Some of them, in desperation, have actually resorted to paying good money for articles dealing with the cooking of game and the preparation of camp foods. A lot of these stories are accompanied by color photographs which show pictures of the finished product.
The perceptive reader will immediately recognize the fraud embodied in most such articles. For instance - in all of those photos, you will note the knives, forks and spoons all have the same pattern. I defy you to find a real hunting camp which contains even a single set of matching knife, fork and spoon.
The pictures also show food which actually appears to be good to eat. Now I don’t mean to suggest the food served in all hunting and fishing camps is venomous. It isn’t. Not in all camps. The food prepared in, perhaps, seventy percent of them is probably non-toxic.
The other thirty percent, however, represent a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of the out-doorsman. Any reasonably experienced hunter or fisherman knows the local Department of Health will pay a bounty of one hundred dollars in cash for the dead bodies of most camp cooks. If you bring them in alive, they won’t pay anything and if you leave them in their office, they’ll fine you for littering.
Such being the case, any wise outdoorsman will select his hunting/fishing companions with care, making sure at least one of his associates is kitchen competent. Any truly wise outdoorsman will make sure at least two of his companions are kitchen competent.
Once upon a time, I fished with Carl Wussow and Steve Willett. Both were capable of producing meals on grills, on wood stoves and over camp fires. Often those meals contained vitamins, were tasty and weren’t merely poured into a dish from a junk food package or heated directly in the can. I thought two capable cooks would be enough. I was wrong.
We rented a motel room near the shoreline of Montana’s Madison River. It had cooking privileges. Since I washed the breakfast dishes, I was exempted from assisting in the preparation of the evening meal. I don’t mind doing the breakfast dishes. I have to wash my hands anyway. Besides, we use paper plates and cups. However, as a condition for being relieved of dinner preparation chores, it was given me strictly in charge to make no snide comment, complaint or commentary relative to the cooking process. At the time it seemed fair. I was lucky to be able to live to regret my promise.
Steve and Carl decided to make spaghetti.
For those of you who know nothing about such things, the cooking of spaghetti is an intricate and complicated matter which consists of four separate phases. Step One: Bring water to a boil. Gourmet chefs suggest you bring a pot large enough to hold the water. Another trick is to be sure you turn on the electric stove. With a bit of dry-run instruction followed by practice, most camp cooks can develop the ability to accomplish Step One with reasonable efficiency.
Step Two: Put the spaghetti into the boiling water. Care must be exercised in selecting only hard, uncooked spaghetti. If soft, cooked spaghetti is chucked into the pot, the result will be a terrible sticky mess. I know. I tried it once.
One must be sure to remove those hard sticks of uncooked spaghetti from the plastic bag they come in. If you throw the whole unopened package into the pot, it will all meld together. It will be midnight before you’ve separated enough strands of the stuff to make a good meal.
Step Three: Take the spaghetti out of the pot. The problem involved in Step Three lies in knowing when to take it out of the pot. The term “al dente” doesn’t help much. Bite into it before you add it to the water and you will learn it is very hard and not yet done. Bite into it after it has been cooked an hour or so and you’ll learn is very soft and an overdone mess.
The question is: When - between zero and sixty minutes - should you take the spaghetti out of the pot? When is it just right? According to Willett and Wussow, you throw a strand of spaghetti up into the air. If it sticks to the ceiling, it’s done.
Step Four: Make the sauce. Some people buy a can of the stuff or a pre-mixed dry concoction which somehow or other gets turned into spaghetti sauce. Other people feel it is essential to add special ingredients to the store-bought product. Beware of these people.
Arthur “Bugs” Baer once said “there is no such thing as a little garlic.” He was a wise man. Referring to the spaghetti dinner in question, I am able to tell every one of you - there is such a thing as too much garlic. There is also such a thing as too much crushed red pepper, too much jalapeño and tepin chilies, too much cayenne powder and too much Louisiana Hot Sauce.
Call me timid, pusillanimous and cowardly if you will, but I don’t like my spaghetti to bite into me before I bite into it. Up until the following morning, I believed the term “Ring of Fire” referred to the volcanoes surrounding the rim of the Pacific Ocean. Believe me, friends, as far as I’m concerned and on a very personal level, the term “Ring of Fire” has another meaning.
I no longer like spaghetti. I’m glad I don’t like spaghetti because if I did like spaghetti, I’d eat it and if I ate it, I’d run the risk of getting another taste treat like the one I suffered through at that motel on the banks of the Madison River.
Once upon a time, in a kingdom located on a great trout stream far beyond the Tomorrow River, there lived a king with a real beaut for a daughter. Her name was Rapunzel. The king, remembering how he used to save maidens in distress when he was a young prince, made sure she was well chaperoned when she was outside of the castle. He kept her on a short leash. She spent most of her time in her room on the upper floor of the castle’s southwest tower.
Rapunzel knew she was a stunning beauty and she had a pretty high opinion of herself. She enjoyed the appreciative glances of the local lads when they watched her long golden tresses and things bouncing as she walked down the street. She played it real cool and never gave any of them the time of day.
The fellows used to hang around the southwest tower and yell: “Hey, Rapy. Why don’t you let your hair down? Yeah, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.” But she’d merely look superior, raise her nose a half inch or so and walk away from the window. Rapunzel had her heart set on espousing Prince Charming.
The Prince was a good looking cuss. He was tall, self assured and had dark curly hair. He wasn’t interested in princesses. He hunted and fished and kept dogs. He knew if he married he would spend his weekends doing the chores his bride had dreamed up - like re-chinking the castle or enlarging the moat so it would be bigger than Queen Guenevere’s. He knew his hunting and fishing time would be substantially reduced, so he decided princesses were dangerous and he stayed away from them.
Well, one day Charming was walking along a path next to the castle. When Rapunzel saw him, she stuck her head out of the tower window and let her golden hair flow down to the ground. Then she softly and coyly called out “Chaarrming. Chaaaarrrming. You could climb up my long hair and get up here with me if you wanted to.” Then she winked at him.
Now Prince Charming was no fool. He wasn’t going to get caught by such a transparent trick. Then he thought some other poor fellow might be trapped by Rapunzel’s ploy. He wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone so he reached inside his tunic, pulled out his fishing knife and cut off eight feet of Rapunzel’s golden hair.
That evening the prince went to Ye Olde 400 Bar for a glass or two of mead with his fishing buddies – Porky, the wisest of the Three Little Pigs (he was the one who built his house of brick) and an ugly gnome called Rumpelstilskin. Everyone referred to him as “Rump” because they couldn’t remember his real name.
Rump and Porky usually came in after dinner and the three of them would swap fishing stories and discuss the cares of the day and the troubles of the world. The wise little pig, a Technical Advisor working at Uncle Ed’s Pork Rind Fishing Lure Company, was the last to arrive. He refused