Flapjacks are good with butter, delicious with creamy maple-sugar soft enough to spread smoothly over the butter. The sugar comes in cans. Ordinary maple-syrup can be used, but is apt to drip over the edges if the cake is held in the hand.

Well-cooked cold rice mixed with the batter will give a delicate griddle-cake and make a change from the regular flapjack.

Biscuits

Biscuits are more easily made than raised bread and so are used largely in its place while in camp. The proportions of flour and baking-powder are the same as for flapjacks. To 4 cups of flour mix 2 teaspoonfuls of Royal baking-powder and 1 level teaspoonful of salt; add shortening about the size of an egg, either lard or drippings. Divide the shortening into small bits and, using the tips of your fingers, rub it well into the dry flour just prepared; then gradually stir in cold water to make a soft dough, barely stiff enough to be rolled out ¾ inch thick on bread-board, clean flat stone, or large, smooth piece of flattened bark. Whichever is used must be well floured, as must also the rolling-pin and biscuit cutter. A clean glass bottle or smooth round stick may be used as rolling-pin, and the cutter can be a baking-powder can, or the biscuits may be cut square, or 4 inches long and 2 inches wide with a knife.

The dough may also be shaped into a loaf ¾ inch thick and baked in a pan by planting the pan in a bed of hot coals, covering it with another pan or some substitute, and placing a deep layer of hot coals all over the cover. The biscuits should bake in about fifteen minutes. For a hurry meal each camper can take a strip of dough, wind it spirally around a peeled thick stick, which has first been heated, and cook her own spiral biscuit by holding it over the fire and constantly turning the stick. Biscuits, in common with everything cooked over a hot wood-fire, need constant watching that they may not burn. Test them with a clean splinter of wood; thrust it into the biscuit and if no dough clings to the wood the biscuits are done.

Johnny-Cake

Served hot, split open and buttered, these Kentucky johnny-cakes with a cup of good coffee make a fine, hearty breakfast, very satisfying and good.

Allow ½ cup of corn-meal for each person, and to every 4 cups of meal add 1 teaspoonful of salt, mix well; then pour water, which is boiling hard, gradually into the meal, stirring constantly to avoid having any lumps. When the consistency is like soft mush, have ready a frying-pan almost full of hot drippings or lard, dip your hands into cold water to enable you to handle the hot dough, and, taking up enough corn-meal dough to make a large-sized biscuit, pat it in your hands into a ¾-inch-thick cake and gently drop it into the hot fat; immediately make another cake, drop it into the fat, and continue until the frying-pan is full. As soon as one johnny-cake browns on the lower side turn it over, remove each cake from the fat as soon as done, and serve as they cook.

Corn-meal must be thoroughly scalded with boiling water when making any kind of corn bread in order to have the bread soft and not dry and "chaffy."

For baked corn bread add 2 full teaspoons of baking-powder and stir in 2 eggs, after 4 cups of meal and 1 teaspoonful of salt have been thoroughly scalded and allowed to cool a little. Pour this corn-meal dough into a pan which has been generously greased, and bake.

Corn-meal needs a hot oven and takes longer to bake than wheat-flour biscuits.

Corn-Meal Mush

Corn-meal mush does not absolutely require fresh cream or milk when served. It is good eaten with butter and very nourishing. Many like it with maple-syrup or common molasses.

Time is required to make well-cooked mush; at least one hour will be necessary. To 2 quarts of boiling, bubbling water add 1 teaspoonful of salt, and very slowly, little by little, add 2 cups of corn-meal, stirring constantly and not allowing the water to cease boiling. Do not stop stirring until the mush has cooked about ten minutes.

It may then be placed higher up from the fire, where it will not scorch, and boiling water added from time to time as needed to keep the mush of right consistency. The cold mush may be made into a tempting dish, if sliced ½-inch thick and fried brown in pork fat. Many cold cooked cereals can be treated in the same way; sprinkled with flour these will brown better.

Kentucky Bread

Kentucky bread is made of flour, salt, and water. It is generally known as beaten biscuit. Mix 2 scant teaspoonfuls of salt with 1 quart of flour, add enough cold water to make a stiff, smooth dough and knead, pull, and pound the dough until it blisters; the longer it is worked and beaten the better. Roll out very thin, cut round or into squares and bake. These biscuits may be quickly made, are simple and wholesome.

