cooking in the bush for hungry and weary prospectors.

I thought i would start a new post and as i love my tucker after being a slacker out detecting i thought a cooking thread re camping might be the go.

1. one jaffle iron two slices of bread buttered on outside. One slice of tinned ham eg spam etc a slice of tomatoe and a slice of onion and salt/pepper to taste and a slice of cheese. Put in fire till you think it is cooked time can vary from fire to fire. Pull jaffle iron out and eat. If done correctly cheese will stick to top of mouth and you will quickly have to drink a cold beer to stop the pain. ( then take another bite and do the same again)

explorer wrote:I thought i would start a new post and as i love my tucker after being a slacker out detecting i thought a cooking thread re camping might be the go.

1. one jaffle iron two slices of bread buttered on outside. One slice of tinned ham eg spam etc a slice of tomatoe and a slice of onion and salt/pepper to taste and a slice of cheese. Put in fire till you think it is cooked time can vary from fire to fire. Pull jaffle iron out and eat. If done correctly cheese will stick to top of mouth and you will quickly have to drink a cold beer to stop the pain. ( then take another bite and do the same again)

Great idea about a cooking post, but mate I do'nt think I'll get you to do the cooking,to much iron in the diet, as stated in you recipe in red

Wombat

Another magical meal from Explorer:

1kg of uncooked silver side; add the silverside to a billy of boiling water and slowly simmer for about a hour and cut or dice if u are fancy- potatos to the boil and then a can of peas about 10 minutes before ready.

Drain off billy. Keep water mix in container for later thick cuppa soup mix.

pull out silverside and cut in slices (thin or thick ) depending on what sort of a glutton u are???
Now get potato pieces and put next to slices of silver side and put peas in as well. Add a slice of cheese and walla a beautiful camp cooked meal. ( better than any meal you would get in a restaurant).

Another exciting meal from the camp crook / i mean cook Explorer.

Until the next receipe - eat well

explorer wrote:Another magical meal from Explorer:

1kg of uncooked silver side; add the silverside to a billy of boiling water and slowly simmer for about a hour and cut or dice if u are fancy- potatos to the boil and then a can of peas about 10 minutes before ready.

Explorer,

Have you tried cooking your silverside in pineapple juice ? Always tender and tasty ! Beeeeeeautifulllll

Phil

Heres one you can do in a Camp oven: bung a 1kg pkt of chicken pieces and a thinly sliced onion into an oiled campoven. Place the C/oven onto the hot coals with lid off to brown the chook n onions for 5-10mins. Now remove C/oven & empty a tin of Apricot nectre in there, refill tin with cold water and stir into it a packet of french onion soup then tip this into C/oven aswell and Stir well. Place lid onto the C/oven and place it into HOT coals so that all sides are well covered as well as a few extra coals onto the lid. This usually takes about 30-40mins to cook the chicken thru and the apricot sauce will thicken nicely. This is an enjoyable meal at the end of a long day and goes even better on a bed of Mashed spud or boiled rice. Cheers Evan

bangers and mash for me guys...simple...quick....EASY....

Come back from detecting, have hunger pain, call out to partner to make something to eat. Partner not at camp..bugga! rummage through esky if only camping in truck or go through van cupboards looking for eatable items if out with van.
Hold can of something in hand and look at label, requires cooking, to much hard work, look for packet of something, same thing. Goto fridge and stare at contents, look for things that can be eaten, nothing available lessen it has to be cooked, slam fridge call out to partner on radio to come make brunch. Partner swears and says awful things like ...are you useless, cant you make your own lunch.... and says other mean things.
Shoo magpie away from truck kitchen and look to see what he was into...oh good he's left some bread, find butter and wipe knife on detecting pants to sterilize before entering it into the Vegemite jar. Make two sanggers and place camp kettle on gas stove. Sit down and enjoy brunch.

On some occasions we go all out and do a roast. Check out the crackling on the side of that pig! Just looking at that photo brings back the aroma of that feast.

