Somehow we got a tradition started that the kids must have foil dinners whenever we all go out to the woods. I first ate these handy meals when I was a Scout in my callow youth. Later my own sons were initiated to them when they were Scouts. It's a mostly mess free way to prepare, cook, and serve a meal, as long as the people you're feeding don't have very discriminating palates. Or care too much about cleanliness and presentation. Or mind if their food might come out still raw or thoroughly burned and you can never be certain which it will be. So you can perhaps see why my children are always so eager to have foil dinners. Our foil dinners were a combination of ground beef, diced potatoes, sliced carrots, and onions. We forgot to bring salt and pepper, though we often add that as well. As an alternative, we also had ground turkey. In ages past, I've even used sliced chicken. All you have to do is combine all of this in the proportions you want onto a generously sized piece of heavy duty foil. Wrap it tightly, then place it directly on the coals that your three Eagle Scouts have already provided. After twenty minutes, you flip them and let them cook for another twenty minutes. The fats in the meat provide the oil to keep the food from sticking to the foil, in theory. I've seen people put a few drops of cooking oil in the foil, but that would require forethought. The meals spent their required time on the coals, and the kids all made themselves appetizers of hot dogs on buns with mustard. (We had brought these along as a backup in case anyone didn't want a foil dinner.) The dinners turned out pretty well. Only a half dozen of my diced potatoes were burned to a crisp against the foil. Others reported similar results. We even made foil dinners for the pups, though we left out the diced potatoes, the sliced carrots, and the onions. They had no complaints. After lunch, the kids all made themselves S'mores, which hardly bear describing since they are so universally known. Missouri calendar:

• Kwanzaa (7 days)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 1:01 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.