Campfire Cooking

by Megan

Last night the four oldest kids camped out in the backyard yet again, so that Nathan can check off March on his way to his Scouting Year-Round Camper Award.  (We camped out at the very end of February and just left the tent up until March.  Saved us the effort of taking down and putting up again.)  The temperature was just below freezing, but we all stayed warm enough in our layers of clothing and piles of blankets.

We woke to a beautiful morning- the birds were chirping, the air was clear and crisp, and the sun was just peeking over the horizon.  Planning to cook breakfast, we decided to start a campfire.  However, the ground was covered in frost.  Wood hadn't dried out after the recent rain, instead it had frozen.  We tried for almost an hour to light our damp twigs.  We were nearly ready to call it quits when we finally succeeded in maintaining a flame.  An old tin can served to boil water and hot cereal was made.  Aside from a little ash in our food, breakfast turned out well.

Later in the day, I decided to try baking chocolate chip cookies in the fire with the Dutch oven.  Hannah helped me mix up the dough while Nathan built the fire.  We covered the oven with coals and waited.  When I checked it, it was underdone and the coals had lost most of their heat.  We placed the oven back in the firepit and Josh helped me build a new fire around it.  When we checked it again, the cookies had slid together into a burned mass, which looked nasty but actually tasted pretty good- crispy and sweet.  Josh, Ben, and I devoured the entire batch.

We resolved to try again with the remaining dough, hoping that we had learned enough the first time to improve our technique.  This time the cookie bars came out less burned.  Nathan made nasty faces while he ate his and complained that he was gagging on the wretched taste.  The rest of the family didn't seem to mind too much.  Josh and I thought they were yummy, but not as good as the first batch.

We will continue to experiment with campfire and Dutch oven cooking.  Eventually we'll learn how to make food Nathan can eat without gagging.