs and leaves and branches with which to build my bonfire.  I suspected the dry tinder was full of beetles and spiders, so I left it strictly alone.

Dumping it all in the stone circle at the campsite, I would proceed to use up a full box of kitchen matches trying to get the soggy timber to ignite.  On a few camping expeditions I was canny enough to bring along a can of charcoal lighting fluid – then it was just a matter of giving the uncooperative shavings a generous dousing and WHOOSH!, there would be a roaring fire.  But I kept losing my eyebrows in the initial explosion, so I stopped using that method of combustion.

  I had recourse to newspaper scraps and any other paper products I found handy.  On one memorable outing I used up all our paper plates just to get the kindling dried out enough to catch fire; we had to eat our meals from our hats. 

The whole idea behind a cooking fire in the wilderness, of course, is not the leaping flames, which occasionally caught a few dead branches overhead and threatened to set off a forest fire, but the resulting embers, in which I, as the cook, would nestle potatoes wrapped in tin foil.  I also had a nifty cast iron Dutch oven, in which I would mix sliced potatoes, carrots, onions, and a can of Hormel Spam, for a camping stew that was sheer ambrosia – if I do say so myself.  But here again my timing was off – I often waited too long, so that when I put the potatoes in the ashes they were already as cold as yesterday’s news.  But raw potatoes, I’ve always heard, are good for you.

Unfortunately the Dutch oven’s lid did not fit very tightly anymore; the result of numerous falls out of station wagons while unpacking.  The fact of the matter is the lid had a gaping crack in it – so when I heaped up the glowing embers around it, a few of them would always manage to fall into the stew.  I thought it gave the stew a hearty outdoor aroma, but the wimps I was with always complained it made the food taste like charcoal. 

Nowadays, of course, there are nifty little chemical fire starter blocks that you can use to start a blaze, or you can simply bring along a small spirit stove – they are quite convenient and efficient.  But somehow, the food just doesn’t taste the same if it isn’t undercooked, burnt to a crisp or flavored with generous amounts of wood ash. 

The upshot is I just don’t go camping or hiking anymore.  I prefer to thumb through my old National Geographic and make the s’mores in my microwave.

(For your next camping trip don’t rely on any such crude and humorous strategies as noted above.  You can have all the nutritious and tasty meals you want by bringing along quality MRE meals from hikingware.com.  They have a large selection at prices that will make your mouth water.)

Visit us at www.hikingware.com

Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500

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written by Tim Torkildson

A Good Knife is a Good Friend.

A boy needs a pocket knife.  A good one.  One that can be used to whittle, carve and play mumblety peg with.  I guess in this decadent day and age I’ll have to explain what mumblety peg is:  Two boys stand about five feet from each other with their feet spread apart; using their own pocket knife, they toss it blade first into the ground as near one of their own feet as possible.  Whoever puts the blade closest to their own foot is the winner.  Oh, and by the way, don’t ever play this game barefoot. 

My first pocket knife was actually a keychain of sorts.  The chain was attached to a small tin folding knife that was just long enough, and dull enough, to clean your fingernails.  My dad got these by the boatload down where he worked.  This was fine, as far as it went, but eventually my other chums got regular pocket knives.  Many of them were old family heirlooms, passed down from grandfather to father to son, and featured handles carved from deer antlers.  The blades were inevitably chipped and starting to rust, but by golly, they could still cut!  When these superior articles began appearing amongst my peers I spurned the next attempt my dad made to fob off one of those chintzy nail jobs on me.

“I wanna real pocket knife” I mumbled sullenly, scuffing my feet truculently, ready to dodge the inevitable sideswipe.  Surprisingly, the old man took my request sympathetically.  He took me down to Apache Plaza, one of the first shopping malls in the area, and let me pick out a blazing red Swiss Army Knife – with two blades, a screwdriver, and an ivory toothpick hidden in the side.

Those were the glory days for me!  And let me tell you something, you young punks who think you know how to show a girl a good time – even the girls at my grade school gathered around to “ooh” and “aah” over my sporty little number.

But then, while carving on a piece of Ivory soap, my finger slipped and I cut my thumb to the bone.  Off to the doctor’s office to get stitches, and then my mother confiscated my beautiful knife and locked it away forever.

“You’re not gonna cut off all your fingers before you’re even in high school!” she told me firmly.

I finally got my pocket knife back during my senior year in high school, when mom was cleaning out her sewing drawers and tossed it back to me without a word.

