Utterly Meaningless

We’ve got a chef here in our house, too. Meaghan specializes in baked goods. 🙂

I’ll do anything that’s not meat. Especially mushrooms. I make good sauteed Portabello mushrooms.

Alex, do you not eat any meat? My homeschooled son thinks he is “the only guy” who is vegetarian (and the rest of our family is not). And lemme tell you, it makes the scouts trips very rough. In his last troop, he got to give a lot of input on organizing the menus and cooking, and they did such cool things. They couldn’t believe it when he cooked them “real pizza” in dutch ovens in the camp fires (he pre-made the dough from scratch and took it in a cooler – they each got to add the toppings they like best. Obviously, not a backpacking trip). In his Mississippi troop, it is all-hotdogs, all-the-time. Oh yeah, and koolaid. The nutrition and cuisine in BSA is not exactly their forte. And he is not too fondly inclined toward the uniform, which he finds not exactly to turn you into a chick magnet when you’re 17. Still, he’s working on his Eagle project this summer and I think he’ll stick with it, even with the Hot Dog Emphasis. He says if he becomes a scoutmaster some day, he will try to encourage the kids to learn that you can eat well when you cook outdoors.

I’ve been a vegetarian since I was eight. I know how your son feels about BSA. I went to SIG (The Summer Institute for the Gifted) and the only vegetarian meal they ever had at lunch or dinner was pasta. Occasionally they had taco shells that I could put some olives, cheese, and lettuce into, but those were fairly rare.

My son’s BSA Troop is struggling with cooking too. We are trying to teach the kids to cook – but they just want to eat something quick and easy and move on. We don’t allow hot dogs / hanburgers, etc. We make them prepare something that involves some effort.

Chris, if they haven’t gotten in to the dutch oven cooking, I highly recommend it. However, summer is not the best time to get started with it, necessarily. There are some great dutch oven cookbooks and recipes available on line and in most scout shops. I know this is a “short cut” idea, but a lot of the boys were amazed at making the simple “cobbler” recipes using canned fruit and cake mix that are often found in the most basic dutch oven primers. This kind of hooked them in to the whole idea of the dutch oven being, well, an oven!

What a nice article. I always had my kids in the kitchen with me. One went on to culinary arts school, but decided against it as a career. My oldest now has her own garden in her backyard. It’s always nice to see the fruits of your labor…in more ways than one.

Jeanne,

The adult leaders are very into Dutch oven cooking 🙂 There is nothing quite like a dutch oven cobbler to finish off a steak and potato meal.

All the patrols have dutch ovens. I’ve suggested that we make them use them next campout.

Interesting them in cooking is easy, it’s building the excitement for dishwashing that i’m having trouble with! 😉

Oh, and Meaghan (the baking chef) is vegetarian in our house too. Maybe we need a vegetarian-hek support group? 😉

You can add me to the vegetarian group; I have LOTS of recipes! (real e-mail below)