While cooking with the boys in the different Scout Troops I have been associated with and drawing from my own experience as a Scout I realized that no matter what the weather, 105 degrees, or 5 below, windy, raining, snowing, as long as the Scouts eat well they will stay. They don't want to go home. It is only when they are not eating well that they begin to think, gee whiz, my brothers and sisters are home, inside, with Mom, eating a good warm meal, that they begin to become restless, disinterested, and home sick and want to go home. It is my contention that if we enable them to cook a good meal then they will stay and enjoy all of the activities that are planned, and some that may not have been planned.If this is true of young Scouts then it stands to reason that it is true of us older folks too. We go into the outdoors for several reasons, camping, hunting, fishing, white water rafting, canoeing, and there may be others that I have not mentioned. Whatever the reason, we too must eat. So why not eat well?
Anything that can be cooked inside of our kitchen at home can be cooked in the outdoors, and a Dutch Oven improves the chances that it will be a gourmet meal in the outdoors.
It is not my intention, as a trainer, to teach folks how to cook. It is my intention, and desire, to teach folks how to cook in a Dutch Oven. I have taught classes for Women In The Outdoors where there have been ladies that were in their late sixties and I am never going to be presumptuous enough to think that I can teach them to cook. But I can, and have, taught them how to prepare their favorite recipes in the out of doors in a cast iron Dutch Oven.
There is no greater thrill than to take the lid off of a Dutch Oven and look upon a lightly browned loaf of yeast bread that a class has mixed together and baked. A Dutch Oven full of golden brown, flakey, baking powder biscuits gets the same reaction.
While doing training at a Scout Camporee I noticed that after three or four classes I had difficulty remembering if I had covered all of the items I had wanted to. So in order to assist my own incompetence I wrote down my class training agenda so I could remember to cover all of the items that I wanted to. Simply click upon the Dutch Oven Training Agenda and you will see what items that I cover in the training that I do. Along with this information I also have the class prepare and cook several items. Folks always ask, "what are you cooking today?" and I simply reply, " you misunderstood, it is what you will be cooking today.
A regular class will take around three hours but can be abbreviated to an hour and a half. There just won't be as much content in the shorter one.
The recipes used in my training include, Beef Stew, Chicken Pot Pie, Cornbread, Biscuits from scratch (a recipe given to me by and old Indian woman), loaves of Yeast Bread, Peach Cobbler and Pineapple upside-down cake.
I will be doing training throughout New York and Pennsylvania at the Gander Mountain Stores and at the Bass Pro Shops along with Women In The Outdoors and some Scouting and other youth and church groups.
Ya'll come on down, we have so many ways, you're bound to like some of them.