Tea In a Tin Cup

by Jo A. Hiestand

  * * *

  Banana S’mores

  8 graham crackers

  8 marshmallows

  2 bananas, cut into ½” pieces

  Heat broiler.

  Break the crackers in half to form squares. Place several banana slices on 4 crackers.

  Place the remaining 4 cracker squares on a baking sheet and top each with a marshmallow. Broil until the marshmallows are puffed and lightly browned, about 1 1/2 minutes.

  Take the crackers with the marshmallows, invert and press down so the marshmallows ooze into the banana slices.

  Serve immediately.

  * * *

  Peanut Butter Cup S’mores

  8 graham crackers

  8 marshmallows

  8 peanut butter cups - unwrapped

  Heat broiler.

  Break the crackers in half to form squares. Place 4 cracker squares on a baking sheet and top each with a marshmallow.

  Broil until the marshmallows are puffed and lightly browned, about 1 1/2 minutes.

  Immediately place two peanut butter cups on EACH hot marshmallow. Press down so the peanut butter cups melt into the marshmallow.

  Sandwich with the remaining crackers. Serve immediately.

  Chapter 7

  Where Have You Bean So Long?

  When my troop went camping, we’d arrive on Friday, early evening, and we’d leave late morning on Sunday. Of course, we didn’t want to cook a breakfast the day of departure. We didn’t want to scrub pans or, worse yet, take them home to clean. And because the campsite had to be spin ‘n’ span for the checkout inspection that we needed to pass before we could leave the campsite, we didn’t want to mess up the area with dishes and pans needing washing, or with a fire that would keep us waiting around until it was cold to the touch—and then we’d have to shovel out the fire pit, sweep it clean, and dispose of the ashes. A lot of work right before we had to leave. So, we always had a Jungle Breakfast.

  It’s a cute name. And ingenious. A Jungle Breakfast is readymade food requiring little if any cleanup. Ours always consisted of bananas and oranges, those individual serving boxes of dry cereal, and donuts.

  To give the breakfast the jungle feature, the fruit and the boxes were hidden around our campsite: in the forks of tree limbs, in bushes, beneath dropping stems of plants, on rocks... Anywhere like that, but some part of the box had to be in plain sight. The number of boxes of cereal and pieces of fruit exactly matched us campers and leaders. It had to. We couldn’t leave forgotten/overlooked food behind to attract wildlife.

  The donuts stayed safely on the kitchen tables.

  Lest you imagine the cereal sitting out all night and feeding a colony of ants, I’ll relieve your anxiety. Our troop leaders or the cooks for that meal hid the cereal and fruit minutes before breakfast, and then immediately called the rest of us to go out and hunt for our meal.

  I always enjoyed that breakfast. It wasn’t the food, particularly, as it was the cleverness of hiding and then finding the cereal and bananas. And it was fun eating the cereal from the box.

  We didn’t have these individual serving boxes at home. Mom was frugal and trash conscious even in the ‘50s. So eating from one of those small boxes on a campout was really an adventure. I liked punching the tip of my spoon along the box front’s perforated lines and then opening the two rectangular flaps. It was like opening the shutters of a window. I bent them back to reveal the cereal nestled inside. The interior of the box was lined with waxed paper (I suppose they still are, if they exist) so the cardboard wouldn’t get soggy from the milk. I poured in a small amount and ate it quickly, before it lost its crispness. What a clever design that box was! To think you would open a box from its side and it became a bowl.

  The breakfast donuts were always the powdered sugar or jelly varieties. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe there were glazed or cinnamon-sugar, but I only remember powdered sugar and jelly. I didn’t like jelly donuts. I still don’t. And the powdered sugar got over everything: my fingers, my lips, my cheeks, the front of my shirt, the tabletop… But they were good. They were worth the extra cleanup. Luckily, the sugar washed up easily with soap and water, and we merely pitched the paper towels. No hot water required, which would necessitate building a fire, waiting for the ashes to grow cold, shoveling out the fire pit, carrying the ashes to the pile… Powdered sugar donuts were definitely a clever choice.

