Camp cooking: a short introduction
Posted BY Ian under camping-advice
"The health and consequently the happiness of the whole camp depends on the catering department."
Words of wisdom indeed, and very closely allied to that other often heard quote attributed to Napoleon, "An army marches on its stomach". Even if you and your fellow campers don't feel much like an army, the principles laid out are the same:"The ideal camp should be as near to the water supply as possible, with good facilities for drainage. It should be in the shade, since hot sun, as well as fire, is good neither for food nor cooks, and it should not be in the nieghbourhood of the incinerator, the latrines, or any such things as a manure heap, where 90 per cent of flies breed - and flies are the camp's worst enemy."One factor not mentioned here is the safety aspect. Canvas tents were not so prone to catching fire as modern fabrics but I'm sure that actually the point was not stated since it was simply too obvious. Never light fires or stoves inside or close to a modern nylon tent. Burning plastic is horrible stuff and you cannot afford to risk an accident. The introduction continues:
"Now the actual cooking place cannot be considered by itself; it forms part of a chain, as it were, consisting of store tent, preparation place, kitchen and dining place. "For a small camp you are unlikely to set up permanent fixtures for each of these camp elements but it is still worth considering physical locations as representing these since certain principles follow from this type of organisation. I will look at those in the next post. In the next article we look at Camp cooking: preparing, cooking and serving All quotes from: Camp Cooking and Catering by J.T. Gorman, Late Commandant Army School of Cookery for India - Second Edition 1933