1. Open can of Beans.
2. Eat
3. Check battery and get going again.

Panther

Mouth Watering Fellas

For those interested in cooking try these recipes under Camping

https://golddetecting.forumotion.net/t1288-prospectors-recipe-book

Jeff

crack a beer, weigh up your days takeings.
crack another beer (first one only got the dust off the sides) inspect your gold.
the more beers, the better the chances become for tomorrow.

after enough beer, doesnt matter if you use the can opener, or make up a burnt offering, always tastes good if you have found some colour.
the sooner you feel dopey from beer, the sooner you will hit the sack, and the earlier you will be up in the morn.

raring to go ... kev

Rule 1- bring wife & caravan on detecting trip.
Rule 2- make sure wife is in caravan @ dinner time.
Rule 3- ask wife " whats for dinner, light of my life"
Rule 4- eat dinner.
Rule 5- "that was delicious dear. You are a wonderful cook & the next nugget is yours."
Rule 6- grovel some more & pour her another glass of wine.
Rule 7- follow above procedure tomorrow.
Osama.

Receipe for those not finding gold on trips.
1 packet of chicken noodle soup/ add water ( make sure water is hot or been boiling ) and pour in cup and stir with stick. Then slowly sip and drink and pray you find a nugget for food the next day or it is another Chicken Noodle soup job again.

plus for dessert one prune from packet ( but only if you have been good)

getting sick of chicken noodle soup...... then try this one. Toast a bit of bread over fire then add something fresh to it like a can of baked beans. There is nothing fresher than straight from the can. Then to really splurge out a slice of cheese on top and a dab of pepper.

WALLA another camp fire meal from the mighty camper!!!!!!!

An remember prospectors and campers if you can not find gold at least you can eat like a KING!!!!!

explorer wrote:getting sick of chicken noodle soup...... then try this one. Toast a bit of bread over fire then add something fresh to it like a can of baked beans. There is nothing fresher than straight from the can. Then to really splurge out a slice of cheese on top and a dab of pepper.

WALLA another camp fire meal from the mighty camper!!!!!!!

An remember prospectors and campers if you can not find gold at least you can eat like a KING!!!!!

Yeah - & then fart like an elephant !!!
cheers, Osama.

Hey Narrawa
Are you sure you werent trying to entice that magpie to be a volunteer for magpie pie.
Osama do you mind if I take notes of your seven rules.(looks like one of those Happy Wife Happy Life type of things).
Cheers Dig

Hey, Narrara,
That meal looks really great in the pot, how long did that take to cook?
Very, very delicious - aaah the good old pot roasts.

Dig, good ol pie was a familiar face around our camp, kind of a watch dog mag pie. He would not let any other bird near us, he even took a liking to Madtuna, by placing a crap in his cup.

Bob, from memory about 45min to cook that roast, and about 5 minutes to inhale it.

GDAY GUYS AND GALS
i know its cheating but what i do when goin out camping and scratchin with friends is i cook a real nice oxtail stew in the slow cooker at home.
then when cooked i place it in the camp oven and freeze it. (always tastes better the next day) then when you get to the camping spot everybody sets up there tents ,camping trailers etc etc and goes off tecting or whatever and you say to them shes right mate ill cook tonite.
and bingo you get out the one you prepared earlier heat it up on the coals and your a winner!!!!!!!!!!!! and its great the next morning on toast
great two meals covered at least woo hoo
good scratchin
cheers the speciman

Having a wife who is a better detectorists and cook than yourself is a huge bonus. As a result we used to write a lot of camp cooking articles for different magazines, Below is one you may enjoy.

Cheers, Jim
----------------------------------------------------------------------

WOK IT TO ME

“Maybe we should take the wok with us?” Cheryl said. I looked at the rather large wok my mother had given us some years ago when Cheryl was into cooking Chinese Dinner Parties.
“I don’t know – it’s very big.” I hesitated to make a totally negative decision as Cheryl usually disregarded them anyway, especially when it came to packing anything to do with cooking, and the thought of what incredible culinary delights had emerged from that wok in the past had me hoping it would be included.

We were packing for our fourth gold prospecting trip to the Western Australian goldfields – a trip that was to last for five months and – we hoped- net us a return of at least a kilo of gold nuggets. Five months in our wind-up Jayco Finch and Triton dual cab Ute in the remote areas of the WA’s Eastern Goldfields. Because we were a little cramped for space every item we carried had to have a purpose, there was no room for stuff we wouldn’t use. What I didn’t know until later was a place was found for the wok.

