Boots the Badass Coffee Babe here! It’s nearly summertime, so I am thinking that it’s time to branch out into the Arena of Pie. Campfire Pie. You might be thinking: Pie out on the trail? Yes, indeed! with good old-fashioned Pie Irons. Check them out below . . . they are so much fun! I’m hoping that you find these Pie Irons to be as gadget-y and interesting as I do! And so simple and magical, too.
I don’t know about you, but there are stories galore that come to mind when I think Pie — stories that are steeped in family tradition from childhood holidays and birthdays and stories that take me back to a time when I found myself in the midst of an undeclared Pie War. I guess you could say that Pie is an Emotional Food that has the power to stir love, guilt, stubbornness, creativity, and forgiveness. And I don’t think I can think the word Pie without reminiscing about an important personage from my past whom I will call Pie King henceforth.
Pie King was an old-timer for whom I worked a short summer season in a remote fishing camp located up in the high country. The camp was in the midst of a roadless area that had with zero amenities, so you can imagine how beautiful and pristine it all was. Pure silence and clean darkness at night. No electricity, no running water, no telephone. Camp was only accessible by trail or by float plane, so business was slow and spotty — thus allowing for time better spent rowing, swimming, reading, writing, roving, and just plain thinking. And getting all of the chores done, too.
The chores that came with the job weren’t really all that bad: renting the occasional rowboat, bucking up some firewood, splitting wood for the cookstove, filling and trimming the kerosene lamps, doing a little bit of cooking, going down the hill to pick up mail from the Mail Boat . . . this sort of thing. It all kept me pretty busy in an unruffled sort of way. Pie King declared me Hired Girl #10 — a name that didn’t take a lot of figuring to figure out. I was part of a Hired Girl (HG) lineage — #10 in a string of outdoorsy women who had come and gone before me, leaving the HG legacy with an imprint stamped with their virtues, their idiosyncrasies, and their imperfections — all defined and assigned by Pie King.
Pie King had a habit of using the other Hired Girls’ virtues as a way to get what he wanted. He also had a habit of using the other HG’s imperfections as a way to get what he wanted. During the Pie War, I thought of Pie King as an Epic Manipulator, but now I would say that he was simply a Good Read of Human Nature. Most people essentially want to Please, especially so in the radiant light of a predecessor’s Halo of Sainthood. Pie King understood this Wishing-to-Please component of human nature. I wouldn’t say that he exactly exploited it, but I also wouldn’t say that he didn’t. After all, there are fine lines crackled and drawn all over life and, with enough backstory, I think the lines get a little blurred and sometimes even erased.
Mr. Pie King spent that entire summer trying to trick, guilt, dog, and wheedle me into making him a pie. I was also soon to learn that Pie King claimed to have worked out his version of the Zen of Pie thing. He said he could judge someone’s character based on their Relationship with Pie. In fact, Pie was one of my interview questions — one that, with Pie hindsight, I now know was the Weighing Grace as to whether or not I would become the Privileged Hired Girl who would be swamping this old timer’s boats, cutting his firewood, and laying his Morning Fire in the cold cookstove each night. The interview question: Do you know how to make pie? My answer: Yes. His answer: You’re hired.
Now I know what some of you might be thinking: Let the Wookie win and just make him the damned pie. But it was more complicated than this. I knew — or maybe I should say intuited — that once I made that first pie, I was going to be chained to the cook cabin for the rest of the summer. Which was NOT going to happen. Not on Boots the Badass Coffee Babe’s watch. And would you feel any differently? Option A: spend glorious, pristine days working outdoors in the unspoiled high country? Or Option B: spend the summer in a dark cabin peeling fruit, rolling crust, spicing filling, and baking the danged pie? I don’t need to tell you which option I preferred.
It wasn’t so much that I disliked cooking and baking, but between hauling water, breakfast clean up, morning chores, and the mandatory chess game at lunchtime — I wanted to be free to roam the great OUTDOORS. At first Pie King made passive references when I was leaving the cabin for my daily-afternoon-off: Wouldn’t a slice of pie taste good right about now? When that didn’t work, he wheedled. Then he demanded. He even tried pouting and giving me the silent treatment. All for Pie. I simply didn’t get it.
His was not a personality to give up a cause once he started to wave the flag. Nor was mine. I, being of sound and stubborn mind, body, and spirit, was not about to give in. The thought of firing up the cookstove mid-day to a 400-degree oven on a 90-degree summer day was NOT going to happen. If it had been the middle of winter? Sure. Why not? But middle of summer in the high country? No. Mr. Pie King was just going to have to wait until October started to chill the air with the promise of day-long fires. Above all, given the stories of Glorious Hired Girls past, I wasn’t about to start a precedent that I knew I was not willing to continue.
The Battle must ensue! Or so it seemed until one day when I was mucking out the barn. I was digging through some old camp boxes when I came across some old rusting Pie Irons. They were in need of a good clean-up, but they were certainly serviceable and a goodly remedy to our sparring match over pie or its lack therein.
That night after supper I got a good bed of coals going in the fire-pit down by the lake before surprising Pie King with the Pie Irons. It was one of those beautiful high-country nights. One with swallows and bats streaking and darting across the sky taking care of the mosquito population. Stars pricked the canopy while a dry moon hung above us while we baked pies. I kept the coffee hot above the coals while we baked pies in silence — a good earnest silence. The kind of silence that marked a truce and that laid to rest any animosity that had been brewing in the weeks previous.
