Michael F. Bowman

On his first camping trip the New patrol was fixing hot dogs. Something I felt was well within their capabilities. After checking to see that they had in deed brought hot dogs and buns and the fire was burning under control, I wandered over to check on the other patrols. Returning about 15 minutes later, I asked how the hot dogs were. "We haven't eaten yet, the pan fell into the fire." Instead of the traditional stick method, he was trying to boil them in a pot like he did at home.

Fast forward three years. Our boy is now a Life Scout and is working with the New patrol on their first campout. He is fixing them breakfast of pancakes. Simple enough. Knowing by now to check frequently I find he has made enough batter for all eight boys, in the frying pan. He is trying to cook this mass of batter at one time in the pan.

A good smart diligent Scout, probably an eagle by now, just watch who you pair him with on the duty roster.

Bob Washburn
Troop 30 Edwardsville Illinois

We were told to bring a can to the campsite, to be prepared to cook "coffee can stew". My parents generally used instant coffee, so there were no coffee cans available. As I frantically searched the house for something suitable, I finally spotted a can in the toy-box which looked about right. I dumped the contents on the floor (it says "A Scout is Clean", not "A Scout is Neat"), and threw the can in my pack.

At the camp, we prepared the stew ingredients, put them in our cans, and put the cans on the fire. As my stew cooked, the gravy seemed a little more colorful than the others. In fact, when all the stews were done mine had about 1/2" of multi-colored goo on top. About this time was when my brother recognized the can as the one which, for about two decades, had held the family's stock of Crayola crayons.

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Troop 93's Bucktails (our high-adventure crew) were backpacking on a cold December on the Big Blue Trail on the VA - WVA state line. At this point, I need to quote from my Scoutmaster's Minute from the Eagle Ceremony of one of the boys (now a pre-med microbiologist!):

As we made camp for the night near the top of the ridge the skies cleared, it got bitter cold, and a very strong wind blew up - perfect Bucktails weather! The menu of gourmet freeze-dried beef stroganoff had everyone looking forward to supper (NOT!). In fact, it was so cold that one cook team decided to defer their cleanup until morning, so they could get into their sleeping bags more quickly, so they set a bag of half-eaten food by the stove, and retired.

In the morning as the bag was picked up for proper disposal, a wet, cold, and well-sour-creamed mouse jumped out of the bag and ran into the woods. Careful examination found that three of his friends had fallen into the food and either froze to death or drowned (Some would say that it was the taste of the stroganoff that killed them).

Just as a proper burial was being arranged, our hero, the future Eagle Scout and eminent Biologist, emerged from his tent. Aghast at the potential waste of good research subjects, he cried, "Wait, I need those for my science project!". So the mice were packed away for travelling, inside two trash bags suspended on the end of a stick, hobo style. As the boys hiked along that morning, past puzzled tourists, dogs, and little children who had taken the easy way up to Big Schloss, they sang their new ditty:

Three dead mice,
Cold as ice,
They dozed off in the Stroganoff
Three dead mice.

Somehow David got the mouse-cicles home and into school without his mother or sister finding out what was in the bag. I don't know the end of this story, but I have it on good authority that the mice stayed in his locker at school for at least two weeks. Sometime later, they mysteriously disappeared.

Chuck May
Vice Chairman - Program, Seneca District
National Capital Area Council
Gaithersburg, MD

Our formar Scoutmaster, an Eagle scout and Woodbadger, tells of the time he instructed a patrol to put liquid soap on their pot before using it over an open fire. He explained that it would make clean up much easier.

Sure enough, a little while later he walked by their campfire and watched their stew blow bubbles. Seems he just assumed they understood the soap went on the outside.

Ron Raab-Long

The troop I grew up in, Troop 85 in Greater Cleveland Council, had two distinct, but related (as it were) traditions. Wednesday morning was the day that we all made individual fires and cooked our breakfast (low impact camping? bah). I was about 11, on my first camping trip and dutifully followed the instructions of the three eagle scouts who were leading us. I watched carefully as they soaped the outside of their mess kits and followed suit. Chuckie, on the other hand, listened but didn't watch.