We had been on the goldfields for two weeks and we were carefully weighing up the days finds and Cheryl was entering the result in our journal.
“Ninety grams.” Cheryl said, looking up with a grin. “I reckon that if we pass the magic 100 grams tomorrow we should celebrate.”
I looked up in surprise, “What sort of celebration?” I asked.
“You’ll see, but only if we get that ten grams,” Cheryl replied with an impish smile.
The next day we began well with a few small nuggets, but then no more. By lunchtime only a meagre two grams had been located by our state-of-the-art Minelab metal detectors and I was depressed. It would appear the promised celebration would have to wait another day.

After lunch I headed for another spot I knew had produced gold before and almost at once found a nice little two-gram nugget. I smiled to myself as I thought about the other nuggets that lay hidden nearby, just waiting for me to locate them, the promised celebration shouldn’t be hard to realise now. Three hours later I had found no more gold and a quick check on the radio confirmed Cheryl was having not much better luck, only one little gram nugget. I worked the area for another thirty minutes before beginning to detect my way back to camp. I’d gone only a few metres when I got a very big signal, too big, I thought to be gold, but gold it was. A beautiful 12-gram nugget, the celebration would be even sweeter now.

Back at camp we weighed our finds then sat out by the campfire to have a beer, I was dying to know what the celebration was but knew better than to ask. Finally Cheryl finished her drink and went into the camper. Following a lot of clattering and banging she emerged, much to my delight, with the wok.






CHERYL’S CELEBRATION STIR FRY
Because we only go to town to shop once every two weeks most of the vegetables used here are the harder varieties but almost any can be substituted.

INGEDIENTS FOR MARINATING STEAK.
Steak to the amount required.
Honey.
Garlic.
Soy sauce.
Chinese Five Spices
METHOD
Marinate a piece of steak with honey, soy sauce and garlic. Cover and leave for the day in the fridge.
Just before barbecuing the steak on the campfire sprinkle with Chinese Five Spice. Three quarters cook your marinated steak remove from heat and wrap in foil to rest and keep warm.

INGREDIENTS FOR STIR FRY.
Onion.
Capsicum.
Carrot.
Zucchini.
Mushrooms, and any vegetables that need using up such as cauliflower, beans or snow peas.
Noodles, Wokka Shelf Fresh Noodles, or similar.

SAUCE MIX.
Tablespoon or two of Soy Sauce.
Tablespoon of honey.
Chinese Five Spice.
Quarter to half a cup of vegetable stock.

METHOD
Slice your cooked steak and make ready. Heat your wok and add a tablespoon of oil, and garlic to taste. Add in the hardest vegetables such as the carrot onion and cauliflower first and stir in your sauce. Follow with softer vegetables then noodles stirring all the while. When your noodles are broken up and free add your steak and mix in with the rest of your ingredients. When the steak is heated through the rest of your ingredients should be ready. Serve and enjoy your campfire cooked stir-fry.



DESERT

PEARS IN PORT FOR TWO.
I never gave a thought to a desert as we seldom have any but Cheryl had bought some green pears last shopping trip and they were about ready to eat. This was the second part of our celebration dinner.



INGREDIENTS.
Three fresh pears.
Tablespoon of honey.
Pinch of cinnamon.
Half a cup of Yaldarra Liqueur Port, or whatever port is handy.

METHOD
Peel and core and slice three fresh pears. Stir together marinade ingredients, honey, cinnamon and port, until smooth then add pears. Marinade for at least three hours.
Place pears and sauce in saucepan and simmer on fire until pears are just soft.

SERVING
Place pears in bowls and pour sauce over them then drizzle unbeaten cream over pears and sauce in a swirl (long life cream will do just as well) and serve.
After the pears are eaten, which I can assure you won’t take long, do as we did and finish your meal with port and coffee by the campfire.

___________________________________
While our trusty camp oven will always remain our main cooking utensil turning out everything from roast pork to bread, our wok will now also travel with us wherever we go because, as we found, you can’t beat a good stir-fry in the bush to help diversify your menu.


































WOK IT TO ME



By

Jim & Cheryl Foster.