  As good and fun as the Jungle Breakfast was, I still preferred a hot meal. French toast was high on my list of favorites even if it did stick to the skillet and required soaking in hot water before we could clean the pan at lunch or supper.

  Pancakes were wonderful, too. We usually made them on tin can stoves with buddy burners as the heat source. For the uninitiated, a tin can stove is what the name states. Take a 46-ounce can, like the size for tomato juice. Wash the can and remove the paper label. Then, with your tin snips, cut a small rectangular opening in the side of the can, starting at the edge of the can’s opening. Make it about half the height of the can and about two or three inches wide. When you set the can bottom-side-up on the ground, your opening should sit on the ground. This is your ‘hearth’ to supply oxygen to the fire that will be inside. Make two or three punctures with a church key along the side of the closed end of the can—on the opposite side of your door. This is your chimney so the smoke escapes the can.

  Set your fuel—a buddy burner or similar source—on a clear patch of ground and place your stove over it. Light your fuel. You’re ready to cook.

  Melt a bit of butter on top of the stove (or cook a slice of bacon) and then pour on the pancake batter. Flip the pancake when it tests ready and cook the other side.

  I could never make pancakes that didn’t stick. They tasted good, but I never had a whole pancake like I could make in the kitchen at home. When I tried to get it off the tin can stove, I had to place my oven mitted hand along the opposite side of the stove to keep it steady and then jam the spatula beneath the pancake. The pancake tended to buckle and fold like an accordion. In fact, sometimes the pancakes didn’t cook evenly, and I ended up with one side half-cooked and one side over-cooked. This led to my slogan “How do you want your pancakes? Burnt, raw, scrambled, or not at all?”

  Luckily, my view of camp cooking wasn’t tarnished by this challenge. There was always the comfort of the big kettle.

  One pot cooking, the staple of campouts for my Girl Scout troop, took a fascinating turn when we first made a bean hole supper.

  My mother, who was our troop leader until I began high school, corralled two of us girls one morning and asked us to dig a hole. It should measure larger than the cast iron lidded pot sitting on the ground near us. There should be several inches of space between the side of the pot and the side of the hole. The pot should also sit a good six to twelve inches below the surface of the ground. She handed us shovels and left.

  I looked at the iron pot. I’d never seen one like it. It had a flat lid with a tall rim, an iron handle, and three small rectangular protrusions on the bottom that I assumed were feet, since the pot’s bottom cleared the ground on which it sat. Though why a pot needed feet, I didn’t know. Anyway, we dug the hole.

  When we’d finished, she called the rest of the troop over to the hole. I hope the girls showed proper appreciation and awe for our work, but I don’t recall. (More than likely, they were glad they hadn’t had to dig.) Mom explained we were going to cook our food in the pot and bury the pot in the hole!

  This was new to all of us, and mom set about showing us how to build the fire in the hole and explaining how long the cooking would take. The cooks dutifully made the bean recipe and put the maple syrup-laced beans into the Dutch oven, which is what mom called the pot. Then we made a wood fire at the bottom of the hole and dutifully fed it with more wood and then with charcoal briquettes, and waited for it to burn down to a deep bed of coals.

  When we had a good depth of embers, we scooped out much it and snuggled the pot onto the remaining coals. After making cer
tain the lid was on straight, we covered it with a double layer of aluminum foil, and shoveled the ‘saved’ coals around the sides of the pot and onto the lid. The final step was covering it with a wetted-down burlap sack and then some soil.

  We waited all day for those beans to bake. Wisps of smoke seeped from the loose earth covering the coals on top of the Dutch oven’s lid. It looked like geothermal activity was taking place in that hole, reminiscent of the bubbling mud pools in Rotorua, New Zealand. Gladly, nothing erupted.

  When dinnertime rolled around, mom and the co-leader removed the soil and the burlap, scraped off the layer of coals, and carefully raised the Dutch oven from the hole. The sheets of foil that covered the lid were black and burnt, but the pot emitted the most wonderful aroma of baked beans.