Cocoa

Good cocoa may be made by substituting cold milk and cold water for hot. Follow directions on the can as to proportion, and add the cold liquids after the cocoa is mixed to a smooth paste; then boil. Either unsweetened condensed milk or milk powder can take the place of fresh milk.

Coffee

For every camper allow 1 tablespoonful of ground coffee, then 1 extra spoonful for the pot. Put the dry coffee into the coffee-pot, and to settle it add a crumbled egg-shell; then pour in a little cold water and stir all together; when there are no egg-shells use merely cold water. Add 1 cupful of cold water for each camper, and 2 for the pot, set the coffee-pot over the fire and let it boil for a few moments, take it from the fire and pour into the spout a little cold water, then place the coffee where it will keep hot—not cook, but settle.

Tea

Allow 1 scant teaspoonful of tea for each person, scald the teapot, measure the tea into the pot, and pour in as many cups of boiling water as there are spoonfuls of tea, adding an extra cupful for the pot. Never let tea boil.

Boiled Potatoes

Wash potatoes, cut out any blemish, and put them on to cook in cold water over the fire. They are much better boiled while wearing their jackets. Allow from one-half to three-quarters of an hour for boiling, test them with a sliver of wood that will pierce through the centre when the potato is done. When cooked pour off the boiling water, set off the fire to one side where they will keep hot, and raise one edge of the lid to allow the steam to escape. Serve while very hot.

Baked Potatoes

Wrap each potato in wet leaves and place them all on hot ashes that lie over hot coals, put more hot ashes on top of the potatoes, and over the ashes place a deep bed of red-hot coals. It will require about forty minutes or more for potatoes to bake. Take one out when you think they should be done; if soft enough to yield to the pressure when squeezed between thumb and finger, the potato is cooked. Choose potatoes as near of a size as possible; then all will be baked to a turn at the same time.

Bean Soup and Baked Beans

Look over one quart of dried beans, take out all bits of foreign matter and injured beans; then wash the beans in several waters and put them to soak overnight in fresh water. Next morning scald 1½ pounds salt pork, scrape it well, rinse, and with 1 teaspoonful of dried onion or half of a fresh one, put on to boil with the beans in cold water. Cook slowly for several hours. When the water boils low, add more boiling water and boil until the beans are soft.

To make soup, dip out a heaping cupful of the boiled beans, mash them to a paste, then pour the liquid from the boiled beans over the paste and stir until well mixed; if too thin add more beans; if too thick add hot water until of the right consistency, place the soup over the fire to reheat, and serve very hot. To bake beans, remove the pork from the drained, partially cooked beans, score it across the top and replace it in the pot in midst of and extending a trifle above the surface of the beans, add 1 cup of hot water and securely cover the top of the pot with a lid or some substitute. Sink the pot well into the glowing coals and shovel hot coals over all. Add more hot water from time to time if necessary.

Beans cooked in a bean hole rival those baked in other ways. Dig the hole about 1½ feet deep and wide, build a fire in it, and keep it burning briskly for hours; the oven hole must be hot. When the beans are ready, rake the fire out of the hole; then sink the pot down into the hole and cover well with hot coals and ashes, placing them all over the sides and top of the pot. Over these shovel a thick layer of earth, protecting the top with grass sod or thick blanket of leaves and bark, that rain may not penetrate to the oven. Let the beans bake all night.

Bacon

Sliced bacon freshly cut is best; do not bring it to camp in jars or cans, but cut it as needed. Each girl may have the fun of cooking her own bacon.

Cut long, slender sticks with pronged ends, sharpen the prongs and they will hold the bacon; or use sticks with split ends and wedge in the bacon between the two sides of the split, then toast it over the fire. Other small pieces of meat can be cooked in the same way. Bacon boiled with greens gives the vegetable a fine flavor, as it also does string-beans when cooked with them. It may, however, be boiled alone for dinner, and is good fried for breakfast.

