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It's All About The Food

Throughout our camping weekend, I finished reading my book of food history (From Hardtack to Home Fries). This, combined with the challenges of cooking away from home, provided a great deal of food-related navelgazing.

I'm planning on interrogating my parents on the sorts of foods they ate growing up, after reading this book.

The girls were highly impressed and disgusted by one of the recipies used by the White House housekeeper during FDR's presidency. It was a salad that combined tomato soup, cream cheese, gelatin and vegetables into a single dish. I suppose the kindest thing one could say about it is that it's a sort of gelatin gazpacho. But still, eww... gelatin gazpacho?

We tried to keep it simple at camp by cooking foods that did not require a great deal of skill to make. I think the best dinner was the chicken foil packets that we wrapped up and stuck in the campfire. The biggest challenge was getting the foil packets out of the fire. It was a good thing we had fireproof plates.

I found the chapter about food and POWs to be the most interesting chapter in the book. It discussed prisoners in the Phillipines during WWII, what they ate during their internment, and what they dreamed of eating instead. A cookbook was even published that contained recipes the men provided, entitled Recipes Out of Bilibid.

The highlight of the food on our trip had to be the ice cream we had at a little ice cream shop near the bookstore in Portland. It came highly recommended, and we were not disappointed at all!

The most elaborate meal we cooked must have been the bacon and blueberry pancakes for breakfast Saturday morning. The fresh blueberries were delicious, and the bacon was not bad, considering I'm really not cut out for cooking bacon.

We were planning a repeat of the pancakes this morning, but the stove started burning in places it ought not burn, so we boiled water over the fire and finished up the leftover cookies instead.

Posted by Rachel at September 1, 2003 10:39 PM