  It was around this time, give or take a year, that my family and I moved from University City to Creve Coeur. The subdivision was being constructed, and my parents bought the first completed house on the street. Families moved in fairly quickly after our arrival, and my sister and I were pleased when a family with three daughters bought the house next to ours.

  Mary, Sally and Bridget were great playmates and friends. We spent a lot of time together and at each others’ houses watching television, playing board games, writing and putting on little plays, and having lunch. We also made taffy—once.

  All five of us gathered at my house for the fun. My mom had the ingredients and the recipe ready. She reminded us to wash our hands.

  We cooked the taffy, let it cool, then buttered our hands so we could pull it. We paired off. I guess my mom partnered with someone. When the taffy was ready, we snipped it into bite-sized pieces and wrapped them in waxed paper. All was going well. Our taffy was white and shiny.

  Then we looked at Bridget’s taffy. It was gray.

  Mom asked Bridge if she’d washed her hands before the pull. She confessed she hadn’t. The trashcan received her taffy.

  Here’s a recipe for baked beans that I love, and could very easily be made in a bean hole. But this is for a slow cooker.

  Camp Style Beans – approximately 6 servings

  1 lb dried navy beans

  1 ½ quarts (6 cups) water

  ¼ lb lean salt pork (or slices of bacon)

  1 onion, chopped

  ½ tsp salt

  1 ½ tsp dry mustard

  1 ½ cups maple syrup

  2 ½ cups water

  Cover the navy beans in water, about 2” higher than the beans, and soak them overnight.

  The next morning, pour off the water and pour in 1 ½ quarts of water. Cook beans until their skins start to break, about 40 minutes. Drain off the water and rinse again to rid them of any starch clinging to them. (The starch will make your beans taste definitely ‘starchy’ if you don’t rinse them) Put the beans into a bean pot or deep casserole.

  To the pot, add the salt pork, chopped onion, salt, dry mustard, maple syrup and water.

  Mix well and cover. Bake at 325°F for 2 ¾ to 3 hours. Add water during baking if beans begin to dry out.

  Be sure to wash your hands before you pull…

  * * *

  Taffy

  2 ½ cups granulated sugar

  1 ½ cups light corn syrup

  4 tsps white vinegar

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup evaporated milk

  In a heavy saucepan, over low heat, mix all ingredients except milk. Stir often until sugar is dissolved.

  Increase heat and bring mixture to boiling. Slowly add the evaporated milk so boiling continues.

  Insert candy thermometer into pan. Continue stirring and cook until mixture reaches 248 F (firm ball stage).

  When candy has reached desired temperature, remove pan from heat, remove thermometer and pour mixture onto a buttered cookie sheet, taking care NOT to scrape the sides and bottom of the pan in the process.

  Let the taffy mixture cool until it is cool enough to handle. Grease your hands with butter and take a small portion of the candy and, using only the tips of your fingers, begin pulling. Candy should be white in color and no longer feel sticky when it has been pulled enough.

  Twist each pulled strip slightly and place on a sheet of waxed paper. When all the candy is pulled, cut each strip into 1-inch pieces. Wrap each piece in waxed paper and twist ends closed.

  Chapter 8

  A Little Late Night Snack

  For several summers during high school I was a camp counselor at Girl Scout Camp Fiddlecreek. Being a licensed Red Cross lifesaver, I was on the Waterfront staff, and taught swimming and canoeing.

  Canoeing was a great activity. We paddled around on a small lake that sat in a shallow dale between two hills. One hill and the land beyond it were the property line and bordered the main road. The other hill housed most of the units, the camp hall and Supervisor’s quarters, and the swimming pool.

  The water for that pool came from an underground spring. Do I have to tell you how cold that water was? Even in the midst of an August heat wave, that water felt like it was piped in from Antarctica.

  Canoeing and swimming lessons were some of the activities provided to the girls, as Camp Fiddlecreek was set up for troop core camping at that time. Troops came for a week’s stay, cooked in their units and enjoyed their own pursuits. Approximately a dozen staff members provided supplemental pastimes, such as square dancing, campcraft, sketching, and nature hikes. The activities were available if they wanted to pursue them.

