EclecticGuy » Boy Scouts

Dutch Oven Cobbler Recipe

EclecticGuy — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:03:05 +0000

I love Dutch Oven cooking! My “specialty” is Dutch Oven Cobbler. I’ve been making it since I was a Boy Scout back in the “70s” and I make it now with my son’s Boy Scout troop. Here is my recipe.

Ingredients

2 packages of yellow cake mix
1 stick of softened or melted butter (unsalted is best)
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1 egg
4 cans of fruit pie filling (apple, peach, cherry, blueberry, pear)

Preparation

Some people line their Dutch Oven with aluminum foil to make cleanup easier, but I am a purist and prefer to cook directly in a well-seasoned oven.

Pour the cans of fruit into the oven. I like to mix 2 types of fruit – 2 cans of apple with 2 cans of cherry or 2 cans of peach with 2 cans of blueberry (my personal favorite!). I put 1 type of fruit in 1/2 the oven and the other type on the other half, keeping them unmixed.

Dry mix the 2 packages of yellow cake mix, vegetable oil, stick of butter (softened or melted) and egg in a bowl. The mixture will be crumbly and dry. Spread it evenly over the top of the fruit.

Bake in Dutch Oven – arrange a layer of coals the diameter of the oven. Place the oven on the coals. Add a layer of coals on the top of the oven. Bake for 45 minutes. You can start checking it at 35 minutes. It is finished when the cake has risen and the top of the cake is a nice golden toasty brown.

Makes me hungry thinking about it!

Potato Canon at Night

EclecticGuy — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:22:07 +0000

Every January, my sons’ Boy Scout troop goes cabin camping on the (frozen) lake at our Council’s camp. I posted about our ice fishing experiences back in January. I forgot that I had taken some video of another favorite activity at the Cabin Camp – potato canons! Also called Spud Guns, Spudzookas, and potato launchers – checkout this article on How Stuff Works for more details on how to build them and some theory of operation.

These canons can shoot a full size potato 100s of feet – we fire them out on to the frozen lake. This year, we shot a few at night and I caught them on video on my little Pentax W60 camera at 30fps. There was literally no light so the video (and photos) are grainy but the effect is interesting and capturing the blast in the canon was VERY interesting. Here is the sequence of 4 frames right at the time of launch:

(you can see the full size photos here)

In this sequence you can clearly see the initial ignition, then the blast up the barrel, and finally, the blast expelling the potato out of the canon. Keep in mind that the canon is made of thick, white PVC pipe! Since the camera shoots 30 frames/second and the blast occurs over 2-3 frames, the entire event is taking about 1/10 of a second!

Here is the video from which these stills were captured:

Ice Fishing with the Boy Scouts

EclecticGuy — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:46:25 +0000

Every January, our Boy Scout troop heads up to NH (we’re based in MA) to cabin camp. Last weekend was this year’s trip. The cabin is on the waterfront of a large pond. Last year I taught a few boys how to ice fish – we cut the holes with a hatchet! This year I was armed with a hand auger, 3 tip-ups, a bucket of shiners and some other items.

It was an extremely cold weekend, it was down to below 0 on Friday night. On Saturday morning a group of boys wanted to get going so we headed on to the ice. I drilled the first hole to show the boys how to use the auger. The ice was a good 15″ thick. As I rigged the tip-up, the Scouts moved to the next location and drilled the hole. It was ready when I arrived with the rest of the gear. We put in 3 tip-ups. The boys also wanted to do some jigging so we made jigging rods out of some sticks, ice line, a tippet, hook and shiner. We ended up with 7 holes, 3 with tip-ups and 4 for hand jigging.

First catch was a 12″ cat fish caught on the stick. Then FLAG and we had a fish on one of the tip-ups. Unfortunately, it got away as the Scout hand-over-handed him in. That’s part of the learning! Then a few minutes later, another FLAG on the same tip-up. This time, they landed him – an 18″ Chain Pickerel.

We left the tip-ups and “rods” set while we went in for lunch and when we came out, another 18″ Chain Pickerel was on one of the rods. That was the end of the action for a few hours as Scouts drifted in and out of ice fishing and other activities.

Secret Ice Fishing Dance

After dinner, my son and his friend went to check the traps and as he was pulling up one of the “rods” he felt a tug, so he set the hook and carefully brought in a 24″ Chain Pickerel. Not a bad day all in all and a new group of boys experienced some fun ice fishing!