BEAN HOLE

The above illustration shows a half section of a bean hole lined with stones. The bean hole may, however, be lined with clay or simply the damp earth left in its natural state. In the bean hole the fire is built and burns until the sides are heated good and hot, then the fire is removed and the bean pot put in place, after which the whole thing is covered up with ashes and earth and allowed to cook at its leisure.

PORK AND BEANS

There is no article of food more easily carried, and none that contains more nourishment to the pound, than the bean. Limas are usually preferred, but the large white marrow is just as good. It will pay to select them carefully. Keep an eye on grocery stocks, and when you strike a lot of extra large, clean beans, buy twice as many as you need for camp use. Spread them on a table a quart at a time and separate the largest and best from the others. Fully one-half will go to the side of the largest and finest, and these may be put in a cloth bag and kept till wanted. Select the pork with equal care, buying nothing but thick, solid, “clear,” with a pink tinge. Reject that which is white and lardy.

This is how to cook them: put a pound or more of clean pork in the kettle, with water enough to cover it. Let it boil slowly for a half an hour. In the meantime, wash and parboil one pint of beans. Drain the water from the pork and place the beans around it; add two quarts of water and hang the kettle where it will boil steadily—but not rapidly—for two hours. Pare neatly and thinly five or six medium sized potatoes and allow them from thirty to forty minutes (according to size and variety) in which to cook. They must be pressed down among the beans so as to be entirely covered. If the beans are fresh and fine, they will probably fall to pieces before time is up. This, if they are not allowed to scorch, makes them all the better. If a portion of pork be left over, it is excellent sliced very thin when cold, and eaten with bread. This makes a dinner for three or four hungry men.

BAKED BEANS

It is usually the case that some of the party will prefer baked beans. To have these in perfection, add one gill of raw beans and a piece of pork three inches square to the above proportions. Boil until the beans begin to crack open; then fork out the smaller piece of pork, place it in the center of your largest cooking tin, take beans enough from the kettle to nearly fill the tin, set it over a bright fire, invert the second sized tin for a cover, place live, hard-wood coals on top, and bake precisely as directed for bread. When the coals on top become dull and black, brush them off, raise the cover, and take a look. If the beans are getting too dry, add three or four spoonfuls of liquid from the kettle, replace cover and coals, and let them bake until they are of a rich light brown on top. Then serve.

BROWN BREAD

Brown bread and baked beans have a natural connection in the average American mind, and rightly so, as they supplement each other. But there is a better recipe for brown bread than is generally known—one that has captured the first prize at country fairs and won the approval of epicures across America. Here is the recipe; take it for what it is worth, but try it fairly before condemning it.

One quart of sweet milk, one quart of sour, two quarts of Indian meal and one quart of flour, and a cupful of dark, thin Porto Rico molasses. Use one teaspoonful of soda only. Knead thoroughly. Bake in a steady, moderate oven, for four hours.

CAMP SOUP

Soup is, or should be, a leading food element in every woodland camp. Soup requires time, and a solid basis of the right material. Venison is the basis, and the best material is the bloody part of the deer, where the bullet went through. We used to throw this away, but have learned better. Cut about four pounds of the bloody meat into convenient pieces and wipe them as clean as possible with leaves or a damp cloth, but don’t wash them. Put the meat into a five-quart kettle nearly filled with water and raise it to a lively boiling pitch. Let it boil for two hours. Have ready a three-tined fork made from a branch of birch or beech, and with this test the meat from time to time; when it parts readily from the bones, slice in a large onion. Pare six large, smooth potatoes, cut five of them into quarters, and drop them into the kettle; scrape the sixth one into the soup for thickening. Season with salt and pepper to taste. When, by skirmishing with the wooden fork, you can fish up bones with no meat on them, the soup is cooked, and the kettle may be set aside to cool.

Squirrels—red, black, gray, or fox—make nearly as good a soup as venison, and better stews. Hares, rabbits, grouse, quail, or any of the smaller game birds may be used in making soup; but all small game is better in a stew.

MOUNTAIN MAN STEW

To make a stew, proceed for the first two hours precisely as directed for soup; then slice in a couple of good-sized onions and six medium potatoes. When the meat begins to fall from the bones, make a thickening by rubbing three tablespoonfuls of flour and two spoonfuls of melted butter together; thin to the consistency of cream with liquid from the kettle, and drip slowly into the stew, stirring briskly meanwhile. Allow all soups and stews to boil two hours before seasoning and use only the best table salt and white (or black) pepper. Season sparingly; it is easier to put salt in than to get it out. Cayenne pepper adds zest to a soup or stew, but, as some dislike it, let each man season his plate to his own palate.

FRIED SQUIRREL

Fried squirrels are excellent for a change, but are mostly spoiled by poor cooks who put tough old and tender young squirrels together, treating all alike. To dress and cook them properly, chop off the heads, tails, and feet with a hatchet; cut the skin on the back crosswise, and, inserting the two middle fingers, pull the skin off in two parts (head and tail). Clean and cut them in halves, leaving two ribs on the hindquarters. Put hind and fore quarters into the kettle, and parboil until tender. This will take about twenty minutes for young ones, and twice as long for the old.

When a sharpened sliver will pass easily through the flesh, take the hindquarters from the kettle, drain, and place them in the frying-pan with pork fat hissing hot. Fry to a light, rich brown. It is the only proper way to cook squirrel. The forequarters are to be left in the kettle for a stew.

VENISON STEAK

Venison steak should be pounded to tenderness, pressed, and worked into shape with a hunting-knife and broiled over a bed of clean hard-wood coals. A three-pronged birch fork makes the best broiler. For roast venison, the best portion is the forward part of the saddle. Trim off the flanky parts and ends of the ribs; split the backbone lengthwise, so that the inner surface may be well exposed; hang it by a strong cord or bark string in a powerful, even heat; lay thin strips of pork along the upper edge, and turn from time to time until done. It’s better to be left a little rare than overdone. Next to the saddle for roasting comes the shoulder. Peel this smoothly from the side, using the hunting knife; trim neatly and cut off the leg at the knee; gash the thickest part of the flesh and press shreds of pork into the gashes with two or three thin slices skewered to the upper part. Treat it in the roasting as described above. It is not equal to the saddle when warm, but sliced and eaten cold, is quite as good.

JERKING MEAT

Fresh meat may be cured, or jerked, as it is termed in the language of the woodsman by cutting it into strips about an inch thick and hanging it in the sun, where in a few days it will dry so well that it may be packed in sacks and transported over long journeys without putrefying.