Cooking, etc.

So I built and lit a fire, etc. I'd forgotten a long time ago how much work it is to wake up, bundle up, get a fire built and breakfast cooking, and all that. (I think even my more recent camping trips were of the granola-bar-for-breakfast kind, and it may well be that I haven't cooked breakfast over a fire since I was in the Brownies and my dad came along on a father-daughter campout.) Regardless, after some initial false starts we got a fire a'cooking, and the eggs weren't far behind.

My worries about the previous day's snow were largely unfounded, though I hadn't anticipated one technological problem: the Morningstar veggie bacon does not want to get cooked over a fire. Or cooked over any kind of heat. I'm a faux-bacon enthusiast (really), and the difference between the Smart Bacon I usually use and this stuff is the difference between night and a disgusting, awful day made out of charred, oddly colored cardboard. Really, it was pretty gross. This is the kind of problem them Handbook didn't really set out to address, of course (there is no provision for making mock bacon instead of the real stuff), so I'm still going to say it counts. Besides, it looks pretty, right?

(PS: I'm a big wimp, so given the fact that THERE WAS SNOW ON THE GROUND, OKAY GUYS?, I ate my tasty tasty breakfast indoors. I am so not Eagle Scout material.)

I apologize for the delay in posting, by the way. It's been a busy few days, returning to New York and heading to relatives' for the Seder. Additionally, I've just started reading David Grann's "The Lost City of Z," which is pretty much an H. Rider Haggard book in real life, and it is all I want to think about. Tomorrow, partially inspired by that, I have a field trip planned to investigate a very particular type of field surgery. Be prepared.

To build a fire . . .

I remember reading "To Build a Fire" in 7th grade English. Well, sort of in 7th grade English. I sat next to the window, and there was a big stack of books on the windowsill. I think we were actually doing some kind of vocabulary exercises, and I read a lot of short stories under my desk.

(Sorry, Mrs. Nogami.)

Regardless. I'm in Vermont, and tomorrow morning I'm going to be doing part 1 of the Cooking badge -- preparing bacon and eggs, in the open and without a standard kitchen. (I will assume this means I can still use things like knives, plates, etc., because otherwise things seem kind of absurd, and because the Handbook makes reference to cooking over a griddle as an acceptable practice.) For the record, I'll be making veggie bacon.

It's probably in the 30s or 40s here today, so maybe the picture makes things look a little snowier than they actually are. Still, there was a certain amount of brushing snow off of things, and tomorrow I have a certain amount of (probably groundless) concern about snowmelt extinguishing my fire. I've got a lot of dry twigs set up there, though, and a few handfulls of pine needles, so it shoudl all work out. I'll let you know tomorrow, after my delicious breakfast.

(PS: the Handbook also offers me the option to make hunter's stew (what on Earth is this? Must I actually be a hunter? I can't tell), fish, fowl, or game, as well as hoe-cakes, pancakes, or hard tack. I am passing on these, both as a vegetarian and, in the case specifically of the hard tack, as someone with no aspirations of being a quartermaster for a 19th-century whaler.)