692 
FOREST AND STREAM 
June i, 1912 
Some Notes on American Camping Foods 
By L. LODIAN 
A MILMOT or thousand-word article like 
this can but give a brief passing survey 
of a big subject, with some suggestions 
pointing out a few of the medical values of 
foods carried by out-campers. Without realiz¬ 
ing it, many of our commonest foods possess 
remedial virtues for the occasional setbacks or 
ills of outdoor life—as chills, fevers, worries, 
bowel troubles—which, used appropriately and 
in time, keep one in normal health. 
The five essentials in camping-out foods are 
meat, bread, sugar, tea and coffee; and a person 
could camp from coast to coast on these five—at 
a push. But, the monotony of the thing. Hence 
variation in the fodder supply is a necessity to 
comfort. Cheese and eggs and nuts are splendid 
auxiliaries to meat; canned vegetables of the 
bean family help out the hardtack; dried fruits 
supplement the sugar; and cacao is an important 
variant, all of which bever¬ 
ages are made more homey by 
adding evaporated milk 
But the average American 
camper very properly requires 
variety in his bill of fare; and 
the catalogs of our outdoor 
life supply houses’ list quite 
a lot of condensed foods suit¬ 
able for all climates and pur¬ 
poses. For the novice con¬ 
templating a camping trip, the 
best thing for him to do is to 
get copies of catalogs, and 
purchase specimens of the 
provisions, and try them out 
on himself in his own home 
of an evening and morning( if 
a business individual), and 
particularly on Sundays. If 
possible, in fact, live for days exclusively on 
this camping out fare—see how it agrees with 
you—for, recollect, when in the wilds you may 
have for days no other fare than these goods 
you carry. 
Trying out the goods, first, at home, will 
also enable you to get your hand in at cooking— 
sometimes a most important desideratum in the 
open. Not all men are handy at cooking; and 
much food is wasted and disgust caused, some¬ 
times, by the bungling of the cook of a party. 
Every experienced camper should know 
how to serve up hot biscuits of a morning, and 
have them light without yeast; to make a good 
enough fire from rubbish knocking around, if 
there is no wood; to extemporize a shower 
bath with a minimum of water; to obtain a 
light if lacking matches; to sharpen a razor on 
the gritty particles imbedded in a shoe sole, if 
lacking a hone; and a hundred other wrinkles 
of woodcraft. 
The novice who expects to have the sheer 
lazy, criminal time-wasting time he was wont to 
have lying prone in the hammock on a veranda 
of a New England farm—the annual “outing” 
of thousands—is in for a jolt! Genuine camping 
is the strenuous life carried on in the open—a 
species of leg and arm athletics in the wilds. 
It has been the salvation of many a man—es¬ 
pecially to the fevered brain of a speculator. 
He gets that touch of nature which drives home 
into that fevered brain the realization that there 
is something more in this life than dollar- 
getism. 
* * * * 
The present scribe has done a vast amount 
of camping out over the globe, but this was 
very rarely for the “fun of the thing,” but in 
the course of the sheer struggle for life, while 
at real hard work on railroad location work 
and surveying, inspecting manufacturing plants, 
mills and mines; erecting machinery as a prac¬ 
tical mechanical engineer; canal and irrigation 
work; and the like outdoor working “recrea¬ 
tion.” In these multifarious duties he has had 
experiences from the St. Lawrence to the Rio 
Grande, and half a dozen thousand miles be¬ 
yond—to the sand-plains of the Plata; from the 
Paramata (Australia) to the Ganges (India); 
from one end of Siberia to the other; and of 
European countries, repeatedly. Hence the 
authority of these notes. 
There is a difference in the opinions of 
those who camp out for a few weeks “for the 
fun of the thing,” and those who camp out 
month after month through all the rigors of a 
Siberian winter, because their work obliges 
them to do it! You then begin to realize the 
superiority of fairly strong tea over any other 
beverage; of white bread (no wheat hardtack) 
over all other breadstuffs and vegetables; of 
loaf sugar over every other form of sweetener; 
and of dried, unsalted meat and desiccated eggs 
and evaporated milk and cream over other di¬ 
versified animal products. 
An explanation of why tea is more “stay¬ 
ing” as a camping beverage than coffee, is in 
order. It retards the waste of tissue. Why? 
Tea contains tannin; and, just as tannin pre¬ 
serves skin (and, if the process is continued 
long enough, converts it into leather), so does 
the tea infusion, in a measure, help preserve 
the bodily organs. 
Of the teas, the pure black teas like cian- 
chang (suchong), kongu and asam are more 
sustaining than Ceylon teas, and require slightly 
less sugar than green or mixed teas. 
Medicinally, strong hot tea, without milk, 
is a splendid stand-by in bowel trouble, and I 
have often checked by it apprehensive signs of 
a choleric threatening. In headache, and to 
cure melancholia, it is superb. 
Coffee has not the sustaining or carrying 
power of tea. All Arctic workers testify to 
their preference for tea, though American 
campers prefer their coffee. There is no saving 
effected in carrying along coffee extracts (mostly 
of dubious origin), as you have the weight of 
the bottle, and the water holding the essence 
of the extract, to carry along. The powdered 
form is best, in tight cans. A coffee paste on 
the market is—well, just “stuff.” Coffee tablets, 
of German origin, have been imported and 
tried, but died in the “horning.” 
Cacao, erroneously called cocoa by some, is 
only useful as an occasioned change. None of 
the numerous outdoor life 
tribes or parties of the New 
England or the Western States 
have ever adopted it; and only 
occasional Arctic folk have 
“sung its praises.” Contrary 
to popular notion, cacao and 
chocolate are not the life-sus- 
tainers commonly thought. 
They are useful as adjuncts; 
alone, you might starve on 
them, particularly if quite 
pure—i. e., without a particle 
of sugar. 
Cacao the write has often 
taken along, but in the form 
of the crude cacao beans— 
purchasable at most large city 
groceries. To use, roughly 
crush them in a leather bag or 
extemporized mortar, and drop for five minutes 
into scalding water. Or, they can easily be 
chewed whole as you go along, and keep away 
the pangs of hunger. Can be carried loose in 
the pocket, and are always cleanly to handle. 
A handful crushed with a couple of lumps of 
sugar, yields an ideal-tasting chocolate. 
The medicinal value of cacao should not be 
overlooked. It is (in chocolate form) of great 
use in throat trouble, as tonsilitis, quinsy, et al. 
So, in fact, is sugar alone, often bringing at 
once grateful relief. All goods containing salt 
immediately irritate and aggravate the disease. 
A rather dolorous exhibit in the camping 
supply catalog of to-day, is the pocket case of 
medicines to be carried. Better carry along 
nature’s own medicines, in the foods you take— 
wherever practicable. For this reason I have 
noted here and there in this short article the 
medicinal value of things consumable. 
***** 
Dried cream and milk have entered the 
camping-out life in the past decade only, but 
have been known for over half a century. It is 
all right; and even butter can be churned from 
the dried cream, after diluting, but with oh! 
such a flat taste compared to the fresh dairy 
article. 
Dried eggs are also “alright.” I once had 
A STACK OF TEA COMPRESSED. 
