Backwoodsman cooking

 It's Friday again and that means it's time for our weekly training. I was particularly looking forward to this week's meeting as we were doing backwoodsman cooking, something I have not done in such a long time due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

Knowing that we were doing backwoodsman cooking, our batch immediately started to think of a simple menu that we could come up with. The dish that we eventually decided to do was an English breakfast which comprised of ingredients such as chicken breasts, potatoes, eggs, and sausages. After having our ingredients approved, we then proceeded with collecting our tinder and kindle for the fire.

However, what we did not realize was that both the chicken and the sausage that we bought were not halal, Due to this, the Muslim scouts in our batch were unable to touch or eat the chicken and sausage. Thankfully, they could still be involved in the cooking of other ingredients such as the potatoes and the eggs.

After getting lectured by our teacher, we finally started with our cooking. After arriving at the backwoodsman area, we started to dig a hole in the ground with our shovels. Visiting the backwoodsman area again brought back many memories as it was the place we used to hold our openings. After having all the cooking equipment washed and having our stations prepared, we started to build the small triangular structure in the pit which was made up of some kindle and tinder. Following that, we started the fire using one matchstick and began to sustain it by constantly blowing and adding fuel.

When the heat supply was stable, we started to prepare the food. Since the potatoes required a longer time to cook compared to the other ingredients, we began to cook to potato first. The method of cooking was to submerge the potato completely into mud. This is to ensure that the insides of the potato were thoroughly cooked without having the skin being burnt. The potato was then placed gently into the pile of ember.

For the sausages, the way we cooked it was by first getting a medium size twig, and then shaving the bark to remove most of the impurities. After that, we gently pushed the sausage into the twig. To cook the sausage, we placed two long sticks over the fire pit and placed the sausage kebab over it.

Sausage and Potatoes (at the bottom)

Once both the sausages and the potatoes were done cooking, we immediately began to cook our chicken. For the chicken, we sliced it into a few pieces and placed them into a huge leaf-like plate for it to cook. At first, I did not thing that it would work but to my surprise, a few seconds after the chicken was placed, it started to sizzle.

Along with the chicken, we also started to cook the eggs. For this, I applied what I learnt from my seniors during my time in NPC. What we have to do was to poke a hole at the top of the egg and slowly place it into the fire pit

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we did not managed to plate our food. However, everybody managed to enjoy the food at the end of the meeting by sharing it with each other.

Overall, I really enjoyed myself today because I finally managed to participate in a backwoodsman activity after so long and this was something I was really looking forward to for a long time.