C Jim & Cheryl Foster 2004-06-23




1,136 words.

Hey Guys, this sort of cooking can only be done with a "Woman" at camp, don't you think?
Cheers,
uncle bob.

Hey Bob, thats why my best detecting mate is a woman. I gotta be the best fed prospector in Australia.

Cheers, Jim

Wanted... Women with gpx 5000 and a large collection of coils Also vast array of spares for detecting A good quad And a Fully equipped kimberyly camper And vast knowage of wa gold fields eg maps, gps way points and dealing with mines department and fake lease holders. Have i missed any thing?

Daily dutys include:

Cooking
Cleaning
Charging detector batteries
Fixing Puntures
Cleaning and Wieghting Gold
The Horizontal Shuffle

Please Send Photo Of Equippment

Hey Jim you're not wrong there...

Hey Zac, some of us can just keep dreaming......
UB

One of biggest gripes in WA is the amount of foil left laying about by inconsiderate camp cooks. If you want to burn your spuds etec to a crisp by all means do so but take you foil with you. below is a better way of cooking your spuds in the fire.

FOILED AGAIN

The signal was a nice soft mellow tone that said to me it could be gold. Of course it could be lead, solder or even aluminium foil but I preferred it would be gold. It wasn’t. It was foil. Blast! I cursed all fools who failed to properly dispose of any thing made of foil.

As I continued I reflected on all those times I’d been foiled by foil. One of the most baffling had been when we’d been prospecting some new ground on the western side of Lake Carey. After walking and swing for some distance I found a target that sounded good, very quiet but still good. Digging down a few inches I soon had in my hand a pretty 2gram nugget. What surprised me was the signal should have been louder. Only a short time later another soft signal heralded a nice specimen that, from the amount of gold in the specimen and the shallow depth the target should have been deeper. Then not far away I had another soft signal and began to scrape the ground thinking it would only be shallow – but it wasn’t. Nearly six inches down I recovered a solid ball of foil about the size of a marble. How that ball of foil came to be there was beyond me. It had obviously been there several years but there was no sign of any workings or campfire anywhere near where we were. It was a few years later the answer to this mystery was solved. The gold was of a type found in the area that was difficult for PI detectors to sense. VLF machines had no trouble finding that gold but I was shown some samples that any SD, Pulse Induction machine simply ignored despite the fairly solid appearance of the gold. Years before we visited someone had found that patch but left some gold behind for us – and the foil. The story was that there are some people with a twisted sense of humour out there on the goldfields. Whenever they answered a call of nature they would first dig a hole and drop in a ball of foil. Then they would do their business in the hole before filling it all in. In some cases a one or two cent coin was used and later a five cent coin. I have dug one of the 5c coins but it had been there for several years so the coin was all that was left.

Another time I found a nice soft, mellow signal under a small tree. Scraping the ground clean I found the signal still there and began to dig. After several inches the target was still there but sounded even softer. I kept digging and eventually the signal all but disappeared. For a moment or two I was baffled then I caught a glint of silver in the tree above my hole. It was a strip of foil caught in the tree only a foot or so above the ground. I laughed out loud about that one.

In some areas the foil is so thick it drives you nuts. You see it caught in the saltbush, half covered by sand and some you have to scrape the ground before you see it. In one area we visited foil was scattered over a wide area to the east of where several camps had been. The prevailing westerlies had blown it far and wide. Foil is a darned nuisance!

Far too many people toss all their rubbish in their campfire then leave it behind when they leave. The latest foil problem comes from long life milk and other foil lined containers. These are tossed in the fire where the outer cardboard burns away leaving the thin foil liner. After a bit of weathering this thin foil begins to break up and blow away in the wind littering the countryside, sometimes for kilometres down wind.

The other problem is the heavier kind of foil commonly used for cooking. This too is often tossed in the campfire after use. Many people find wrapping a potato in foil and dropping it in the campfire a convenient way to cook a humble spud. Many times this will render a spud inedible with often only a small centre of the poor vegetable not burned to a crisp. I once went on a detecting trip in WA with 3 other blokes and was appalled at the way they cooked and the black and burned spud in foil was one of their favourites.

I decided the only way I was going to get a good feed was if I took over the cooking and one of the ways I did this was to use foil to create veggie packs.

