On the road again, and cooking, too
Ungrateful as it sounds, I occasionally tire of the same old backyard standbys churned out by the grill. I love a burger as much as the next person, but during the season for outside cooking and eating, there are so many more possibilities to explore. There is something about leaving the house, getting your hands dirty, and sharing food outdoors that makes everything taste better.
Being a country girl, I had a rigorous childhood training in campfire cooking, and I see no need to forget those skills as an adult. I trained as a chef in London, where I now live, but love to break free and swap the city for the country whenever possible.
Now is probably the time to confess that I'm an appalling cheat when it comes to camping. My 1972 VW bus, dubiously named Myrtle the Hurtle and resplendent in baby blue, makes life pretty easy, equipped as she is with a fold-down bed, a little fridge, a sink and a gas stove. It's not all roses; the time I save in not putting up tents is lost traveling to destinations at a snail's pace, stopping to top up on gas with unnerving frequency. She's a high-maintenance lady, Myrtle, but at least I'll never get a speeding ticket.
Unless you're a smug camper-van owner, setting up camp is a bit of a project. Sure, children may love gathering firewood, pitching tents, building a fire and cooking supper, but all this takes time.
Bringing a ready-prepared dish in its cooking pot will help team morale on the first night. Boston baked beans, which beg only to be heated through and eaten with good bread, are a good choice. Hungry campers are more likely to get fractious than well-fed ones when that essential tent peg turns out to be missing.
But when you do cook in your campsite, it's best to keep things simple. This doesn't have to mean simple-minded, however. The dishes here require a few ingredients, but the results are luxurious. They are intended to be cooked outdoors, on a gas stove or campfire, but will also work beautifully in your kitchen at home.
Pack lightly
Camping builds an appetite, so it's wise to build your meal upon a good-quality carbohydrate, be that bread, couscous, rice or, in this case, pasta. In this summer carbonara of penne with young fava beans and peas, egg yolks and finely grated pecorino are coaxed into a silky sauce.
The favas and peas, if you buy them in their pods, are already conveniently wrapped for transport, and no chopping is required. When camping with no TV or other such entertainment, the ritual of prepping and cooking becomes a leisure activity rather than a chore. Shelling beans in the late evening sun, away from the bustle and hustle of traffic, is rather soothing. No amount of pastoral loveliness, however, will make dishwashing fun, so this carbonara is designed to leave you with only a pot, a bowl, a spoon and a grater to clean.
Constructing A Fire Pit - News
Douse fires with water or sand and replace any turf divots you created while building your fire pit. One final tip: Watch the forecast closely and pray for sun. You might be made of sterner stuff, but wet-weather camping isn't my idea of fun.
Never build a large blaze in a residential area. Have a water source nearby to douse any escaping flame, but keep a bucket of sand or dirt handy to put the actual fire out. This protects the fire pit from a sudden temperature change that could damage
Many of us could argue that we've been building fire pits since we were Cub Scouts. But, believe it or not, making the leap from a circle of stones to a beautiful fire pit is not that hard once you've mastered a few basic masonry skills.
Building a fire is actually quite simple, whether it's a campfire or a cozy one in your living room. Here's how to do it. A safe place to build your fire. If you're outdoors, that means a fire pit away from trees and bushes.
For example, they have made a campsites, cut a nature trail, made an entranceway, erected a 12- by 16-foot pavilion with picnic tables, made a fire pit and barbecue pit, put up bat houses, benches and created an ampitheater. Shifflett added, “We have a
how not to build a fire pit - House Architecture
Don’t like to blindly follow the rules of regular society, we ran a story in the Winter 2011 issue on how to build a fire pit.
Most magazines would have run that story in a summer issue when decent folk like to gather around a bonfire and toast some marshmallows. But not us. Oh no. We figured the dead of winter is when people need to get outside the most and a fire pit was just the reason to do it. And judging by the popularity of the story, you agreed with us, o fellow frosty pyromaniacs.
But the thing is, if you didn’t pull on your woolies back then to build a fire pit, now is the time to do it. It’s super easy, as evidenced by the fact that even I had no trouble building one in the backyard in an afternoon:
My fire pit. Ain’t she pretty?
Unfortunately, I built mine before we ran the story so I missed a few critical lessons that we spelled out clearly there. One of them: Use granite, not porous materials such as brick, concrete or sandstone. Why? Because high heat can crack those other materials and, in rare cases, cause them to explode (we’re not talking a stick of dynamite-type explosion here, but enough of a pop that you don’t want to be next to it).
As you can see from the photo, I used one of the aforementioned porous materials. As you can also see from the photo, one of the top pavers is split from a particularly robust fire. And as you can see from the photo yet again, I surrounded the pit with white cedar mulch figuring this would make a cozy surface to plop down lawn chairs.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. Last weekend, I threw a cardboard box on top of the fire and a flaming chunk of it broke free and settled on the mulch. Which, as you might have surmised, is flammable. All I can say is if you don’t have a garden hose within easy reach of your fire pit, you need to keep a couple of big buckets of water on hand (see my scorched mulch for proof).
You can guess what my first project is for the upcoming long weekend: Replace mulch with something non-flammable. I was thinking about using rock mulch but that’s not going to be very comfortable to sit or walk on. Anybody got any better ideas?
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