Campfires and Coffee

 

Every morning I get up, wander to the kitchen, feed the critters, and wonder what genre book, comic, or audiobook will entertain me over breakfast.  Then I crack open the coffee tin, take a sniff, and my mind immediately goes here.

Can't wait to go camping this season.

Hurricane Irene Power Outage Cowboy Chili for Two

 Ingredients:

One rusted out, unusable gas grill that you regret buying from your friend

One grill grate from when you tried but failed to make the unusable grill usable

One fire bowl

One bag charcoal briquettes

One bunch of twigs for kindling (semi-dry)

Four mid sized logs (semi-dry)

One large pot

One small container of bacon drippings

Three tomatoes rescued from the garden before the 75mph winds, diced

One can beans from the back of your pantry

One onion, diced

One chili pepper, diced

One jalapeno pepper, diced

Two chicken breasts slowly going bad in your depowered refrigerator

One bottle Corona

½ pack of taco seasoning left over from Thursday’s dinner

Two cups of water

1-     Stare at the unusable gas grill.  Shake your head in shame.

2-     Prepare the fire bowl by dumping out the water, then pouring in the charcoal.  Light charcoal.  While the fire is still going add kindling and four logs, arrayed so that they can provide support for the grate as they burn.  Because the wood is wet you may want to liberally add bacon drippings which burns hot and gets your neighbors and family agitated.

3-     When the coals are burning red and the wood is spitting flame, place the grate on top of the wood.  Place the pot on top of the grate, and put a couple of tablespoons of bacon drippings in the pot.  Enjoy the melting and sputtering, then add onion.  Stir occasionally for five minutes.

4-     As onions brown, place the two chicken breasts on grate over the fire.  Turn occasionally.

5-     Add water and taco seasoning to the pot.  Stir.  When boiling, add chicken to the pot. Stir occasionally for five minutes.

6-     Add peppers, beans, and tomatoes to pot.  Stir occasionally for 40 minutes. 

7-     Drink beer while watching the pot boil and avoiding ashes flying in your face as the last of the tropical storms winds pick up.  If the pot starts to look dry, pour beer into the pot. 

8-     Check to make sure that chicken is cooked through.  Spoon chicken and chili into large bowls.  Either eat outside or light candles, because it is going to be a while until the power comes back on.

To Be a Trail Cook

A few years ago I put up one of those little Facebook “how well do you know me?” quizzes.  One of the questions was “What is my ideal job?”  The possible answers were safety consultant, federal law enforcement agent, college professor, or trail cook.  Pretty much everyone who took the quiz picked one of the first three. These are all reasonable assumptions as I have either worked in or been trained in each of these professions in my brief three and a half decades on this planet, but were all wrong.  A few astute observers of old Slap got it right and picked number four- trail cook. 

I love cooking.  Absolutely love it.  I can’t do plumbing, am vaguely competent in carpentry, would be a disaster as an electrician, and don’t understand how cars work other than the whole “put key in ignition and push pedals” thing.  When it comes to cooking, though, I can be an outright genius.  Point me to a supposedly empty refrigerator and bare pantry and I’ll whip you up a quiche faster than you can whistle Dixie.  More likely a nice pasta salad, but you get the point.  Where it all really comes together, though, is making something in a pot.  Soup, stew, chili, any chance that I get to throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot has a good chance of coming out tasting like manna from heaven.

So why aren’t I a cook?  Terrible hours, mediocre pay, and you have to be inside a hot, windowless kitchen for most of the day.  As a trail cook, though, the world is your kitchen.  You cook outdoors, plucking fresh ingredients from the ground as you wander the earth.  You ride ahead of the herd, away from the dust.  You have hours of blissful solitude, but can still share in the brotherhood of humanity when you ring the dinner bell and bring the hands home for supper.

It really wasn’t like that, I’m sure, and you faced danger and the elements for crap pay.  What really attracted me to this idea in the first place was reading Lonesome Dove.  The sheer joy felt by Bolivar when he smashed the dinner bell with the crowbar is something that I hope to have some day. When Po Camp came along, the sage mystic with a knack for experimental cooking, I knew that was the job for me.

In my mind the trail cook became the consigliore, the maester, the wise adviser to the trail boss, serving up equal parts cool advice and hot chili.  Am I right?  Probably not, but it is fun to dream.

Tune in next time for recipes from Hurricane Irene!