Camp cookery (Kephart)

Bean Soup. — Boil with pork, as previously directed, until the beans are tender enough to crack open; then take out the pork and mash the beans into a paste. Return pork to kettle, add a cup of flour mixed thin with cold water, stirring it in slowly as the kettle simmers. Boil slowly an hour longer, stirring frequently so that it may not scorch. Season with little salt but plenty of pepper. Pea Soup. — Wash well one pint of split peas, cover with cold water, and let them soak over night. In the morning put them in a kettle with close-fitting cover. Pour over them three quarts cold water, adding one-half pound lean bacon or ham cut into dice, one teaspoonful salt, and some pepper. When the soup begins to boil, skim the froth from the surface. Cook slowly three to four hours, stirring occasionally till the peas are all dissolved, and adding a little more boiling water to keep up the quantity as it boils away. Let it get quite thick. Just before serving, drop in small squares of toasted bread or biscuits, adding quickly while the bread is hot. Vegetables may be added one-half hour before the soup is done. Condensed Soups. — Follow directions on wrapper. Skilligalee. — The best thing in a fixed camp is the stock-pot. A large covered pot or enameled pail is reserved for this and nothing else. Into it go all the clean fag-ends of game — heads, tails, wings, feet, giblets, large bones — also the leftovers of fish, flesh, and fowl, of any and all sorts of vegetables, rice, or other cereals, macaroni, stale bread, everything edible except fat and grease. This pot is always kept hot. Its flavors are forever changing, but ever welcome. It is always ready, day or night, for the hungry varlet who missed connections or who wants a bite between meals. No cook who values his peace of mind will fail to have skilly simmering at all hours. CHAPTER XI. COFFEE.— To have coffee in perfection the berry must be freshly roasted and freshly ground. This can be done with fryingpan and pistol-butt; yet few but old-timers take the trouble. There are two ways of making good coffee in an ordinary pot. (1) Put coffee in pot with cold water (one heaped tablespoonful freshly ground to one pint, or more, if canned ground) and hang over fire. Watch it, and when water first begins to bubble, remove pot from fire and let it stand five minutes. Settle grounds with a tablespoonful of cold water poured down spout. Do not let the coffee boil. Boiling extracts the tannin, and drives off the volatile aroma which is the most precious gift of superior berries. (2) Bring water to hard boil, remove from fire, and quickly put coffee in. Cover tightly and let steep ten minutes. A better way, when you have a seamless vessel that will stand dry heat, is to put coffee in, place over gentle fire to roast until aroma begins to rise, pour boiling water over the coffee, cover tightly, and set aside. Tea. — Pour boiling water over tea (one heaped teaspoonful tea to the pint), cover tightly, and steep away from fire four minutes hy the watch. Then, if you have no percolator, strain into sep- arate vessel. If tea is left steeping more than five or six minutes the result is a liquor that will tan skin into leather.