From: Dr. Charles Goodwin (doc236@erinet.com)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 14:46:44 CST
We require the patrols to cook meals from basic ingredients. They submit the menu to the senior patrol leader or to one of the assistant senior patrol leaders (We have a troop of over 120 scouts and 9 patrols plus leadership.) If the patrol has cooked a particular dinner menu that year, they may not cook it again. The boys don't really rebel; they just know this is what is expected of them. Almost yearly one of the campouts is a Gourmet Cooking Campout with first second and third place awards in Best Tasting, Most Difficult Preparation, Best Team Work, Most Unusual Menu, Most Unusual Ingredients, Best Atmosphere, Best Service, and Best Presentation. The scouts have a ball with this. The adults and the senior scouts sample food with each patrol and then select the winners. The food is terrific, and obviously every patrol wins several awards which they attach to their patrol flags. Also at our four-day Troop 236 Leadership and Scout Skills Camp which we hold each year we stress cooking, especially Dutch Oven Cooking. We do normally will cook turkeys with corn, baked potatoes, biscuits, salad and a variety of fruit cobblers one night, jambalaya and pineapple upside down cakes one night, and a variety the last night with patrols selecting from spaghetti, chicken parmasan, chile, and several other possibilities. The boys see how well one can eat and how easy the clean up is with Dutch oven cooking. We do have a Troop Cookbook on our website at http://www.troop236.org.
Charles Goodwin, MD, Scoutmaster Troop 236 Kettering, Ohio
----- Original Message -----
From: smith.13@nd.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list philmont
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Philmont]: One Giant Leap
Alan and others,
I am one of those scoutmasters who was never a scouts as a youth. So I do not know what scouts really used to do. From the stories I heard, there was a wide range of skills and styles years ago as there are today. I think our troop had done well at times when we pushed them. They may do dutch oven cooking, different types of pastas, a variety of foil dinners, and hot sandwiches or tacos for lunch. On the other end, if we let them go, they may do only bacon for breakfast, or just grilled cheese for dinner, or donuts every morning.
There is one man I work with (in his late 40's) who claims that his patrol ate Spaghetti-O's for dinner every campout for 3 years. So what has changed? :)
I think that troops that do backpacking should introduce some types of back country cooking early so crew are not faced with a brand new type of cooking just before they hit the trail. We do few backpacking trips and the former SM who was going to lend us stoves passed away and the stoves can not be found. We now have to buy stoves and start training on cooking over the next 5 months. We are behind in trail cooking skills. Since we have a 50 miler for the non-Philmont crew scheduled, we need to train everyone and do it quickly. (5 months is quickly in my book. I am a slow learner.)
At 2/6/2003 07:23 AM, you wrote:
Does anyone else find that there is a whole lot less cooking in scouting today than there used to be? With high tech stoves and fire bans and packaged food so readily available, it seems that learning to cook in scouting is becoming a lost art. My cooking training and even more importantly, my pot and dishwashing training is a major asset in today's world.
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Roman J. Smith
Scoutmaster Troop 505
roman.j.smith.13@nd.edu
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