Continued from last week ~
“I would rather have a good frying pan to live with in camp
than anything else except a good disposition, a good stove, and a good water
container. The iron frying pan does not
burn so easily as thin steel, and food stays hot longer, for often in camp
meals, one thing must wait for another to cook.
Provide a tight-fitting granite cover, for a tin one will rust, and take
flat covers for two stew pans. Cover
carry best standing on edge in the box.
Pot roasts and New England boiled dinners are just as possible as
steaks, pork chops, and corn-mealed fish if you provide deep kettles with tight
covers. I have made even dumplings.
Shallow light gray granite pie tins make inexpensive but
satisfactory plates. Gray does not rub
marks upon being packed together as white will do. Be sure, however, to get big white enamel
cups without handles. They are often to
be purchased among hospital supplies as well as sports supplies.
Carry knives, forks, spoons, the all-important can-opener,
butcher knife, short pancake turner or spatula, and scissors in a heavy muslin
or dug bag, made wide enough to lay, not shove, the articles in. The loose end is wrapped around the whole, making
rattling impossible, and forming a protective pad. A bag of this kind eliminates the bugbear of
camp life – hunting this or that in a ‘don’t-know-where-I-put-it-place.’ Silver
for table use does not need the care that steel does, and is more
homelike. Get an aluminum salt shaker,
as this does not corrode; a size to carry at least a cupful of salt is best,
the same shaker being used for table and cooking. A paper circle laid inside shaker cover will
prevent salt from spilling en route. For butter, get a glass jar which will hold a
pound, because some small-town grocers will not divide a pound. A jar wider and shorter than a Mason jar and
with as little shoulder as possible, is best.
An oilcloth-lined pocket is essential for carrying a damp dishrag.
You will need to watch to find square-shaped tin containers
for coffee, sugar, rice, etc. A tin
cracker box makes a good-fitting bread and cake box for the average cabinet
box.”
If Mother figures out a way to haul along an ice-cream
freezer, this 1911 recipe (from the Boston Cooking School’s magazine American Cookery) would be a big hit
with the whole family after a long drive on hot days.
Except, perhaps, for Father, who has to turn the crank.
STRAWBERRY
ICE CREAM
1 quart of rich cream
1 cup of sugar
1 pint of strawberry juice
1 ½ cups of sugar
Juice of ½ a lemon
Mix the cream and cup of sugar and turn the
crank of the freezer until the mixture is partly frozen; add the fruit juice,
mixed with the cup and a half of sugar, and finish freezing. Let stand an hour or two before serving, to
ripen.*
We used to fix home made ice cream at my grandparents farm when I was a kid. My sister and I would start off cranking our little hearts out, then my grandmother would crank for a while, and my grandfather would finish it off. I can't imagine sitting around a camp fire for two hours waiting for the stuff. Perhaps make it when they stop for lunch and then stash it in the "travel box" until supper time?
ReplyDeleteLast week I left before the conversation about steaming brown bread. In the 1930s, nearly every household would have had a blancher, which was used for hot water canning - as opposed to a pressure cooker. The basket in my blancher is 6 inches deep and about 7-1/2 in diameter. I used to make brown bread a LOT; I used one pound coffee cans, and tied greased tin foil over the tops. Good luck finding a real coffee can today! Plastic doesn't take well to being boiled.
I wonder if the 16 ounce cans of fruit or beans would work? although I'm not even urea if they come in cans that size anymore...
ReplyDelete"sure." not urea. Curse you, auto-complete.
ReplyDeleteEither I worked in the medical field too long, or I need a nap. I actually *read* that as urea, and just kept right on going. But, yes, a 16 ounce can of whatever would work, and probably be better suited. Coffee cans make large loaves - OK for what I'll call table bread, but brown bread is more of a dessert thing to me, and a smaller can would be better. I haven't seen baking powder in cans in a while, come to think if it, although that doesn't mean much.
ReplyDeleteI used coffee cans to bake table bread, too. They hold just about as much as a small bread pan; grease the lid, and the rim, and when the lid pops off, the bread has risen enough to bake. You can get more upright cans in the oven than you can regular flat pans. (Which is important when you are baking for six, not two.)
Up here in Canada, busily looking for large sizes of tinned fruit and awaiting delivery of new can opener that promises dull lids and can bodies. The other half sent my old metal Melita coffee cans and lids (full of nuts/bolts/screws)to the Sally when he cleaned out the basement before we moved. You keep something for 40 years, and then it's gone just before you need it.
ReplyDeleteThat ought to be a corollary to Murphy's law -- you never need something until it's been given away.
ReplyDelete@ Lady Anne: MJB and Maxwell House still pack their coffee in cans . . . in some stores. I'd suggest a baked-bean can as a substitute.
ReplyDeleteActually this article is still pretty good advice for setting up a camping kit! The "silver for eating" threw me for a minute, until I remembered that a) stainless steel is an invention of the '20's or '30's, and b) camping was a rich (or at least upper-middle-class) family's activity, when that picture was taken.