They way to cook your vegetables in foil is simple and you end up with a delicious meal with no pots to wash. What is more, vegetables cooked in this way are healthy and will go with almost any meat. We call this a veggie pack.

You can use almost any vegetable this way but the most commonly used are hard vegetables such carrots, potatoes, cabbage, brussel sprouts and pumpkin.

Cut up your vegetables according to their hardness, the harder the vegetable the smaller you cut them as opposed to softer ones such as cabbage and pumpkin. Place your vegetables on a large square of foil and drizzle any good cooking oil such as olive oil over them. Then sprinkle salt to your flavour, I find garlic salt will impart more flavour than ordinary salt. When ready roll the vegetables up in two layers of foil and place them on a layer of hot coals. Leave for about fifteen minutes, depending on the heat of the coals, and then turn and leave for another fifteen minutes. You can also use a BBQ plate and get the same results without all the ash.

The end result will be far better than any foil wrapped spud tossed in the fire and you don’t have to worry about washing up any cooking pots. It is the ideal way to cook when camping and a perfect accompaniment to any barbequed meat. The ingredients can be varied according to taste and it is easy to experiment until you create your own favourite veggie pack. And you can create and cook your own veggie packs at home not just in the bush.

The most important thing is to take your foil with you, not throw it in the campfire and leave it. We do put the foil back in the fire to burn off the excess oil but we then retrieve it, cool it, and put in our rubbish bag. We do the same with any cans we might use. In the old days the old time diggers had no way of taking their rubbish back to town for disposal but you have no such excuse. Foil and other rubbish left in the bush are unsightly and a sign an irresponsible person camped there – do the right thing and take it with you.

Don’t keep this message to yourself, ensure you encourage others to take their rubbish home with them, and not just the foil, you should leave nothing in your campfire except ashes and even that should be spread out to cool and then covered with soil.

I hope the next soft signal I dig is gold – and not foil.

Gday


Granite I understand where you are coming from when you talk about detecting up foil, a few times over the years I have dug what I believed was a solid metallic target only to have it dissappear completely and even after detecting all over and around the hole have not been able to locate it.

The last time away the same thing happened and it was only when I noticed a very small amount of decomposed foil did I realise what the target was, as I dug it the foil opened up and spread apart in pieces that must have been too small to detect, when it was clumped together it gave a convincing signal, so I now believe previous targets that did the same thing were most likely clumps of decomposing foil.

Anyway the trick to cooking potatoes and other vegies in the fire is to dig a hole slightly away from the main fire and place the foil wrapped packets in the soil, re cover with the soil and then drag a small amount of coils over the top, when selecting potatoes for fire cooking I pick small baby potatoes, they take less time to cook, before wrapping in the foil I spike them with a fork, usually putting them in the soil about 20 mins or so before cooking the meat or whatever, if you put them directly into the coals you will end up with them burnt on the outside and raw on the inside.

I also do the same with sweet potatoes,carrotts,pumpkin and also onions, when done right they are delicious.

But as Granite says make sure you pick up the foil and bin it and dont leave it in the fire as some poor sucker like me will detect it up in a few years time.

cheers

stayyerAU

Not getting your daily or weekly dose of Omega 3 oils in your diet. Then here is quick cooking tip.

One slice of bread toasted to give it taste and strength then whack open a can of sardines. But before u do this spread some butter or margarine on the toast then put on a couple of sardines from the tin on the bread and a bit of the oil and juices. ( can substitute oil or juices if u have no butter) and walla. Another BUSHMANS feast in the desert or bush. ( one bushmans Sardine and toast feast coming up)...... Boy is life good out in the bush....

An just to add a little extra treat one vitamin C tablet and a cup of water. ( this will stop scurvee that affects many a weary Gold Prospector)

all great ideas

Hey stayyerAU, you certainly have detecting fever huh.... i think you drag "coals" over your potatoes, not "coils" hehehe, so cute

hey explorer.... you can have my share of sardines. I dont think so.... eeeeek..... i dont call it a source of omega 3 but i do call it BAIT....

lol, cheers

One can of tomato soup (plus can of milk) with one or two bags of Twisties in it.
Debloodylicious,
Jig