Topical Guide 463
Mark Dorset
Food: Cooking
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
“[…] This bread is just like the stuff we made in the Boy Scouts, or I should say tried to make in the Boy Scouts. […] You made the batter,” he says, “or the dough. I wish I could remember whether it was bread or biscuits. Maybe there were ways to do both. Anyway, you made the dough, let’s say, and then you stretched it out — no, no — you rolled it out, like clay when you were making those bowls in grammar school. And then you wrapped it around the stick. Then you held the stick over the fire, and in a remarkably short time the dough became hard and black and tough as rope.”
Sophie and Paul, “Campfire Bread on a Stick Recipe,” from Vegan on Board:
Making bread over a campfire is one of the rites of passage that everyone should experience. Scouts and forest school children are often taught how to make stickbread. It’s a great way to learn about outdoor skills, and a great reward to enjoy! In England bread cooked on a stick is known as damper. In Denmark Snobrød is associated with the concept of hygge—a feeling of coziness, contentment and everyday togetherness. It really is such a good feeling to enjoy fresh bread you have made yourself whilst enjoying the beauty and power of nature! And it’s a great activity for everyone to enjoy together. Food for the soul!
Lieut.-General R. S. S. Baden-Powell, C.B., F.R.G.S., Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Good Citizenship, “Camp Life: Bread Making”:
To make bread, the usual way is for a scout to take off his coat, spread it on the ground, with the inside uppermost (so that any mess he makes in it will not show outwardly when he wears his coat afterwards); then he makes a pile of flour on the coat and scoops out the centre until it forms a cup for the water which he then pours in hot; he then mixes the dough with a pinch or two of salt, and of baking-powder or of Eno’s Fruit Salt, and kneads and mixes it well together until it forms a lump of well-mixed dough. […]
Cut a stout club, sharpen its thin end, peel it and heat it in the fire. Make a long strip of dough, about two inches wide and half an inch thick: wind it spirally down the club; then plant the club close to the fire and let the dough toast itself, just giving the club a turn now and then.
Memories: Relationships Among; Relationships to Present Perceptions
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
“My God,” says Matthew. He pulls a length of bread from the vase. “Do these remind you of anything? […] This bread is just like the stuff we made in the Boy Scouts, or I should say tried to make in the Boy Scouts. […]”
Right here, at this moment, just as he’s beginning to describe the making of bread-on-a-stick, Matthew is struck by his strongest memory of Boy Scout camp. It isn’t bread-on-a-stick; […]
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory:
In fact, there is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. In most cases these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as “signs” that recall to us former images. The convenience and rapidity of perception are bought at this price; but hence also springs every kind of illusion.
See also:
Food, Appetite for TG 56; Food, Chicken, Chicken versus Clams TG 44; Food: as Significant Element of a Remembered Incident and Its Literary Reproduction TG 34; Salami TG 135; Food: Preferences: Chicken versus Clams TG 155; Food: In Popular Culture TG 155; Food: International Cuisines in Translation: Chinese: Chow Mein TG 400; Food: Kartoffelklösse TG 367; Food: Aïoli, Chocolate Decadence TG 424; Food: Artificial TG 460
Memory TG 57, TG 125; Memory, Faulty: Causes of, Results of TG 34, TG 133; Memory, Remembering, Forgetting, and the Search for Lost Time TG 22; Memory, Faulty, Causes of Distortion in TG 97
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