That was some powerful good grub

When you think of camp food, images of hamburgers and hot dogs over an open flame or perhaps the mystery meat served in a dining hall come to mind.

Camp food is not gourmet and is usually nothing to write home about. A couple weekends ago, however, I had a camp food experience that is still paying dividends – some of them even pleasant.

Boy Scout Troop 1000 from Richmond went camping at Pedernales Falls State Park up yonder on the far side of Austin. It’s a beautiful place and well worth the drive. Per tradition, the boys cook their own meals in patrols and the adults cook though as if they were another patrol.

On this camp out, our grubmaster – the person responsible for coordinating the food, not actually digging for grubs – planned on us having chili that Saturday night. That is all we knew and when it came time to prepare the meal, our grubmaster had bugged out.

So a few of us opened up the food box and cooler to see if we could figure this thing out. We are, after all, Boy Scouts. My wife found the ground beef and began scrambling it up in the frying pan. She found some diced green peppers and added them to the mix. While she was doing that, one of the dads began stacking the various cans of vitals in a rather precarious formation. It was fun and got quite high before the whole works tumbled.

We got out the big stockpot and dumped in the beef and pepper mixture, along with a couple more bags of pre-browned ground beef we found. We then commenced to opening the cans. There were several cans of garbanzo beans, kidney beans, chili beans and black beans. We found a few packets of chili power mix that we added.

Then someone found the remains of the hash brown potatoes that didn’t get cooked up for breakfast. There were a few looks exchanged and then into the pot they went. We then found more beans and a couple big cans of diced tomatoes. Rummaging around, we came up with a jar of diced jalapeños that we dumped in.

I know some other stuff went into the mix and other things were rumored to have gone in. About this time our grubmaster returned looking clean and well coifed. Apparently he found the showers. When we told him what we did, he got a funny look on his face but figured, why not … it might work.

We let the concoction brew for a while and then served it up. Hoo boy! That was some chili. My wife made up some of her famous corn bread in the Dutch ovens to compliment the meal and trust me, it paid a mighty big compliment!

Everyone ate their fill of that powerful good stuff and we still had lots left over. I managed to finagle some of the leftovers and have been chowing down on it for lunch all week.

Did I mention it paid some dividends? Did I mention there were beans in it – lots and lots of beans? Need I say more? Each day at lunch I get to relive those tasty memories. I pity the fools who have to be around me afterword…