Game Birds

Game birds can be baked in the embers. Have ready a bed of red-hot coals covered with a thin layer of ashes, and after drawing the bird, dip it in water to wet the feathers; then place it on the ash-covered red coals, cover the bird with more ashes, and heap on quantities of red coals. If the bird is small it should be baked in about one-half hour. When done strip off the skin, carrying feathers with it, and the bird will be clean and appetizing. Birds can also be roasted in the bean-pot hole, but in this way, they must first be picked, drawn, and rinsed clean; then cut into good-sized pieces and placed in the pot with fat pork, size of an egg, for seasoning; after pouring in enough water to cover the meat, fasten the pot lid on securely and bury the pot in the glowing hot hole under a heap of red-hot coals. Cover with earth, the same as when baking beans.

Fish

Fish cooked in the embers is very good, and you need not first remove scales or fins, but clean the fish, season it with salt and pepper, wrap it in fresh, wet, green leaves or wet blank paper, not printed paper, and bury in the coals the same as a bird. When done the skin, scales, and fins can all be pulled off together, leaving the delicious hot fish ready to serve.

To boil a fish: First scale and clean it; then cut off head and tail. If you have a piece of new cheesecloth to wrap the fish in, it can be stuffed with dressing made of dry crumbs of bread or biscuits well seasoned with butter, or bits of pork, pepper, and a very small piece of onion.

The cloth covering must be wrapped around and tied with white string. When the fish is ready, put it into boiling water to which has been added 1 tablespoonful of vinegar and a little salt. The vinegar tends to keep the meat firm, and the dressing makes the fish more of a dinner dish; both, however, can be omitted. Allow about twenty minutes for boiling a three-pound fish.

The sooner a fish is cooked after being caught the better. To scale a fish, lay it on a flat stone or log, hold it by the head and with a knife scrape off the scales. Scale each side and, with a quick stroke, cut off the head and lower fins. The back fin must have incisions on each side in order to remove it. Trout are merely scraped and cleaned by drawing out the inside with head and gills. Do this by forcing your hand in and grasping tight hold of the gullet.

To clean most fish it is necessary to slit open the under side, take out the inside, wash the fish, and wipe it dry with a clean cloth.

If the camping party is fond of fish, and fish frequently forms part of a meal, have a special clean cloth to use exclusively for drying the fish.

Essential Foods

Outdoor life seems to require certain kinds of foods; these we call essentials; others in addition to them are in the nature of luxuries or non-essentials

List

List

Sanitation

Camp fires and camp sanitation.

Keep your camp scrupulously clean. Do not litter up the place, your health and happiness greatly depend upon observing the laws of hygiene. Make sure after each meal that all kitchen refuse is collected and deposited in the big garbage hole, previously dug for that purpose, and well covered with a layer of fresh earth.

Impress upon your mind that fresh earth is a disinfectant and keeps down all odors.

Erect a framework with partially open side entrance for a retiring-room. Use six strong forked-topped poles planted in an irregular square as uprights (Fig. 28), and across these lay slender poles, fitting the ends well into the forked tops of the uprights (Fig. 28). Half-way down from the top, place more cross poles, resting them on the crotches left on the uprights. Have these last cross poles as nearly the same distance from the ground as possible and over them hang thick branches, hooking the branches on by the stubs on their heavy ends. Also hang thickly foliaged branches on the top cross poles, using the stubs where smaller branches have been lopped off as hooks, as on the lower row (Fig. 29); then peg down the bottom ends of the hanging branches to the ground with sharpened two-pronged crotches cut from branches. The upper row of branches should overlap the under row one foot or more. Make the seat by driving three stout stakes firmly into the ground; two at the back, one in front, and on these nail three crosspieces.

Never throw dish water or any refuse near your tent or on the camp grounds.

Burn or bury all trash, remembering that earth and fire are your good servants, and with their assistance you can have perfect camp cleanliness, which will go a long way toward keeping away a variety of troublesome flies and make camp attractive and wholesome.

Camp Spirit

Thoughtfulness for others; kindliness; the willingness to do your share of the work, and more, too; the habit of making light of all discomforts; cheerfulness under all circumstances; and the determination never to sulk, imagine you are slighted, or find fault with people, conditions, or things. To radiate good-will, take things as they come and enjoy them, and to do your full share of entertainment and fun-making—this is the true camp spirit.

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