FOOD
There are several reasons why the camp food is almost more important
than any other consideration. To begin with, most girls are leading a
more active life than they are accustomed to living at home. This makes
them hungry, and, add to the exercise the natural tonic of invigorating
air, the camper becomes fairly ravenous at meal time. There are other
reasons, too, why food is an all-important question. If one is in the
real wilderness, it will be difficult to get. One is obliged, therefore,
to consider carefully beforehand the kinds of food necessary for a
well-provided table and a well-balanced diet. Another reason for taking
thought about this whole subject is the portage. All the foods must be
toted in, and not all kinds will prove suitable or economical in the
long run for this sort of portage. Finally, there is the question of the
ways and means for keeping the food, after it is once safely in camp, in
good condition.
As a rule, when we go on our expeditions we leave regions where it is
easy to get a great variety of foods. The city or its suburb or a
comfortable country town, is the place we call home. Our tables are
filled the year long with fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meats,
and all kinds of bread. This dietary in all its variety, to which we
have been accustomed at home, is quite impossible of realization in the
camp. We might just as well make up our minds to that at once. Yet
accustomed to vegetables and fruits as we are, we need them both in
wholesome quantities. How shall we get them? Potatoes of course, if the
camping expedition is for any length of time, that is ten days or more,
must be lugged. And lugging potatoes is heavy work over a trail. As for
the other vegetables and fruits, and even meats, most people buy large
quantities of tinned articles and so get rid of the whole question.
Personally I think that this is a great mistake. It was a delight to me
to find in Doctor Breck’s “Way of the Woods” that he, if obliged to
choose between bacon and dried apples and chocolate, would always choose
the chocolate and dried apples. And when the question of portage as well
as health enters in, it may be said right here that it is quite
impossible to carry a pack full of tins. But aside from the comfort of
the guides, a tin-can camp is not likely to be a wholesome one. I am
convinced that tin-can camping is responsible for whatever ills people
experience when they go into the woods.
It is quite simple to get different kinds of dried vegetables and
different kinds of dried fruits--and the best are none too good--in
bulk. At present there are even evaporated potatoes on the market for
campers. Such dried foods pack and carry best and are most wholesome.
Both white and yellow eye beans, dried lima beans, peas, whole and
split, onions, evaporated apples, dried prunes, dried peaches and
apricots, rice, raisins, nuts of all kinds, lemons, oranges, and even
bananas, if they are sufficiently green, can be quite easily taken into
camp. Various sorts of flour and meal, too, will be needed. Find out how
much it takes to bake the bread at home and add that to the length of
your stay plus the number of the campers and plus a little more than you
actually need, and you will be able to work out the flour problem for
yourselves. There should be then white and graham flour, or entire
wheat, corn meal, pilot bread (memories of toasted pilot bread in camp
can make one smile from recollected joy), some rolled oats, cereals like
cream of wheat which carries well, cooks easily, and is hearty, and
various sorts of crackers.
Now the writer does not think meat necessary in camp. Except for the
fish caught and the birds shot, none need be eaten. All the meat element
or proteid necessary is provided for in the beans, peas, and nuts. But
it is well to take a flitch of bacon or a few jars of it to use in
broiling or frying the fish or game. Pork and lard are entirely
uncalled-for in a properly thought out dietary.[3] Sufficient good
fresh butter is very much needed. If campers feel that they must have
other tinned meats, the best kinds to take are the most expensive, ox
tongue, and that sort of thing. Several months ago four of us started
off on a ten days’ camping expedition into a very northern wilderness
unknown to us. One of the party, needlessly ambitious, took a preserved
chicken in a glass jar bought from the finest provision house in Boston.
By the time we reached our destination, the chicken was anything but
preserved. Indeed, unless all signs failed, it had already embarked upon
a new incarnation. No arm in the party was long enough to carry it out
and set it on a distant rock for the skunks to visit. Nor shall I soon
forget a certain meat ragout which we concocted in a Canadian
wilderness. We had the ragout, but alas, we had a good deal else, too,
including a doctor who had to cover half a county to reach us! Aside
from the fact that people who live in cities and towns eat altogether
too much meat, in camp there is not only the question of its
uselessness, but also the fact that there are no ways to care for it
properly. Meat makes a dirty camp.[4]
[3] A brother camper says that he thinks even the fish would feel
neglected without pork. On the contrary, trout are very sensitive to
good bacon--in short, prefer it to salt pork. If you do not believe
this true fish story, then catch two dozen half pound trout, slice
your bacon thin and draw off the bacon fat. Take out the bacon, put
the fat back into the frying pan--don’t burn yourself--and pop in
one-half dozen trout. After the first mouthful you will find that my
contention that trout are most sensitive to bacon entirely true. Be
sure to put a little piece of bacon on that first bite. Following
that, all you have to do is to keep on biting until your share of the
two dozen trout is consumed. Remarkable how those two dozen will
fly--almost as if the little fellows had turned into birds! The reason
I am opposed to pork and lard camping is that we all know nowadays how
diseased such meat may be. To go into the woods for health and run any
avoidable risks is folly. Get a flitch of the best bacon and the best
bacon is Ferris bacon. From this you will get enough fat for all
frying purposes; also, in case you use fat as a substitute for butter,
there will be enough bacon fat for cakes, etc.
