_bread And Horse Wrecks Recipes

GRANDMA FLO'S SHIPWRECK

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.
• Arrange potatoes in the bottom of the casserole dish. Crumble ground beef over potatoes, and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and ground black pepper. Spread onions over meat, and then beans. Pour undiluted soup over everything. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cover.
• Bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover, and continue baking for 1 hour.

MEDIEVAL HORSEBREAD

Steps:

• Place barley in a jar and cover with water. Seal jar and let stand 24 hours.
• Drain, saving the liquid, rinse and place back in the jar. Cover with a towel and let stand, turned upside down, overnight. Repeat the rinse / drain process three times more, saving the water each time.
• Wash dried yellow split peas and place them in a medium sized bowl. Cover with water and leave overnight to soak.
• Mix together the starter, flours, salt and 350 mL barley water (drained from step 2) until a thick wet dough forms. Leave in the fridge, covered, overnight. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour to warm up before proceeding.
• Drain split peas and add to a food processor with the barley. Pulse to coarsely chop, set aside.
• Knead rested dough for 10 minutes with the dough hook or 20 minutes by hand, adding flour as necessary to achieve a slightly sticky, but not wet, dough.
• Knead in the chopped split pea mixture.
• Form into a ball and place on a heavily floured tea towel.
• Place towel-wrapped loaf in a basket, bowl or banneton and leave to rise 24 hours at cool room temperature (don't try to shortcut this step - it's a heavy loaf and needs a *long* rise).
• Place a large baking tray or pizza stone in the oven and heat oven to 450F (preferably convection).
• Turn loaf out onto a parchment lined rimless baking sheet or pizza peel and transfer to the hot pan or baking stone.
• Score loaf with a sharp knife and place in the oven.
• Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven to 425F (preferably convection) and bake another hour.
• Turn out on a wire rack to cool.

SHIPWRECK DINNER

Steps:

• Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir beef in the hot skillet until browned and crumbly, 5 to 7 minutes.
• Stir pasta and cheese mixture from the macaroni and cheese package into the beef. Add tomatoes, milk, peas, and corn to the beef mixture; stir. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, place a cover on the skillet and cook at a simmer until the noodles are tender, about 12 minutes.
• Season the dish with seasoned salt. Stir about half of the Cheddar cheese into dish to melt. Top with remaining cheese.

SHIPWRECK STEW

Steps:

• In a large skillet, cook beef and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. , In a 3-qt. baking dish, combine beef mixture with the remaining ingredients. Cover and bake at 350° for about 1 hour or until rice and potatoes are tender.

SHIPWRECK CASSEROLE

Steps:

• Slice onions in the bottom of a baking dish. Add thinly sliced potatoes.
• Over potatoes spread hamburger. Next add uncooked rice. top with a layer of chopped celery.
• As each layer is added season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Combine soup with an equal amount of water and pour over all.
• Cover and bake for 2 hours at 350°F.

_HOW TO COOK A COOT

Steps:

• If you're not a duck hunter or married to a duck hunter, just skip this recipe. Personally, I've never tried to cook a coot, primarily because I've never even shot at an "Ivory Billed Mallard". Remember, this is the guy who will eat every thing except grits and green lima beans. In this modern age, it seems to me, too many people blame events in their childhood for the mistakes or failures they make as adults. Some rightly so, but I can't help but feel a lot of it is over done!So where is all this leading, you ask yourself? Yup! you guessed it, my childhood. Since my dad first took me duck hunting at age three, the list of things I've done in life longer than I've duck hunted is fairly short. Memories of those first duck hunts are still vivid. Back in that distant past, I learned that the preferred duck of those who wait at home while others duck hunt, to be mallards. Those of the green headed variety! My dad, being a pretty fair hand with a shotgun, seldom got skunked in those days. He'd been there before, but it was a new experience for me, just four years old. About the only thing flying in the marsh that day were coots, which Dad had several different adjectives to describe. I didn't understand why dad didn't shoot them as they patterned by. At that time I obviously thought-ducks are ducks! Wrong! How long I pestered Dad to shoot them, I can't remember. What I do remember is him saying, "Mother didn't like any kind of ducks except those with green heads" and it wouldn't be very smart to take something home she didn't like. Though I was just four years old, that part I understood! I'm sure Dad first passed this recipe on that day. Over the years, Dad repeated this recipe so many times I've memorized it without ever having cooked it.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Fowl & Fish

_SOURDOUGH

Steps:

• Talk to a "Sourdough Cook" and almost immediately he'll launch into a history of his starter. (You may be reminded of folks who've just become grandparents for the first time!) It's not uncommon for a particular starter to be handed from generation to generation and considered to be a family heirloom. Fanatics, who inhabit the ranks of "Sourdough Cooks", will always like to tell how their starter was carried over Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike gold rush. They say this as if any starter with a less glorious past is inferior. Over time I've found it's easier to let such folks think their inferior thoughts rather than argue with them. The starter I have used for the last twenty years was given to me by an uncle who lived in the Seattle area. As I recall, a cook off a merchant ship gave it to him only after an hour long discourse on the lineage of this starter. Translated, it means if you buy or are given a starter, it is at least a day old. Don't worry though, "Sourdough Cooks" often like to fish as well and thus, share a trait for which all fishermen are famous. So, within a month or so of starting to cook with sourdough it's perfectly acceptable to me if you want to "stretch the dough" so to speak!At home I keep at least two containers with starter in them at all times. When I pack for a trip I take one starter with me and leave the other at home. Then should I roll a pack horse off the trail or flip my raft, I'll only be out of sourdough until I get home. The starter I leave at home, I like to think of as my insurance "dough"! Rather than this author attempting to write another "Sourdough Cook Book", Jack Trueblood graciously allowed the use of his recipes and an explanation of just what "Sourdough" really is. As a kid growing up in the 50's-60's in southeast Idaho, I often read stories in FIELD AND STREAM written by Jack's father, Ted Trueblood. Ted often mentioned sourdough biscuits and bread when describing camp life in those stories. At any gathering of the Trueblood clan, "Uncle Jack" will be found with his "sourdough fixins", passing on this knowledge to all his nieces and nephews.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Bread in Camp

