Making Do

You may recall that the glass window on my grill shattered and ruined my dinner a few nights ago. I've been reduced to cooking indoors, which is never much fun in the summer. Tonight, though, Rich decided that it would be a great idea to build a campfire and cook out there. It's quite a hike to our backyard campsite from the kitchen. It's not miles, or anything, but compared to the short jaunt to the deck in which we can quickly fetch any forgotten items, it can be a pain. But I wasn't interested in eating any foods that would be prepared on the stovetop and in the oven, anyway, so I agreed to prep and pack a meal to cook over the open flame.

I had some hot dogs leftover from the London Broil au Glass Shards incident and some burgers that would be easy enough to cook on an open fire. Of course, there was the issue of vegetables. My fridge is packed with them, and we don't have time to take the night off from our green consumption. My solution was to slice up a zucchini, a purplette onion, some broccoli, and toss them with a little canola oil, some salt, pepper and herbs, and some leftover already-cooked potatoes. I have a vegetable basket meant to be used on the grill that would serve us well on the campfire grill.

I learned to cook on a campfire years ago when I worked at Camp Tepee. We were required to have a cookout with our "tribe". On my first go-around, I didn't know how to start a fire, didn't know how to cook on one, and couldn't imagine how I would go about keeping 12 little girls safe and occupied while trying to figure it out. Fortunately, I had a great outdoorsman of a boyfriend at the camp, coincidentally also named "Rich", who was able to help me out. As time went on, I became very adept and creative in my campfire cookery.

Being as confident as I am in my abilities, if I had my way, I would have been in charge of building the fire and arranging the cooking space. Rich set things up backwards with the campfire raging upwind of the grill setup. I didn't complain, but it did make cooking a challenge. I did need to interfere when it came to building an appropriately sized bed of coals under the grill. If you aren't familiar with cooking on a fire, you want to do it over a bed of hot coals. You can determine the temperature by putting your hand above the grill and counting how long you can hold it there. If you can only keep it there without feeling the burn for a second or two, it's really hot and good for searing meats. If you can keep it there for 4-5 seconds or so, it's a good medium. Much longer than 5 seconds, and you might be able to have a slow-cooked chili in a cast-iron pot. I directed my darling to build up the coal bed before we could get going.

When the meat was done, I got the vegetables going in the basket on a medium-ish location. They were delicious when done. I love grilled zucchini, and cooking over real wood makes a nice difference in flavor.

We topped off our meal with s'mores, the true campfire classic.