This is my post for #memoirmonday #42 What are your favorite dishes—either to cook or to eat? hosted by @ericvancewalton
I guess my favorite food would be anything that has been cooked over a campfire, with that I mean a fire that was from wood that has been burned down to coals and a grill placed on top.
We camped once a year for 2 weeks and one time I was thinking about how we have a campfire every night and how the ground under it would be hot like an oven and I wondered if I could cook a roast under the ground with a fire on top of it. I had never heard of it being done but I tried it anyway. This was in the 1980s.
I prepared the roast and had someone dig the hole. Digging the hole is the hardest part because the person doing the digging has to dig out where a fire has been burning.
I covered the food in the roasting pan with several layers of heavy duty foil
and put the lid on it and covered the lid with foil. My husband put it in the hole and covered it with sand. To go with it I put dinner rolls in foil and cooked them over coals.
We built a fire on top of it and let it cook all day and in the afternoon we dug it up. Digging it up is a hot job, I learned to bring a long handled shovel camping with us. The first year all we had was a short army folding shovel.
there were carrots on the bottom and the burnt green on top was some leftover green beans, they did not fare well but everything else was perfect you could cut the meat with your fork. To go with it, I put dinner rolls in foil and cooked them over coals. Not many people cook and eat a roast while primitive camping on an island.
If I can not cook over an open fire, then my favorite would be shrimp, how I like to eat them is to boil in only salted water. I caught these in a little 6 foot cast net.
My second favorite is lobster, baked and dipped in garlic butter. We don't get them as much as we used to which makes them a real treat.
I have a favorite candy bar, Dollar General's milk chocolate with caramel and sea salt, it has big chunks of salt and as for the caramel, I can not taste it which is a shame. I like to eat a few squares after I eat dinner. One thing I like about this candy bar is 100% of the proceeds go to Dollar General Literacy Foundation.
This is not my favorite food but many years ago I was cooking a stew in the crockpot, my sister came by and thought it needed more ingredients and dumped more spices and something I can not remember in it. When my Mom came by she looked in the crockpot and put in macaroni noodles. Neither of them told me what they did. It was the best "stew" I have eaten.
photos are mine