The second tradition of that day of the week was a cup of prune juice with breakfast. You see, Wednesday was parents' night and the Scoutmaster had long ago discovered that boys who hadn't...shall we say...had a moving experience were much more likely to go home with mom and dad on Wednesday. So, the theory goes, he would give us all some prune juice to "get things moving."

After breakfast we were under the pavilion cleaning up the mess kits. Mine was coming along fine, but Chuckie was having the darndest time getting his clean. The inside was pretty good, but the outside was jet black. I asked him if he had soaped it and he said, "Well yeah, but that didn't keep the outside from getting dirty now did it?" (with a sort of sarcastic "you ninny" voice)

Chuckie spent a good portion of that afternoon beating a path to the latrine. We all wondered which had the greater effect, the prunes of the soap. Considering the rest of us made at most two trips out (and actually they were more psychologically induced than anything), I'd say it's safe to say that the soap did the trick.

Bob Costello
Cubmaster - Pack 765 Charter Organization Rep. - Troop 775

As a boy, one scout wanted to make chocolate pancakes. His process was as follows:

First, he filled a pot half full with water. Then, he poured in one cup of cocoa mix. Then, he mixed in half a box of bisquick and stirred. And stirred. And stirred. (he refused any and all suggestions with "I know what I'm doing; I do this at home all the time!")

Finally, he had "batter." He decided to make one big pancake, and poured the mix into a pan. And cooked. And cooked. And stirred. And cooked. He literally spent 2 hours trying to cook the water off of this mess to something resembling a pancake. He never got there. The closest he got had the consistency of undiluted chicken-noodle soup.

Then he conned the scoutmaster into tasting it.

Nobody ate it. No one. We "accidentally" left it out over night, in an area full of raccoons and other 'critters. NOTHING touched the stuff for the entire three days we were there.

Jason A. Cruse

At a district camporee in 1965/1966, our patrol had forgotten to bring along a chefs tool kit. We asked our Scoutmaster what to do? He said, "Improvise", so that's what we did.

In spite of offers of help from other patrols, we chose to refuse any and all assistance and remedy the problem through our own ingenious methods.

Our menu was pancakes and bacon. In leiu of a spatula and fork, we used the latrine shovel (sterilized over the campfire) as a pancake turner, and a twisted coathanger for handling the bacon.

Of the pancakes that survived turning, they actually didn't taste too bad. (Of course you had to get past the idea of what that shovel had been turning a short time earlier.)

The bacon came out perfectly. Unfortunately the dutch overn full of bacon was knocked over by a young tenderfoot (oops, I didn't see it), so the bacon was seasoned with earth. (I cleaned off the bacon as best I could.)

What I remember most wasn't the eating of the meal, but rather the cooking of the meal. We were cheered on by the rest of the troop as they gathered around to watch us as we did our best to overcome our situation.

It wasn't the finest meal we had ever cooked, but it was by far the most fun and the most memorable.

Cliff Golden
Scoutmaster Troop 33; DeKalb, Illinois
Three Fires Council BSA

** About mid-season at one of the camps, we had a newly formed Troop from a very urban area on its first ever camping trip. We marveled at their bagage - it seemed that some of them must have taken nearly their entire household with them with multiple packs and trunks. I assigned a seasoned staffer to act as their cooking advisor and every morning he came back with reports that the boys were complaining that during the night other Scouts from other Troops were raiding their food box (the one with all the snacks from home). We had a lot of racoons and critters known to feel at home borrowing from the unwary, so we didn't take much notice and just attributed it to lack of experience. Their advisor's coaching was received well, but ignored or so it seemed. Anyway, after a few days the SPL decided enough was enough. He volunteered to contribute a box of Ex-Lax his mother had sent with him just in case. After supper this intrepid group made some of the best looking brownies you ever saw. I know as I happened along about that time. I was politely warned off from sampling as it was well known I liked to sample. I thought it odd, but went on to the next campsite, not yet in on the secret. The next day we had an entire patrol of kids in the kybos and infirmery. We finally did the math and put two and two together. The kids in this patrol were taking turns playing commando raid and enjoying the fruits of victory each night. Seems their enjoyment was somewhat diminished by their last catch.

