Cooking with Scouts

No, we did not make Girl Scout Cookies with real Girl Scouts. That’s a whole different conversation.

Chris and I spent Saturday with the Scouts teaching some Viking foods, games, and fire management.

I can hear you now: but they learn how to cook and do fire management in scouts! And you would be correct. But these are young folks. Not a lot of experience points. So they did different things within the whole sphere of fire management for baking, general cooking, and frying. I did the frying, though, as it was pretty hot smoky work. We had some damp, punky oak to use.

The troop leader, Austin, picked up a cookbook and decided his troop would be experimenting with some new flavours and textures. In Cold Day Soup, we used coarse mustard and calendula flowers. They did not expect to like it, but were surprised when they did. I did tip the scales a little in my favour by making sure everything had plenty of butter, a bit of extra salt, and just enough vinegar.

Hmm, now I’m having thoughts about a butter beer sauce……

Anyway, for Viking Fried Barley, we switched out the barley for buckwheat. We made a fire and a tripod. Both were things of beauty. I used my new Iron Age pot for frying the buckwheat. The buckwheat did get a big soggy as not all of the water was drained off after cooking. But, a hot iron pan steamed much of it off.

The scouts tried both dishes, and were pleasantly surprised; they liked both of them! The Cold Day Soup disappeared fast, even though it was a hot evening.

Chris did marvels with teaching them how to play Hneftafl! I wanted to play, but we were busy over at the fire with managing and baking.