_twas The Week Before Elk Season Recipes

_NO NAME CREEK BAKED BEANS

Steps:

• Often times recipes are born of necessity or thrown together out of what ever the cook can find left in the grub box. So was born this recipe in a camp on "No Name Creek" the fall of 1991. Right now you're thinking this "No Name Creek" doesn't exist and I'm just tryin' to protect a honey hole for elk hunting. Wrong! Look real close at a map of Chamberlain Basin in Central Idaho, and you'll find the real "No Name Creek" about a thirty minute horseback ride from Chamberlain Airstrip.I'd been assigned a two week hitch in Chamberlain as part of an emphasized enforcement effort in the back country. I, along with several others, rode and flew into Chamberlain to relieve guys who'd been in since before the back country elk hunt opened. Don Wright drew the duty of camp cook for the first crew and I drew KP for the second group. Our tours over-lapped a day so Don and I combined our talents for dinner. To this day neither of us remembers the main course that night. Since my grub order wouldn't arrive till the next day, we made do with what Don had on hand.Looking in the grub box it appeared our choices for a vegetable included kidney beans, black eyed peas, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, or pork and beans. With not enough of any one kind to go around we had no choice but to throw them all together. Looking at the ingredient list, you'll see that lacking a real kitchen sink to throw in, we just cleaned out the grub box. Since then, I've served this recipe to several hundred people, but I don't think it ever tasted quite as good as that first night. I chalk it up to ambiance. Folks talk about how the proper ambiance will make a good meal great. Only pilgrims wouldn't classify the smell of wood smoke and dinner music provided by horse bells as ambiance! Anyway...these beans will provide their own ambiance.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Vegetables in Camp

_GETTING BREAD IN CAMP

Steps:

• I can't remember exactly which chapter and verse in the "Good Book" mentions bread as being the staff of life, but even back then camp cooks included bread on the menu. I'm not saying bread is a must at every meal, but I wouldn't advise trying to feed a bunch of hungry campers for a week without it. Two days would be my best guess as to how long it would take before they got kinda surly. Though not mentioned specifically in the "Good Book", I suspect when Moses headed for the mountain to try and sort out all his troubles, no bread in camp was on his list. Should you forget to pack it or run out, as did Moses and his camp, deliverance through prayer would be an option. (However, don't have high expectations of seeing french toast scattered about on the ground and a six point bull hanging on the meat pole the next morning when you peek out of the tent!) It doesn't matter whether you're car camping, horse packing, or beaching your raft on a cobble bar, bread can "make a meal". Other than car camping, when space is not such a limitation, packing bread gets to be a real pain. For instance, try horse packing enough loaves of bread into camp to keep five or six hungry elk hunters in sandwiches for a week. You'd end up with one pack horse which appears to be fully loaded, but in reality is only carrying fifteen pounds. Then, no matter how carefully you pack, it's always half mashed when you get to camp. Dough ball sandwiches for a whole week might haunt a camp cook for the remainder of his life. Hope exists though, read on to find out how to get to camp and get bread too!With but one exception, I never pack store bought bread on a horse or raft trip. On raft trips I will take a couple of the round brown and serve loaves of sourdough bread. These fit perfectly in a 12-inch Dutch and make great garlic bread on spaghetti night. In place of "sliced bread" I pack flour tortillas and/or pita bread. Both pack in a fraction of the space and with the exception of trying to make french toast, make great substitutes for sliced bread. A couple of squeeze bottles with mayo and mustard make off road sandwiches a breeze to fix. Squirt a little mayo and mustard on a flour tortilla, roll up a couple of slices of your favorite sandwich meat and or cheese and you're done. Peanut butter and jelly works for the kids. If you want sandwiches to put in your day pack while hiking or hunting, use the pocket pita bread instead. In addition, the "torts" work just as well as "sliced bread" for sopping up gravy etc.Fresh baked in camp qualifies as the ultimate bread experience in my book. (Which I like to think is a "Good Book", too.) Whether sourdough, from scratch, or a dry prepared mix, your companions will hold you in very high esteem if your menu includes hot fresh bread. The camp cook who graces his table with such fare rarely requires the power of prayer to deliver him from evil especially any perpetrated by his companions! ** The individual (s) who speaks badly of any cook that bakes bread, should be remanded to REMEDIAL CAMPING 101 until a member of the clergy certifies that such a sinner(s), through penance and other sanctions, has admitted the error of his or her ways! A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Bread in Camp

_GOOD HUMORED COOK

Steps:

• Back in the early 80's, I pulled my pack string into an outfitter's camp just at sunset. Their dudes were still out on the hill, so I accepted the invitation of the cook to stay for dinner. I unpacked and hobbled the stock and packed in an arm full of wood to the cook tent. I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot on the wood stove and sat down to shoot the bull while the cook started work on dinner. It didn't take long to figure this old kid had spent part of the afternoon visiting with old "John Barley Corn". The dudes and their guides arrived about an hour after dark. The hot dry weather made the hunting tough, and the elk had all but quit bugling. In four days of daylight to dark hunting the four hunters had hung one small buck and one raghorn bull on the meat pole. Needless to say, there was an air of tired discouragement as we sat around the table waiting for the cook to finish dinner. The old cook knew how to erase the saddle miles off of one's jeans and the scowl off of one's face. Dinner was roast saddle of venison with red potatoes and carrots, sourdough biscuits, and dessert of huckleberry cobbler! It somehow seemed that after dinner every one's spirits had lifted and that maybe the bulls would tune up and start bugling in the morning. One of the dudes walked over to where I'd pitched my camp for a little conversation before we turned in for the night. I'll always remember him telling me that no matter how poor the hunting was, just coming back to that tent and having grub that good set before him made the hunt a success. The next morning I heard the guides wrangling their stock about two hours before daylight. I didn't have to make such an early start, so I fed my horses and wandered over to the cook tent to mooch a cup of coffee. When I pulled the tent flap aside and walked in, the cook was frying ham steaks, and had sourdough pancakes ready to fry, along with a couple dozen eggs. I helped myself to the coffee and sat down at the table. While I sipped my coffee, he cooked. I noticed he was sipping from a glass with about two fingers of an amber liquid. I commented on how good the food had been the night before and that breakfast didn't look like it would disappoint anyone. As we talked cookin', I asked him where he got all his recipes. When he said he kept them all in his head, I remarked something to the effect that would be kinda hard to do.. "Naw," he said, "they all start with the same ingredient". Puzzled, I asked what he meant. His reply has stuck with me since. He said, "Each recipe starts out with: Pour one beer or one shot of whiskey into the cook! Once I do that, the rest just seems to come to me!" After eating supper the night before and looking at the breakfast he was preparing, I couldn't see trying to argue with him. This old boy was the epitome of a "Happy cook is a good cook!"A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales

_TWAS THE WEEK BEFORE ELK SEASON

Steps:

• Spiced with More Tall Tales - Introduction