Despite sentimental flights about the joys of dining with your eyes full of hot ashes, I have found few camp cooks I care to associate with near mealtime.
Sir, if you know a good, practical camp cook I suggest that you foster his friendship at all costs if he is a male; if a female, make every effort to marry her.
My opinions lack some authority because it has been said that I could starve to death locked in a supermarket. A lack of enthusiasm for culinary camp chores has made me a dishwashing expert of many years' standing. From this lowly station I have observed that my wife can serve a Christmas dinner for 12 with fewer dirty dishes than required by my fishing buddy in preparing a quick breakfast for two.
I do not overlook some of the efficient shortcuts employed by male sportsmen. An outstanding example is the system of a pretty fair dry fly caster I knew who served ham and eggs twice a day, explaining that the enclosed protein and stuff were just what hungry fishermen needed.
But it was in economy of effort that he excelled. He served the ham and eggs on plates each morning. Each evening he turned the once-used plates over and you got ham and eggs on the bottoms. It meant a single washing for two meals and a boon to my department, but it required some skill to eat sunny-side-up eggs from a face-down plate, even though he somehow achieved a leathery base from the egg white.
As a dishwasher I have had rare opportunity to witness the inside operation of amateur camp cooks--their triumphs, their dramatic failures, and their moments of gnawing anxiety. They are fundamentally a fidgety and insecure lot. Most of them can hardly find the kitchen at home.
Some years back I was privileged to be appointed dishwasher for a camp of southern deer hunters. The camp was a spacious cabin on a picturesque lake shore, and it was my choice to be dishwasher since I had no stomach for a turn at cooking for four other guys, all of them admittedly chefs of a high order. I wasn't a regular camp member; only a guest.
When I moved in the day before season opening I wished to make an impression with willingness and announced my first official act would be to clean up the dishes and rearrange odds and ends stored under the sink counter.
In the South such hunting camps are frequently carried over through generations, and the odds and ends are evidently inherited too. When I started out it was simply a chore to impress my friends, but as I got on with it I had all the anticipation of an anthropologist digging in Aztec ruins.
Such resorts are furnished mainly with things no longer needed in the owners' homes, so it was not surprising to find 28 water glasses in a camp with beds for six hunters. There were 33 coffee cups, some of them marked with the names of deceased marksmen. None of the four broken electric toasters seemed repairable, but the 80 assorted knives and forks were okay. Currently used dishes and utensils were in a separate cabinet.
In the cooking-grease department, nothing had been wasted. Contained in a variety of cans, old coffeepots and jars was something like five gallons of used grease. The entire inventory was frequently interrupted as the hunters kept moving in to exclaim over some long-forgotten bit of culinary memorabilia and after a brief conference they decided one gallon of secondhand cooking grease would be sufficient.
There was a flurry of excitement when I found an old-fashioned jug of colorless liquid with a unique bouquet. After that treasure had been whisked away the hunters were so interested in sink secrets that I lacked room to work.
Each of the other hunters at that camp took his turn at dinner cooking, usually beginning elaborate preparations around 6:00 p.m. Since they contested bitterly with each other as to the quality of their respective specialties it was generally about ten before the various ingredients were gathered and the food on the table.
The meal was sleepily completed around eleven o'clock and I'd generally get dishes washed and the kitchen cleaned up by midnight. This was rather inconvenient since all alarm clocks were religiously set for four in the morning I'd have ended the week worn and haggard if anyone had gotten up at that time, but we actually crawled out about and the carefully planned and elaborate breakfast would take until about eight. We generally started hunting about nine o'clock.
The cook with a specialty isn't purely a product of the South. Almost everywhere I go camping I find a saucepan Caesar who insists on feeding the assemblage something better then they get at home. He presses all hands into service as assistants and gets the meal on the stump about two hours late. He usually lacks one of the most important ingredients and if a market can be reached by an hour's arduous driving he probably runs into town after the Cantonese bead molasses he needs for his beef and noodles. If it's a backpacking expedition I insist that he carry his own groceries and utensils.
When you return from one of these all-male campouts, give your wife some flowers. It will seem the least you can do.
This story originally appeared in The Part I Remember by Charles Waterman.
Copyright (c) 1974 by Charles F. Waterman. All rights reserved.