** When I was a cooking advisor with a new patrol I realized about midway through the meal that preparations for clean-up had not been started and suggested to the patrol leader that he might want to think about how he was going to do the dishes. He had a blank look, so I went on and said well don't you think you should put some water on the fire, thinking they ought to start heating the water to wash with. He signalled one of his mates to come over and whispered a few words to the new Tenderfoot, who grabbed a bucket and headed for the campsite's wash stand. A few minutes later our dinner conversation was interrupted by a loud hissing sound. We all turned at once. The Tenderfoot had poured the entire bucket of water directly on the fire. :-(

** We had a near catastrophy at one campsite. The cooking advisor was watching the preparations for stew and noticed that one of the Scouts was using two rocks to pulverize a couple of tablets. The advisor asked what was going on. The Scout confidently explained that they were a little behind schedule and had to make sure that their cooking gear was clean before they could go to the evening activity. He reasoned that it would help things if in the process of cooking, the food could somehow be made to be self-cleaning. And he'd heard that Tetrox was good for cleaning. Ergo he was going to use it. He'd gotten a bunch of Tetrox tablets from the commissary and figured they'd do the trick. Anyone who has experienced the Tetrox Trots will know that having a large concentration of Tetrox in food is a bad idea. Fortunately, the Scout was persuaded that direct consumption of Tetrox was something to be avoided. We had little doubt as to what would be cleaned out.

** During an evening campsite visit after one of the hottest days on record at camp, I saw the remains of two eggs dribbling down the sloping roof of a tent. They were perfectly place and obviously with some care. This ruled out the normal mischief. So I couldn't resist asking the Scoutmaster what gave. He got a little red in the face and mumbled that he'd told the boys at breakfast that it was going to be so hot that day they'd be able to cook an egg on any exposed surface like say a rock. He regretted this deeply he said. Hmmm. Seems that two of the Scouts hadn't been listening particularly well, but got the tail end of what he'd been saying. And it also seemed like a dream solution to avoid having to make a cook fire, so they careful placed eggs on the canvas and waited for the miracle. And waited, and waited, . . . I can assure you that the eggs didn't do much for the aroma of the tent. Whew!

** Where I grew up having a frog in your pocket when you were young wasn't all that unusual. Seems like it was one of those things young boys did - catch a frog and jam it into a pocket. A patrol was cooking up a muligan stew in the evening. One little fellow sitting close to the fire - obviously hungry and anxious to be there when the stew was pronounced done - started squirming. Seems he had caught a frog and stuffed him into his pants. And as luck would have it the frog was in the pocket closest to the fire. Well Mr. Frog apparently thought things were getting unhospitably warm, so did his best to get some attention. The Scout finally came to Mr. Frog's rescue and pulled him out only to be stunned by the frog's efforts to jump free. Somehow the frog succeeded in jumping and nobody saw him land. A quick search ensued, but old Mr. Frog was nowhere to be found. All eyes turned on the bubbling stew. Heads dropped down in disappointment. They reckoned that the frog had made a bad calculation on his landing zone and had landed in the middle of the stew. The stew was taken off the fire and put to the side. After it had cooled, it went down the kybo. Seems they had lost their appetite. A little later in the evening the Scout who'd lost his frog was shouting excitedly. They all gathered. In his hands was a frog. The Scout explained that he'd found his friend - see here how this spot is shapped and this leg is just so. Well he convinced them it was the same frog and it might have been.

Michael F. Bowman