getting your own meals is so great, that, whatever may be cooked, it is
excellent.

[Illustration]

You will need a frying-pan and a coffee-pot, even if you are carrying
all your baggage upon your back. You can do a great deal of good cooking
with these two utensils, after having had experience; and it is
experience, rather than recipes and instructions, that you need.
Soldiers in the field used to unsolder their tin canteens, and make two
frying-pans of them; and I have seen a deep pressed-tin plate used by
having two loops riveted on the edges opposite each other to run a
handle through. Food fried in such plates needs careful attention and a
low fire; and, as the plates themselves are somewhat delicate, they
cannot be used roughly.

[Illustration]

It is far better to carry a real frying-pan, especially if there are
three or more in your party. If you have transportation, or are going
into a permanent camp, do not think of the tin article.

A coffee-pot with a bail and handle is better than one with a handle
only, and a lip is better than a spout; since handles and spouts are apt
to unsolder.

Young people are apt to put their pot or frying-pan on the burning wood,
and it soon tips over. Also they let the pot boil over, and presently it
unsolders for want of water. Few think to keep the handle so that it
can be touched without burning or smutting; and hardly any young person
knows that pitchy wood will give a bad flavor to any thing cooked over
it on an open fire. Live coals are rather better, therefore, than the
blaze of a new fire.

If your frying-pan catches fire inside, do not get frightened, but take
it off instantly, and blow out the fire, or smother it with the cover or
a board if you cannot blow it out.

You will do well to consult a cook-book if you wish for variety in your
cooking; but some things not found in cook-books I will give you here.

Stale bread, pilot-bread, dried corn-cakes, and crumbs, soaked a few
minutes in water, or better still in milk, and fried, are all quite
palatable.

In frying bread, or any thing else, have the fat boiling hot before you
put in the food: this prevents it from soaking fat.

BAKED BEANS, BEEF, AND FISH.

Lumbermen bake beans deliciously in an iron pot that has a cover with a
projecting rim to prevent the ashes from getting in the pot. The beans
are first parboiled in one or two waters until the outside skin begins
to crack. They are then put into the