Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Breakfast Flambeau

When Joe was in seminary, before the days of parenthood, we camped in Minneopa State Park with some buddies. One of the meals we planned, bacon and eggs cooked over the fire in a paper bag. I remembered having done this in grade school at a Lutheran Girl Pioneers campout.

Everyone mocked me. "It can't be done, Mary."

But I knew it could. I had seen it done.

Of course, it had been a few years, but how hard could it be?

This was before the days of the world wide web. It was there, but not like today. I don't even know if we had a dial up modem in our apartment at that time. Probably not. I did look at the library to see if I could find any directions on cooking bacon and eggs in a paper bag over an open fire, but to no avail.

But really, how hard could it be?

Everyone laughed as I broke the eggs into the bags. They all laughed as we debated whether the bacon should be on top or underneath.

They all laughed as the bag caught fire and our breakfast landed in the flames. We managed to rescue a few strips of bacon and twist them around sticks to cook. Mmmm. Big breakfast.

Everyone laughed. All weekend.

But now we live in the age of the internet in every home. Blogs. Wikipedia. About.com. Now I can get instructions. And guess what, Tony? It can be done.

I can even watch a video.

In fact, there is even a downloadable Paper Bag Cookbook for all your campfire cooking needs.

I'll have to start asking for paper bags in the grocery store. Imagine eleven individual lunch bags for a meal...Uh, uh. Not gonna happen.

1 comment:

madhenmom said...

I remember that camping trip well. In fact, I had thought about googling to find out how to do that egg thing before our next camping trip. Thanks for saving me the trouble. I'll let you know if we end up using that method.

Char