Wombat Central! OT and ONT!

What great stories. :)

OK. Now I guess I have to tell a high school camping story. :) It was gorgeous spring in Northern Ohio when our wonderful Irish Girl Scout leader, Iris, took us to a nearby park & swim club for a weekend outing. The night temperatures were still in the high 40s and low 50s. We were to use the pool to practice our lifesaving, etc for our badges. The water was colder than a witch's tit and our teeth chattered so much, our abnormally hearty leader took pity on us pitiful weaklings and let us mostly laze around the campfire eating copious camp food and drinking hot chocolate. Needless to say, there was more than an adequate supply of hershey bars for S'mores and "Wonder" bread for mock Angel food cake.

Fortunately, we all had warm sleeping bags because the night was quite nippy. I was awakened sometime in the tender hours by the sound of rustling at our feet. I whispered to my tentmate, Cheryl, to awaken but she slept like a drunken sailor and I was afraid to raise my voice. The night was soundless except for the noxious rustling at my feet! It was dark and hard to see.... holding my breath and barely moving, I managed to find a flashlight/torch. I don't know what I was thinking but I turned it on and there at the foot of our small tent was a skunk!!!!!! Heart pounding nearly out of my chest, I dropped the damn light and froze. I was paralyzed, afraid to move for fear the little beast would do that perfectly horrible thing that skunks do when they are frightened. So there I lay, waiting, hearting thumping like kettle drums. And then finally, after interminable eons, the scurvy beast just walked back out into the starlit night.

My friend never awakened until morning but I discovered that the skunk had polished off all of our hershey bars!

Phae

OB-SEW: Most of us sewed our own Girl Scout uniforms.

Reply to
Phaedrine
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Eeeewwww, you combine mouses with mices??? ;-)

Reply to
BEI Design

I'm a Fairport fan, from waaaaaay back to the 70's... Every year they hold a get together in a field in the Chilterns - in August. We went a few times.

One year we went with the couple we stayed with in Preston the other weekend. Hehehehehe...

Alex is an excellent cook: he decided that on the Friday night, to warm us up after the drive up from Kent, what we needed was a chilli. Alex's chillies make yer eyes water. Very good, rather hot. THE best and easiest thing to do when camping is freeze everything you can so that it keeps everything else cold in the cool-box until you need it, so he borrowed my smaller (clamp top) pressure cooker and cooked up a batch of chilli, which he then froze, in the pressure cooker. OK, by the time we got there and set up cam it was half defrosted, so we popped it on the Primus stove to finish melting while we fetched water and so forth... We got some really strange looks for eating a properly cooked chilli in Tent Central! However, that was not our only triumph that weekend.

Alan was in charge of Saturday's meal, and I think we had sausage and mash and tinned peas. Simple, filling, and very good - he chooses excellent sausages! I think I'd baked a cake that we ate for afters that night.

*I* decided that what we needed on Sunday, before upping tents and shifting the metaphorical camels back to the Kent desert on Sunday afternoon was a proper Sunday dinner... nay, a full blown Christmas dinner! So before we left I had stuffed and frozen a chicken. We had with us a bag of nice clean new potatoes and some fresh veg, and the frozen birdie did double duty of keeping the milk and butter fresh all weekend and was just defrosted enough to pot-roast under full pressure for Sunday Lunch by the time it came to cook it... So I fired up the Primus, browned the outside of the chook, poured in a bottle of wine, and brought it up to pressure... While the birdie cooked in its alcoholic steam bath, we cooked the spuds on the Camping Gaz stove, and steamed the veg on top of the spuds... While the bird rested after cooking I made the gravy, and there we were, eating stuffed roast chook, new spuds and fresh veg in a field in August! While we ate the first course, the pressure cooker came into its own again and re-heated one of my Christmas puds, which we ate with cream kept fresh by the frozen bird we had just consumed... While we ate the pud, the pressure cooker heated water for the coffee, and while we drank that both stoves made hot water for the washing up and the final cup of tea we had just before leaving.

We impressed no end of people with our joint culinary skills that weekend. I've never understood why camping is seen as an excuse for not eating properly, and after years at college of cooking for large numbers of folk on 2 inadequate gas rings, I can do pretty well with fairly minimal facilities! :)

When he gets back I must get Alan to tell you about the Exploding Spotted Dick...

Reply to
Kate Dicey

Thereby hangs a tale, I'm sure!

Great camping/cooking story, Kate. You and Alan get the joint outdoor culinary award, hands down!

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

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Kate Dicey wrote:

Reply to
Karen Maslowski

I need a little clarification here. What, precisely, do you consider to be a clove of garlic? Some people think it means the whole head, others aver that it is the little segment you break off. Personally, I have adopted the terminology of a local food writer from Cajun Country, who refers either to a "head" of garlic or a "toe" of garlic.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

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Reply to
Olwyn Mary

It would seem that someone inferring that a "clove" equals a "head" would have no problems with vampires, ever. ;)

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

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Olwyn Mary wrote:

Reply to
Karen Maslowski

The clove is the segment you break off.

Reply to
Kate Dicey

Thanks. I figured that was what you meant, but you wouldn't believe how many arguments on that subject I have read in cooking columns etc.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Reply to
Olwyn Mary

Crikey! One finds Fairport in the unlikliest places! Like Alt dot Sewing ;)

Alt Sewing-ers may be interested to learn that Fairport Convention's annual music festival at Cropredy, Oxfordshire is still going strong. It is a marvellously family-friendly festival, a Glastonbury-for-grown-ups.

Full details are here:

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F

Reply to
Andy F

Well, don't forget I live in the south of England! Cropredy is only a couple or three hours away by road... :) We took James a couple of times as an infant (though we didn't camp then), and my God-daughter when she was really tiddly. She spent most of the day dancing, and fell asleep in mid concert at about 9 pm. Didn't stir for 12 hours, even when her mum did her nappy!

We get all the Fairport details: we're on the Talking Elephant mailing list and get updates. We see TE every year at Rochester Sweeps, and ALWAYS spend well over budget on CDs! We have to reign in for the rest of the year... They keep remarking on how much James has grown, and applaud his taste in music and T shirts! We got to meet Ashley Hutchins there one year. I wish I had that man's energy, never mind the talent! What are we up to now, Distant Descendant of Morris On? ;)

Reply to
Kate Dicey

Spotted Dick is a steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit.

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when I was a Boy Scout, one of the patrols on a Summer Camp decided to prepare this for their evening dessert. Rather than steam it in a tea-towel, they went for a double-boiler approach, putting the pudding inside one billy and putting this into a large lidded dixie, with water in to provide the steam. This pudding needs a long time to cook, too long for a young scout to be bothered to watch it, so they put it on after lunch hoping to have it ready for the evening meal. In the mean time, we all went off to play a wide game (one which involves running about over a large area).

Unfortunately, camp fires are not as easily regulated as a gas ring, and this one burned a little too hot. Of course the dixie boiled dry. Then the pudding mixture started to heat up. Sadly, the lid had jammed on the inside billy, due to some unlucky chance of differential expansion...

Suffice it to say that we all knew that the pudding was a failure, as it broadcast the event, and itself, over a wide area. The explosion was probably more spectacular to hear than to see, but the pudding was certainly widely available, albeit in small portions. The billy lid came down about 30 ft from the campfire, but no-one knows how far up it went.

Today there would be enquiries and post-mortems and no doubt someone would have to be blamed. Back then we just laughed, and shared our pudding with the explosive cooks.

Reply to
Alan Dicey

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