Category Archives: Cooking

Cooking

sausage tortillas

Camping Meals and Recipes

If camping is one of the activities that your family loves, then you will certainly want to make sure that you serve them a great meal on your next camping adventure. Cooking and eating in the great outdoors can make your camping trip so much more enjoyable.

Recipe #1: Sausage Tortilla

To help get their day off to a delicious start, scramble 500g of breakfast pan sausage in a skillet. You can add chopped onions and green onions to the sausage while it’s browning if you’d like. Once the sausage is done, add enough eggs that have been beaten up for everyone. Scramble the eggs and the sausage together until the eggs are done. Wrap the egg and sausage mixture in a flour tortilla and sprinkle grated cheese over the egg and sausage mixture. Roll up the tortilla so that it resembles a burrito. Now you can serve your family homemade breakfast burritos.

This is a great camping recipe because you only need one skillet to prepare it and it’s great for eating on a paper plate or even a paper towel.

Recipe #2: Ground Beef Gravy

Another great recipe that you may want to try on your next camping trip is to take enough ground meat for everyone and brown it in a skillet with some chopped onions. Once the meat is browned, sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of flour over the meat and continue to cook it until it becomes a rich brown color. Add a cup of water at a time to the meat so that gravy forms. If the gravy is too thick for you liking, you can add a little more water. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once it has cooked for a few minutes, it is ready to serve. You can serve it over plain white bread. You can toast the bread if you have the means or you can use it right out of the package whichever you prefer.

S’mores

There are a lot of great meals that you can prepare while you are camping besides the same old hot dogs and sandwiches. You can just about prepare anything on a camping trip that you would prepare at home. However, you may want to continue to bring all of the ingredients that you normally bring on your camping trip to make those must have smores that everyone craves. After all, a camping trip isn’t the same without the great taste of smores being included. To jazz up your smores, bring along a little coconut or peanut butter to spread or sprinkle on your smores to create a great new taste.

Your family is going to love these great new camping recipes that you have prepared for them. It is going to be just what they need to make their camping trip a great adventure. You may find that they will be asking you to prepare these meals again once you have returned home.

 

survival skills: raw meat

Eating Raw Meat. Is it Safe?

Have you ever seen Bear Grylls eating raw meat in his TV shows? Generally, he’s lost in a wild place and  he chooses to hunt and set some traps or he finds an already dead animal.At this point, all he has to do is eating this food. He could set up a fire and prepare food but this act could take him one hour or more, so he decide to consume it uncooked. Is it a savvy move?

Eating Parasites and Bacteria!

Even if meat you procure in the great outdoors may seem better compared to what you purchase in the supermarket, that does not mean it’s sufficiently safe to eat uncooked due to the presence of parasites and bacteria.

Here a short list of bacteria and parasites that may be on your wild menu:

  • Trichinella worms can be carried by numerous wild mammals
  • Brucellosis
  • Sarcoptic mange (Sarcoptes scabiei; Notoedres douglasi) Meat is edible but heavy infestations can result in secondary bacterial infections. Avoid skin contact with carcasses as transient infections by Sarcoptes scabiei is possible.
  • Escherichia coli
  • Larva migrans (Baylisascaris procyonis). Avoid exposure to fecal material and intestinal tract contents because larvated eggs are infectious for humans if accidentally ingested.
  • Tularemia can be passed while you’re butchering the animal. It’s common in rabbits.
  • Prions. They are like the infectious agent that provokes mad cow disease. Squirrels carry prions in their bones and their brain, cooking them can’t completely destroy the prions so NEVER eat brain and marrows.
  • Lyme Disease is trasmitted by ticks (sometimes called deer ticks). You’ll get it dressing the game while eating meat is safe.

External Analysis

Inspect the outer layer of the carcass, using gloves or a stick to turn it. When performing external analysis, it’s fundamental to understand that the unhealthy look of an animal may be induced by other means, not only by transmittable disease. Aging, poor or lack of nutrition, physical injuries, and physical defects that hinder food gathering and consuming tend to be the other variables that can be responsible for this sort of appearance.

  • Do the feathers, hairs, shell or any other body coverings seem in good health?
  • Is the animal in good shape or is it rather emanciated or skinny?
  • Are unnatural issues present, including abnormal growths, deformities, or traumas?
  • Does it have other sorts of symptoms of sickness, for instance proof of diarrhea?

Internal Analysis

After the external analysis, you’ve to inspect the interior of the animal while the carcass is skinned and processed.
Make use of all senses when inspecting a carcass. Bad smells commonly arise from decaying tissues, it’s possible that come from an old injury which has abscessed. Nevertheless, the spilling of intestines content into the animal cavity in the course of extraction or from cutting during harvest can be the origin for such smell. The food eaten by the animal may even cause strong smells which are not a sign of illness. For example, mussels or sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) are meals eaten by animals that cause them to smell strange, but do not indicate potential human health risks. The look of organs and flesh is frequently damaged during the hunt and may be hard to judge. However, if you find the presence of tumors, fungal growth or abscesses in the interior, you should reject the carcass.

  • How does the animal interior smell?
  • Do any of the organs or tissues seem abnormal or irregular in appearance or color?
  • Do any of the tissues or organs seem to have abscesses or infections?
  • Are there any tissues or organs that contain what appear to be parasites?

