{"id":25497,"date":"2021-07-18T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T17:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=25497"},"modified":"2021-07-20T13:17:03","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T20:17:03","slug":"eat-your-heart-out-reflections-on-dutch-oven-cooking-and-lineage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2021\/07\/18\/eat-your-heart-out-reflections-on-dutch-oven-cooking-and-lineage\/","title":{"rendered":"Eat Your Heart Out: Reflections on Dutch Oven Cooking and Lineage"},"content":{"rendered":"

River folk are divided into two factions. Those who love to cook on the river, and those who pack leftover pizza slices into daily rationed Ziplocs for sustenance. I descended from the former breed.<\/p>\n

Meal planning is one of my favorite parts of river trips. Though this task invokes a sense of dread for some\u2014to such drastic degrees that they will trade cooking responsibilities for groover management\u2014not me. While groover management doesn’t intimidate me in the least, meticulously plotting the most flavorful, healthy and efficiently prepared river provisions (using minimal ingredients) is my forte.<\/p>\n

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On my first spring river trip of 2021, my love for procuring river grub culminated into one of the most splendid menus to-date. The key to it all? The Oregon Territory chuck wagon first mate: The Dutch oven. I\u2019m talking the original, real deal, full cast iron, rusts-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, heavy as sin, 10-inch OG Lodge model.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how I became so infatuated with cooking on a Dutch oven. Although I have no memories of learning the art of meal prep on an open fire, my rustic kitchen queen of a great-grandmother, Pauline Pearl Powell was a pro at this.<\/p>\n

She was born in the 1910s, a daughter of Valsets, Oregon (a now extinct logging town in the coastal range). When the Great Depression hit, she and her logger husband moved to Owyhee country to manage a mining camp. They lived in canvas tents, and as the lone female amongst the crew, Pauline worked as the camp cook. Sometimes I romanticize feeling Great-G-ma Pauline in my bones while squatted next to my cast iron cauldron. I imagine shouting \u201cSoups on!\u201d and grasping a hand-whittled wooden spoon to shovel stew into the bowls of an endless line of starving, soot-covered men.<\/p>\n

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In contrast to the riverside mining camps of yore, to deliver the fanciest food, cooking for two or three maximum is ideal. Therefore, I invited my roommate and trialed my favorite recipes on him. This trip was also the maiden voyage of my new frame, dry boxes and thus, my newly packed and organized kitchen set-up\u2014all based on a Dutch oven cooking model. Luckily, spring timing worked out for the legal allowance of a fire, which is clutch when cooking with a Dutch, obviously.<\/p>\n

Sitting on the commissary dry box, (wo)manning the oars, floating down the Lower Deschutes, thoughts of preparing dinner distracted me from my rowing duties. Passing through Trout Creek and Whitehorse Rapids, punching through laterals and catching slack water behind iceberg rocks, visions of curry, desert for brekkie and veggies sizzling in oil danced through my head.<\/p>\n

The wildflowers bursting along the riverbanks on either side became the only distraction from my culinary daydreams.<\/p>\n