Cooking in the Woods

 

Two days ago I went to the woods after heavy rains and had some problems throughout the day, so I decided to go back to the same place today and go over the whole thing again. This time I went much better prepared, but even though I carried more fire-lighting gear I did not use this today. It had been raining all last night but today was fine and sunny. 

In order to right mistakes made two days ago I did not put up a tarp lean-to shelter this time but concentrated upon lighting a good fire from the start, because I had brought some bacon and a piece of bread with me to eat. I found some birch-bark on the trek over to the area, and this time had my axe with me and chopped some birch-wood into sections, thus opening the drier inner wood to the fire. There was a lot of pine-wood around which was dead, and I looked further up where the area was not so dense and the wood seemed slightly drier for this. This wood was on the base of the small pines, snapped easily, meaning to some extent it was a little drier, and this did get going more easily than before.

Firstly, I made a cup of coffee on a small metal stove, using eco fire-lighters for this; after the coffee was made I turned the stove over on some sticks below it and this started the fire off. This time the fire went much better than the other day and no problems arose here. After coffee, and when the fire was going well and starting to burn down, I cooked some bacon and toasted the bread at the same time. 

After I had eaten the bacon sandwich and Sam had had his share, I made a cup English Tea by boiling the stainless-steel mug on the fire. 

The above photo shows a Milbank Bag used for cleaning up the water, and the Water Purification Kit which Carl gave me for Yuletide.I did not use this today because I had allowed the fire to die right down and I would prefer to boil the water afterwards with a one-minute rolling-boil to make sure it is safe. Next time I go over this will be the next experiment to try. 

On the way back I collected some small slivers of birch-bark which went into my pocket to dry out for another time. Also looked around the area to see what was available for the future. There is plenty of punk-wood about but this was very wet, will maybe collect and dry some out next time.