Always Cook Raw Meat

The simple reason to cook the meat you harvest in the wild is because heat can destroy the majority of the harmful infectious agents.

Remember: in the event you discover a sick or an already dead animal, never eat its meat.

Every signs and symptoms of infections, abscesses, tumors and fungal growth outside or the carcass also suggest that you must discard it.

Another reason is that humans are genetically predisposed to eat cooked food. Uncooked meat is much more difficult to masticate and uncooked plants have too many fibers to be easily digest. Our small teeth and sensitivity to raw foods are physical proof of this adaptation.

Remember: bacteria prosper and reproduce between 4°C and 60°C. To kill bacteria you must cook meat taking the internal temperature up to 65°C.

Cooking Methods

  • Roast: Cut meat into slim strips and put them on a flat rock placed near the fire.
  • Grill: Build a spit placing two green forked twigs on both sides of a fire. Spear a piece of meat with green, thin branch then rest it in the forks just over the fire.
  • Bake: Wrap meat in green, non-poisonous, leaves. Put the package in a shallow hole and cover it with mud. Build a fire just over the mound and let the heat bake it.

Meat Storing

For any uncooked meat remains, use natural refrigeration technologies. If you’re in a snowy place, you can merely wrap up them in snow.
In a more warm place, insulate the meat with leaves and clay and submerge it in a stream or put it in a hole near a water source. This storage technique is temporary.

In future posts, i’ll describe in details methods to preserve meat with salt, by drying and by smoking.

 


althea macaroni

Althea Macaroni

You can make a dish tastier than conventional “macaroni and cheese” using healthier ingredients.

Preparation time

30 minutes

Cooking time

40 minutes

Ingredients (6 serves)

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 5 yellow Allium cepa (onions), sliced
  • 2 cups Althea officinalis leaves
  • 6 cloves of Allium sativum (garlic), finely chopped
  • bacon
  • 1 tsp. all-purpose spice seasoning
  • 3 cups of milk
  • 3 tbsp. mellow (light-colored) miso
  • 2 tbsp. Maranta arundinacea (arrowroot)
  • 1/2 tbsp. salt
  • 1 10-oz. package of mozzarella, diced
  • a pinch of Cayenne hot pepper
  • 1 lbs. whole-grain macaroni
  • 1-3/4 cups dried bread crumbs
  • 2 tbsp. oil
  • 10-oz. grated cheddar

Preparation

  • Sauté the onions in the olive oil 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly browned.
  • Add the Althea officinalis leaves, garlic, bacon, and all-purpose seasoning and sauté another 5 minutes
  • Meanwhile, puree all sauce ingredients in a blender.
  • Stir the sauce into the sauté and transfer to a large, oiled baking dish.
  • Stir the oil into the bread crumbs and spread on top of the mixed ingredients.
  • Spread the cheddar on top.
  • Bake in a preheated 180 °C oven 40 minutes or until bubbly.

delicious bannocks

How to make bannock bread

Bannock is a portable, tasty and easy to make bread. You can cook using little more than a fire and a stick or you can bake or fry it.

It can be used as a stand-alone food or combined with whatever ingredients are on hand: honey, brown sugar, fruits, nuts, berries, garlic, cheese, eggs or bacon.

You can prepare the basic mix and store it in an air tight container such as a zip lock bag. It is relatively light and easy to carry because you need to add water only when you are ready to cook it.

 

Preparation time

15 minutes

Ingredients for 1 serve

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 2 pinches of baking powder (optional)

Preparation

  • mix the above ingredients well
  • add whatever extra ingredients to the dry bannock mix
  • add water a little at a time until you get the required consistency

Cooking methods

  • ash bannock:
    • roll the bannock dough into a ball and flatten into a thin cake
    • bake it directly over the smoldering coals of a fire
    • turn it occasionally until it’s golden brown
  • stick coil bannock:
    • roll the bannock dough into a long sausage shape
    • coil it around a green, peeled stick
    • hold the stick over the embers
    • rotate until the bannock is golden brown all over
  • baked bannock:
    • pat the bannock dough into a fat tortilla 1 cm thick
    • bake in a fry pan until done
  • fried bannock:
    • pat the bannock dough into a fat tortilla 1 cm thick
    • put the oil in the pan. The quantity of oil determines the texture and crust
    • fry bannock on both sides

 


 

sweet spice mix preparation

The Sweet Spice Mix

The Sweet Spice Mix is a simple and tasty blend of herbs that you can sprinkle on cereal, fruit or any kind of dessert. It enhances any sweet dish.

Preparation time

5 minutes, if you’ve already grounded each ingredient

Ingredients

  • 4 tbs. Cinnamomum spp. (cinnamon), ground
  • 4 tsp. dried Mentha piperita (peppermint), ground
  • 4 tsp. Illicium verum (star anise), ground
  • 4 tsp. Coriandrum sativum (coriander) seeds, ground
  • 2 tsp. powdered Zingiber officinale (ginger), ground
  • 1 tsp. Syzygium aromaticum (cloves), ground
  • 1 tsp. Elettaria cardamomum (cardamom), ground

Preparation

  • Mix all ingredients together and store in a jar