Vernon WadeThere are lots of cooks out there who actually know what they are doing. I pretty much taught myself to cook, out of necessity. I haven’t a clue most of the time, but I do love to eat. 

I have made everything posted here. If I can do it, you certainly can. Someday, if there is enough interest, I will gather all these recipes into a cookbook. In the meantime, in the spirit of dashes, dollops and three-fingered pinches, I present them here for you to try. Let me know what you think.

 

 

I cooked this on my Biolite Campstove2, using pellets for fuel. Any campstove will work. The trick is to fashion a double boiler. I broke up several small branches and tossed them in my large camp pot to form a trivet. I put the small pot from the set inside this, resting on the branches. The rice and broth went into the small pot and was covered with the lid. This floated in larger pot, with the water about halfway up the sides of the smaller pot. I covered the large pot with a lid, too. I placed the base of an old campfire toaster on top of my stove to defuse the heat and put the double boiler on top of that.

 

Ingredients

2 servings.

  • 1 cup rice – I used half and half brown and long grain white rice
  • 2 cups broth – I used frozen chicken broth but you could use water mixed with dried soup or bouillon
  • ¼ onion, peeled and diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • several fresh morels, chopped bite-sized (any other mushroom will work – use what is in season)
  • veggies – 2 stakes asparagus, 1 carrot, 1 stalk celery, all chopped bite-sized
  • butter or oil
  • salt & pepper to taste

            I cleaned my vegetables at home, just to make things easier. For some reason I didn’t cut them up while I was at it. That would have made things a little quicker in camp, but it wasn’t a big deal.

The rice and broth went in the double boiler with the stove on low. I let it simmer while I got the camp set up. You need about an hour to cook the rice, but I let it go a bit longer, adding some more pellets to the stove and a little water to the larger pot to keep it from boiling dry.

When I was ready to eat, I took the rice off and replaced it with a cast iron skillet. I got it hot, added a little oil and the morels, salt, and pepper. I stirred it to keep the mushrooms from burning and to coat them on all sides with hot oil. After several moments I added a splash of water, the onions, garlic, and veggies. I let this cook just long enough for the onions to soften and stirred it all into the rice.

It started to rain about the time the food was ready, so I ducked inside the tipi and ate dinner.