_BREAD AND HORSE WRECKS

Steps:

• One might think these two topics have little in common and under most circumstances such an assumption would be valid. However, on one occasion I observed the first cause the second! Here is how it happened. The last couple of days of August finds the trail heads into the Middle Fork busy, as sheep hunters head in to set up camp and do some last minute scouting before the season opens on September first. In order to kill two birds with one trip, so to speak, I planned to trail in with four head of stock and work sheep hunters for a few days. When finished, I'd leave two head with an outfitter and pick them up later during elk season. With miles to drive and ride, I left home before the grey light of dawn. When I pulled into the trailhead and unloaded my stock, two fellows, already there, were sorting gear and making up horse packs. They had two saddle horses and two pack horses in various stages of undress. As I unloaded gear, they hustled over for a little conversation. It took just a few minutes to learn they were headed for Waterfall Creek. They told me they hoped to make it to Pole Creek that night and on into Waterfall Creek the next.I'll never be a unanimous choice for the "Packers Hall of Fame", but it didn't take an old hand to see these two guys qualified for "Pilgrim" status. (Volume Two of this series will deal with "Pilgrims" in greater detail.) Anyway, they were still within sight of their truck when the first of several wrecks occurred. I watched them try to balance and jury rig the two outsize loads so they'd ride. In order to give them a head start I made up my packs and ate a lunch of sardines and crackers before I packed up and headed out.Going down the old two-rut road, I saw signs things might be unravelling for these guys. In two different places the tracks showed they'd stopped and re-set their packs. I don't like to bet on someone elses misfortune, but this for sure didn't look like a good bet! For anyone who's ridden the Camas Creek Trail, they already know Big Dry Gulch offers the only real good spot to horse camp in the fourteen miles from the trailhead to the mouth of Camas Creek. I caught up to these guys about a half mile short of Big Dry Gulch. Where I caught up to them, the trail was not wide enough to get my string past, so I pulled up and waited. Trying to repack kitchen boxes in the middle of a trail on a buzzed up pack horse will try the patience of any saint. Suffice it to say none of the adjectives or adverbs from the conversation between those two belong in a cook book. I watched as one fellow rearranged canned goods while the other tried to tie a flatland version of a diamond hitch. Among the canned goods, I could see several "cardboard tubes" of store bought, taste like homemade, ready to bake biscuits. These guys knew they were holding me up and were hurrying as best they could. Within about fifteen minutes they were ready to head out again. As they took off I held back a little ways just for a cushion in case they had more problems. Even from a distance I could hear the canned goods rattling in the bottom of their pack boxes. They'd packed their kitchen on a bay horse who, it appeared to me, had little experience as a pack horse. He kept trying to walk wide of the trail and get up next to his buddy. Within about 200-300 yards of Big Dry Gulch this old bay horse again went wide of the trail, it having slipped his mind, with his load, that he was now a couple feet wider than normal. When the off-side pack box smacked a big granite boulder several things all started to happen at once. He'd hit so hard he stepped sideways into the horse he was trying to pass. This horse, being ridden by the owner of the offending pack horse, responded by jumping ahead into the rear of the pack horse in front. The chain reaction continued to include the lead horse as well. Now, both riders began screaming various adjectives, adverbs, and non-complimentary nouns!Up to this point, things weren't too bad. Within seconds, control appeared to be within their grasp. Then the second stage ignited. The horse, who started it all, had just about calmed down when those biscuit-bearing cardboard tubes spontaneously began to explode. I'm not sure what it sounded like to this old horse, but whatever it was, he decided it wasn't in his contract to haul. Every time another tube gave up a load of ready to bake biscuits, this old horse would buck a different direction. For the minute or so it took him to buck the whole load off, he looked like he belonged in a rough stock string on the rodeo circuit! Not to be outdone, the other pack horse got in the spirit of things and both loads ended up scattered over a fairly wide area. For the first five minutes after the dust cleared, the only word I heard either guy say which could be printed here is "you"! Fortunately, no visible injuries were suffered, but I suspect if those two guys ever get ahold of this cook book they'll suffer flashbacks or latent mental trauma for awhile. Anyway... I pulled off at Big Dry Gulch, tied my stock up and gave them a hand. The pack box, which formerly contained the pressurized biscuit bearing cardboard tubes, now held an amorphous blob-like mixture of raw biscuit dough, eggs and egg shells, orange juice, maple syrup, and soy sauce covered cans. We dumped this mess as far off the trail as we could. If only the next party down the trail had been a film crew shooting special effects footage for a sci-fi horror film. In this case a picture would have indeed told a story worth a thousand words. It honestly looked like a quivering, glistening, gob of mutant protoplasm from an alien planet.An in-depth analysis of this situation might well yield several "morals to this story". i.e. Don't pack pressurized containers on a green broke pack horse if you do pack such containers, make sure to pad them so they won't release their contents prematurely, or if you want fresh bread in camp, pack the ingredients and bake it once you get there! A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Bread in Camp