[at-l] Ernest Hemingway On Camping (Part II)

[RoksnRoots at aol.com]

When it is clear weather you don't need to pitch your tent if you are only 
stopping for the night. Drive four stakes at the head of your made-up bed and 
drape your mosquito bar over that, then you can sleep like a log and laugh at 
the mosquitoes. 

          Outside of insects and bum sleeping the rock that wrecks most 
camping trips is cooking. The average tyro's idea of cooking is to fry everything 
and fry it good and plenty. Now, a frying pan is a most necessary thing to any 
trip, but you also need the old stew kettle and the old folding reflector 
baker. 

        A pan of fried trout can't be bettered and they don't cost any more 
than ever. But there is a good and bad way of frying them. 

     The beginner puts his trout and his bacon in and over a brightly burning 
fire the bacon curls up and dries into a dry tasteless cinder and the trout 
is burned outside while it is still raw inside. He eats them and it is all 
right if he is only out for the day and going home to a good meal at night. But if 
he is going to face more trout and bacon the next morning and other equally 
well-cooked dishes for the remainder of two weeks he is on the pathway to 
nervous dyspepsia.

          The proper way is to cook over coals. Have several cans of Crisco 
or Cotosuet or one of the vegetable shortenings along that are as good as lard 
and excellent for all kinds of shortening. Put the bacon in and when it is 
about half cooked lay the trout in the hot grease, dipping them in corn meal 
first. Then put the bacon on top of the trout and it will baste them as it slowly 
cooks. 

         The coffee can be boiling at the same time and in a smaller skillet 
pancakes being made that are satisfying the other campers while they are 
waiting for the trout.

         With the prepared pancake flours you take a cupful of pancake flour 
and add a cup of water. Mix the water and flour and as soon as the lumps are 
out it is ready for cooking. Have the skillet hot and keep it well greased. 
Drop the batter in and as soon as it is done on one side loosen it in the skillet 
and flip it over. Apple butter, syrup or cinnamon and sugar go well with the 
cakes.

       While the crowd have taken the edge from their appetites with 
flapjacks the trout have been cooked and they and the bacon are ready to serve. The 
trout are crisp outside and firm and pink inside and the bacon is well done - 
but not too done. If there is anything better than that combination the writer 
has yet to taste it in a lifetime devoted largely and studiously to eating.

      The stew kettle will cook you dried apricots when they have resumed 
their predried plumpness after a night of soaking, it will serve to concoct a 
mulligan in, and it will cook macaroni. When you are not using it, it should be 
boiling water for the dishes.