Chef Baloo

My last class I was teaching was on an absolutely beautiful spring day. You couldn't have asked for nicer weather. The sun was shining, it was in the high 60's, low 70's, and a nice gentle breeze was drifting across the field to keep us cool in the sun.

I set up one of those light 10x10 shelters over the preparation table to keep the sun off our heads as we were chopping veggies and prepping lunch - naturally an unexpected gust of wind blows over the shelter, right into the stove and knocks the stove (with steamed veggies and pasta sauce) all over the ground.

• Lesson 1: Always stake your shelter no matter how beautiful the day or gentle the breeze.

• Lesson 2: When Boy Scouts want tomato sauce on their pasta - they are not going to let a little thing like dirt stand in their way!

Dry pasta for 45 adults wasn't on the menu - so I quickly whipped together a white sauce for the pasta with some butter, milk, and Parmesan cheese that I had at the site.  Crisis averted.

During lunch, I see the 4 Boy Scouts who were assisting us had tomato sauce on their pasta. Yup - they went over to the puddle of tomato sauce on the ground, skimmed off the top layer of sauce, and stuck to their original plan of pasta with red sauce. No stopping those Boy Scouts!

And the extra twigs and dirt just counts as additional fiber. Boy Scouts need roughage. LOL.

As I teach my BALOO class, I make sure my students are aware of a variety of different types of outdoor cooking or meal types that are available to them. This is not an exclusive list - but these are the ones that I touch on in my intro class which are easy for beginning outdoor chefs.

• Dutch Ovens


• Camp Stoves (ie. open burners, including: table top, free standing stoves, turkey fryers, backpacking stoves, etc...)


• Silver Foil Cooking (sometimes called Hobo Meals)


• Box Ovens


• MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat, military style. The outdoor equivalent to Nutrisystem. Not cooking in the most literal sense, but still a type of meal and food prep that Scouts really enjoy.)


• Food on a stick. (You would be amazed at what you can cook on a stick!)

(Post being edited.)

Procrastinating. Lots of it. Set up a blog instead of doing something else. OK, done.