Adventures in Camp Cooking part 3 - Pork roast & peach cobbler.

Day 3, Another beautiful morning.  Really I can't say enough good about the nice mornings.  Although we still have to deal with the wreckage and wetness of the previous day.  I had planned on making breakfast in bags, or rather having the kids make their own just to show them some camp cooking skills.  But since the carnage of the night before we really just wanted to eat breakfast and get things going.  So, out with the cereal bowls and I ended up cooking the bacon in the pan on the stove.  I learned to make these breakfast bags from my sister when I was about 8.  She was a camp councillor at Oakcrest and YW for a few years.  She and Dian Thomas taught me everything I know.  For a quick version of the Breakfast in a bag go here.  I usually add a piece of bread with a hole in the middle to go over the yolk and get the egg on both sides for what we always called a sunshine sandwich.


After breakfast we hauled all the sleeping bags and pads out to dry.  There was still hail piles on the ground all over where there was vegetation but it was melted on just dirt areas.  It took until noon to dry the tents, waiting for the sun to totally reach them. 

After this we started up the fire so we could slow roast the pork all day.  Only problem is, It's been a while since I used a dutch oven and I forgot how much heat to put on it.  Since we couldn't dig a pit I thought we could use a little more coals but Dad thought we needed even more.  He thought since it was sitting out all day the heat would dissipate more quickly.  I put a dry rub on the pork and put it in the pot.  We piled the coals around it.

Our friends arrived fairly early and we all took a trip to the beach.  Dave took the kids out in the boat and Sean and I stayed on the beach.  He doesn't care for boats too much.  Not too far away one of the oars broke.  This is sad because my husband made this boat and oars by hand.  Not an easy thing.  But he didn't seem too upset by it, he said he just used 2x4's  for the oars, but they looked nice.   He had a tiny motor for such emergencies.  He learned this after getting stuck on Utah Lake with the sail boat when a storm came up.  That lake is nasty in a storm.   

I headed back to camp early to get lunch started.  I decided to check on the roast.  Good thing.  The sugar in the rub and the juices from the meat had completely burned into a big black sucker all over the bottom and the roasts were black!  Ugh.  Dutch oven lesson re-learned.  However, I knew it could be saved, I knocked off what sucker I could and wrapped the meat in foil to wait until later. 

After this we had lunch, PB sandwiches.  We put the tents back together and guess what?  Just in time for it to rain again.  This time was not so bad though.  We went back into the tent for more card games.  It stopped and I went out to deal with the pork.  I cut off the outside and the inside was super tender and tasty!  I put it in a pan for later.  I decided since we didn't do the cobbler the night before than I would do it now.  I figured it would still be warm for dessert if I did it first.  I had put ingredients into bags so I had to do was add eggs and mush it in the baggie.  Since I was using bottled peaches I left out some sugar thinking they would already be too sweet, but I like my cobbler on the less sweet side anyway, usually getting some sweetness from the ice cream.  But there would be no ice cream tonight.

Then the neighbor and I put together the rest of our dinners while D took all the kids fishing.   I put potatoes in foil and started the fire up again.  Two hours later the fishers were back and the potatoes were perfect!  The cobbler was also perfect, but, sadly I opened the lid just as the wind picked up and they got nicely salt and peppered from the blowing ashes.  Seriously it was perfect looking until then.  It could have been sweeter.

For dinner I added a bit of water to the pork and simmered for a bit.  It turned out great

We ended with more smores and some late card games.  I had promised my son we could play one of his favorites but by the time we started it was freezing!!! so we huddled around the lantern on the table trying to hurry the game and stay warm.  Another cold night on the hard ground.  But by now I was more tired and slept better.