I determined that MY own boys would always have a pocket knife of their own, from the moment they were old enough throw rocks at girls.

So each of my boys got a pocket knife on their eighth birthday.  And by their ninth birthday they had all cut at least one digit to the bone and had their knife confiscated by their mother.  And did I put up a fuss and demand of my wife that these sacred emblems of boyhood be returned post haste?

Are you kidding? 

(But all kidding aside, a good, reliable hunting knife is a prerequisite for any successful outdoor experience, whether camping or hunting, and to have handy for any number of emergency situations at home and away.  So make sure you purchase your next knife, or maybe the first knife for your child, from hikingware.com – where quality and competitive pricing are always top priority!)  

Visit us at www.hikingware.com

Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500

www.facebook.com/pages/Hikingware/183290271848107

https://twitter.com/Hikingware

written by Tim Torkildson

The Campout.

by Tim Torkildson.

I always prided myself on being a good and conscientious father; I got up early and went to work and came home late and didn’t yell at anyone because I was too tired.  I took turns with cranky babies at night and did my share of laundry and dishes.

But there was one area where I was admittedly deficient.  I didn’t take my boys camping.  I’d never been camping as a boy myself; my old man considered the weekend well-spent in round-the-clock pinochle games down at the Pine Tavern.  I didn’t belong to a Scout troop.  So I never had any camping experience as a kid.  I tried to shrug it off to my wife Amy, saying “Oh, the kids will have just as much fun playing Monopoly with me instead of going out into the woods and being eaten alive by grizzlies.”  She never reproached me, just gave me “The Look.”  All you husbands are familiar with “The Look” – it is a combination of pity, contempt, frustration, and just a pinch of grudging affection.  Amy took to leaving camping gear magazines around for me to accidentally find, and maps and brochures of the State Parks in our vicinity suddenly appeared in the bathroom.

So I finally decided to take the two boys, Adam and Stephen, on a campout.  I chose the first weekend in October, up in Minnesota.  How cold could it get?

I begged, borrowed and practically stole all the camping gear from our neighbors and friends, and the boys and I set out early Friday afternoon to spend 2 glorious days at Wicked Waters State Park.

As I drove us into the Park I congratulated myself on my timing; there was not a single other soul at the camp site.  We had the place to ourselves.  Indeed, the man who took our reservation looked as surprised at our appearance as if we were a troop of Martians.

I had the boys set up the tent, which they did in a surprisingly quick and quarrel-free manner, while I got the portable charcoal grill going for our first meal in the great outdoors – grilled wieners and a can of beans set right on the grill.  I neglected to make sure the grill was level, so the wienies all rolled off into the dirt and the can of beans also managed to eventually slide off into the dust.  We had cold baloney sandwiches for dinner, and then, the night coming on unexpectedly fast, I didn’t have time to get a roaring campfire going for our s’mores.  Instead we made an early evening of it.  In the morning, I promised, we’d revel in fried eggs and bacon straight from the cast iron skillet, and then go fishing and hiking and probably manage to catch a glimpse of Sasquatch.  As we snuggled into our bulky sleeping bags I felt a glow of satisfaction at having at last taken my boys out into the wilderness – where we would undoubtedly bond like Super Glue.

And then the temperature plummeted.  In the middle of the night I found two frozen little boys begging to get inside my sleeping bag with me.  I welcomed their company, as I was beginning to feel like a Popsicle myself.  I don’t know where those sleeping bags were made, but they were not insulated, and, in fact, seemed to suck the body heat right out of us.  I remembered reading the tag on one of ‘em; it said “Made in Lower Slobovia.” 

At dawn, with a heavy frost on the ground and our breath coming out like puffs from a steam engine, Adam, Stephen, and I creakily got out of our sleeping bags, broke the icicles off our noses, and agreed that breakfast could wait until we packed everything up and drove out of the Park and up the road to the McDonalds we had passed on the way in.

That was my one and only camping expedition with my boys.  Thereafter, when I would suggest we take a little time off from civilization for another try at camping out, they developed facial tics and began to stutter.

Monopoly’s a great game, y’know that?

(You can avoid an uncomfortable night’s rest when you go camping by buying your sleeping bags from a reputable source like hikingware.com.  They feature quality brands such as Texsport and Snugpak.)

Visit us at www.hikingware.com

Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500

www.facebook.com/pages/Hikingware/183290271848107

https://twitter.com/Hikingware

written by Tim Torkildson