  On the last evening of the troops’ stay, the staff—meaning employed Senior scouts and me—conducted all-camp campfires. We’d lead the songs, and each troop put on a skit. It was all great fun.

  The Seniors and I bunked down in Redwood, which was a small duplex cabin clad in…well…redwood siding. It was a small rectangular building, nearly square, taller in front than in the back, due to the flat roof that sloped down towards the rear. The roof back there was just a few feet off the ground.

  I was only a few years older than the Seniors, so we bonded quickly. It was the folk music era, and I could play guitar, my lovely Martin D-12-35 (12 denoting it was a twelve-string model and 35 indicating it was a dreadnought size—very large). We sang a lot: songs of the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; the Brothers Four; Judy Collins; the Clancy Brothers; Ian & Sylvia… We sang not just at the campfire, but also some evenings in Redwood, and we’d have daytime song sessions if any troops wanted us. I especially loved leading rounds like “Ego Sum Pauper,” “Gelobet,” and “A Poor and Carefree Stranger.” We also had small parties if someone in our group had a birthday during that week at camp. One of us would bring a cake from home (we left Fiddlecreek on Saturday morning, rushed home, laundered our clothes, repacked, and were back at camp Sunday evening.) and we’d have our party some evening of the next week. One time we had no knife to cut the cake, so we used my machete.

  In addition to singing and eating, sometimes we listened to recorded music or we recorded our parties, both by way of my portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. If I remember correctly, one day we thought it’d be great fun to scare the girls staying in Gaylord Lodge with a spook recording. We asked the troop leader at Gaylord if that would be all right. She said yes, and she subsequently told them the tale of Sir Gaylord, who roamed the area and was sometimes seen near the lake. Nothing like the personal touch to make the ghost more real and frightening. Never mind Sir Gaylord was a creation of her imagination; the girls didn’t know that. So the Seniors and I made a spook tape. We moaned and wailed, we clanged my machete and other metal tools against the metal frames of our beds, we twanged the steel bedsprings and got a marvelous echo, someone sang a song, someone else screamed…

  We finished our tape recording and on the night of her story we walked over to the lodge.

  Gaylord was a rectangular building of one long room in an open floor plan. A breezeway separated the living area from the bathrooms, which were across the covered porch. Inside the lodge proper, the kitchen sat at the room’s far end, with a fireplace in the
center of the long wall. The main area held metal bunk beds, a dozen or so round tables and a lot of folding chairs.

  On the evening of the ghost tale, we made the short walk from Redwood and positioned ourselves beneath the breezeway. Gaylord Lodge was on the same hill as Redwood and, as such, the front of the building was set on stilts so that the entrance (in the rear) was accessible from level ground. Since the land sloped downward and away from the front, this building layout provided the perfect place for us to hide with the tape recorder. Our spook tape would certainly be heard, either from the breezeway or through the open windows of the lodge, directly above us.

  Well, we started the tape recording. I played some of it—the songs, for instance—on slow speed to make it sound spookier. Kind of like strange monks chanting, which was appropriate, since Camp Fiddlecreek property had once been a monk’s residence. I’d stop the tape approximately every twenty seconds so the girls could hear it—they were screaming very loudly. When they quieted, I’d start the tape up again. One girl begged her buddy to go with her to the bathroom. Evidently the buddy refused. (Remember, the bathrooms were on the other side of the breezeway, so they’d have to go outside…where the ghost was!)

  The tape playing went on this way—start/stop/start/stop/start…slow speed/normal speed/slow speed…—for many minutes, always accompanied by the girls’ shrieks and yells.

  We finally stopped the tape when we heard the girl say she didn’t have to go to the bathroom anymore.

  Throughout the Sir Gaylord event, as we termed it, we munched on several snacks we’d brought with us, figuring we’d be there a while. (Remember the Girl Scout motto!) Three of my favorites are Cherry Nut Mix, Cranberry Cashew Trail Mix, and Go Bananas Mix. We also invented a snack that we named after Sir Gaylord, the founder of the feast. As befitting the evening, it’s ghostly pale in color.