[4] I cannot emphasize too often the absolute importance of keeping a
_clean camp_. Mr. Rutger Jewett, to whom this camping manual and its
author are indebted for many wise suggestions, thinks that it is not
always feasible to burn up everything. “Every camp,” he writes, “has
some empty tin cans. It seems to me that the best plan in this case is
to have a small trench dug, far enough from the camp to avoid all
disagreeable results and yet not so far away that it is inaccessible.
Here cans and unburnable refuse from the kitchen can be thrown and
kept covered with earth or sand to avoid flies and odors. Everything
that can be burned, should be.” The only difficulty in my mind is, in
case the region is hedgehog-infested, that those charming creatures
will form their usual “bread-line”--this time to the trench--and add
digging to their accomplishments in gnawing. However! Better rinse out
your tin cans; Sis Hedgehog is less likely to mistake the can for the
original delicacy.
All food refuse should be burned up, anyway, never thrown out into the
brush, and it is difficult to burn meat bones. The girl or woman who
keeps a dirty camp is beneath contempt. There is likely to be one
neighbor, if not more, in the vicinity of every camp, who will make
things uncomfortable for the campers. He should be called the camp pig,
and he is the hedgehog. Also his cousin, the skunk, will hang around to
see what is carelessly thrown out or left for him to eat. The hedgehog
is the greediest, most unwelcome fellow in the woods, and even the fact
that the poet Robert Browning had one as a pet will not redeem him in
the eyes of the practical camper. He hangs around any camp that is not
kept clean, gnaws axe handles which the salty human hand has touched,
licks out tin cans which have not been rinsed as they should be before
they are thrown away--in short, he follows up every bit of camp
slackness. There is only one way to keep off hedgehogs and that is to
have an absolutely tidy camp.
In addition to the food stuffs already mentioned, there are several
others which should be taken in the necessary quantities. Salt and
pepper--better leave tea and coffee at home and take cocoa--soda, sugar,
a few candles (helpful in lighting a fire in wet weather, as well as for
illumination), matches, in a rubber box if possible, kerosene if your
camp outfit will permit such a luxury, olive oil, maple syrup for
flapjacks, molasses, condensed and evaporated milk or milk powder.
[Illustration: REFLECTOR BAKER.]
[Illustration: HOLD-ALL.]
[Illustration: PATENTED FRY PAN.]
[Illustration: HUNTING KNIFE.]
[Illustration: BIRCH BARK CUP.]
The articles which need to be cooled can be kept fresh in a nearby
brook. Dead fish, however, should never be allowed to lie in water, but
should be wrapped up in ferns or large leaves. If you are camping for
any length of time, by making a little runway out of a trough you can
have freshly flowing water, cooling butter and other food stuffs, all
the time. Or a receptacle constructed something like a wire bait box
will prove as good as the flowing water. This sunk into a cool pond or
lake, makes an admirable ice chest, into which the finny creatures
cannot get. In some rotation which you have decided upon, the care of
the food should receive the especial attention from one girl every day.
In this way hedgehogs, skunks, mice, rats, ants, will all be kept at a
distance.
There are in addition to these various food stuffs and their care, as I
said in the first chapter, many articles necessary for camp life about
which we must think. If you are going off for a few days with a guide,
he will attend to these things for you. But if you are setting up a camp
for yourself, you will need to have them in mind. They are, two or three
tin pails of convenient sizes nesting or fitting into one another so
that they can be easily carried, a tin reflector baker for outdoor
cooking, a coffee pot if you are foolish enough to take coffee,
enameled ware plates and cups, basins, pans, dishpans, a dishmop, a
chain pot-cleaner, a double boiler, a broiler, knives and forks, spoons
big and little, pepper and salt shakers, flour sifter, a rotary can
opener, a frypan, long-handled and short-handled, a carving knife and a
fish knife if you intend to do a great deal of fishing. There are many
kinds of cooking kits. There is a good one for four persons which may be
obtained at about six dollars from any large hardware dealer. Add to
these things which have been mentioned fish hooks, a lantern, lantern
wicks, nails of different sizes, a hammer--don’t forget the
hammer!--toilet paper, woolen blankets, mosquito netting (if it is a
mosquito-infested district), fly dope to rub on hands and face, oilcloth
for camp table, some twine and some tacks.
Equipped with these articles and what you carry in your knapsacks and
what you wear, there is almost no wilderness in which a girl cannot
have a good time, improve her health, and be the wiser for having
entered the wilderness.