Bob's Corner
From our weekly issue dated December 02, 2009
Never have been much of a cook, and I suspect that some of the Boy Scouts who were in the Raven Patrol of Troop 899 in National City, Calif. still remember the dinner I cooked at one summer camp.
It really wasn’t my fault. I mean, I had heard that the way to cook was to simply put everything into a hot pan with some oil or grease. That’s what I did. However, fish fillets don’t take well to that sort of treatment, especially if the pan is turning white hot.
When the patrol sat to eat, my fellow Scouts and the advisers with us looked at the food rather oddly. One of the advisers opined that he had never before eaten oversized potato chips that tasted vaguely like fish. That was the last time during that summer camp that I cooked any meal.
Although I did win the pancake-cook-and-heave (no jokes, please) competition. The contest involved cooking a pancake (no oil allowed) over a campfire, then running with the pan and cake some 30 yards; moving the pan up in fast mode so the hotcake would fly out and go over a wire about 7 feet up; catching the cake; then running back to a judge, who would sample the cake.
Yeah, it was a Boy Scout thing. But I did win. Somehow. I think there was some skullduggery by one of our advisers who managed to slip me a spatula. Otherwise that pancake probably would still be stuck in the pan.
Another of my cookery adventures involved making some bread pudding when we lived in Escondido, Calif. I had managed to save a whole bunch of bread crusts and small slices. One Saturday when Jan was not at home, I went to work. I was so proud of my efforts. I put in all the ingredients I thought necessary. But unfortunately I left out sugar. So we had a glut of bread pudding that no one could eat, even when we tried to sweeten it after the fact.
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The birds liked it though.
More recently, I wanted some hotcakes for breakfast, and with Jan’s advice managed to cook three. The first one was not too good. The second was better, the third was the best-tasting one yet.
And I didn’t have to throw any of them over a wire.
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