I laughed, not really knowing what to say. How do you say thank you after waging such a war-of-wills and then sort of winning. Not the stuff of humility and grace. But still. I still think I read the situation rightly. I guess there is something to be said for diligence and perseverance in the face of battle, albeit a battle waged in the Pie War.
He told me that he had almost married once to a woman named Lorna. They had had a squabble over — you guessed it — Pie, among other things. Their incompatibility had reared its complicated head over an incongruous list of baseball, whiskey, cork boots, and general lifestyle. How Pie figured into it, I didn’t ask. I didn’t mine for details and he didn’t offer much more than he thought that Lorna was likely The One who had gotten away.
I wasn’t expecting any kudos for having been so damned stubborn to an old man who could play heartstrings like they were tuned on a fiddle. It’s sometimes hard to feel any pride when winning a tug-of-war kind of battle. But, looking back, I think he admired that I was willing to give as good he gave — and come up with a solution that suited us both in the end. Maybe that is what he had hoped would happen with Lorna.
Maybe this is what life sometimes is. A series of solutions that give as good as they take and that leave everyone feeling both pretty banged up and danged good in the end. A happy ending? I don’t know. I’m not the one with the Pie Zen experience.
We ended up having a few more Pie Iron shots of whiskey before the fire died down. The rest of the season passed without Grand Incident, and I packed up my duds in early October. Times change and we with times but not in the ways of Pie Iron friendship. I sent Pie King a home-baked apple pie up on the float plane each summer to commemorate a war well waged. He never thanked me but he didn’t have to. Sometimes you can let the Wookie win post-war.
Perhaps this story has gone for too long. Back to Pie Irons! Check them out . . . so much fun! Pie out on the trail? Grilled Cheese? Breakfast sandwiches? Fried potatoes? Sloppy Joes? French toast? Yes to all of these great trail options.
So check out the fun products and cookbooks below! I tried to find a good video for you . . . . and just wasn’t finding one. I did find a blog with some recipes (Blueberry Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast and Stuffed Hash Browns) that sounded pretty though so I am sharing it with you below.
Click here to view the website: http://www.dirtygourmet.com/pie-iron-cooking/
And here is another site that specializes in Pie Iron cooking:
http://www.bestcamprecipes.com/pie-iron-meals/
And is there anything that goes better with Pie than Coffee? (And Irish whiskey?) True, you might say whipped cream, ice cream, cheddar cheese, or yogurt . . . but they don’t call me Boots the Badass Yogurt Babe. I’m all about Coffee as you know, and I would contest that Coffee and Pie are the peanut butter and jelly, the peas and carrots, the wheat-grass and kale of the culinary world. You can argue with me, and you’ll win. After all, I’m an easy going kind of buck-a-rina, as evidenced by my summer of working out The Pie Accord with the Pie King.
Check out this super cool Classic Stainless Steel Yosemite 8-Cup Coffee Percolator — like the kind that Pie King kept going on the cookstove throughout the morning. I love the sounds of a percolator, don’t you? So retro, cute, and good!
And for a blue-granite-ware camp experience:
http://amzn.to/1WN5CNq
And in red! I love this cheery color!
And here are the Pie Irons! A fun way to cook a meal and a dessert over the campfire! All for about $14 – $22 — what a deal!
Rome’s 1605 Double Pie Iron with Steel and Wood Handles
http://amzn.to/1tpyyyh
Rome’s 1805 Round Pie Iron with Steel and Wood Handles
Happy trails to all of you Pie Lovers. Try out these Pie Irons and make a memory!
Life is a lively event. Make pie, drink coffee, and get to it! What’s stopping you?
xox to you, as always . . . Boots
Howdy to all of you super-outdoorsy souls who are planning your menu for this summer’s camping, climbing, rafting, bicycling, kayaking, or hiking trip. It’s a general truth that dehydrated meals are the way to go when you’re going to be carrying any kind of weight on your back or in your boat . . . and it’s also a general truth that while some of these ready-made meals that you buy in expensive outdoor stores are pretty darned good, others are, at best, kind of mediocre. Why not set mediocrity aside and start each day on the trail with a fresh and energizing cup of Bircher muesli? It’s easy to make, it’s healthful, and it tastes great!
Bircher muesli is one of those meals that tastes good for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It is a healthy and creative choice that tastes good if you roughly follow the script of oats, fruit, coconut, honey, nuts, berries . . . you get the idea. It’s made of good stuff that is easy to pack and you can prepare it in advance of the trip. And the best part? Muesli doesn’t require any cooking, which makes it an ideal choice for those trips that are going to include some dry camps. Easy, healthy, tasty, and easy to prepare . . . you can’t get it wrong.
I started packing my own version of Bircher muesli the summer that Mitch the Mobius joined the trail crew as Camp Cook. This particular crew worked trail up in the high High Country so the work season was short. We made summer base camp at one of the high lakes once the snow receded and the supply horses could make it up the trail. We operated as Trail Rovers who did trail maintenance, cleaned up camp sites, and packed out a whole heck of a lot of annoying garbage from the High Country. Depending on the destination, one might have to pack some overnight gear to cover the necessary miles — but, as a rule, we all generally did our best to return to camp each night to eat around the fire and sleep in our roomy, canvas wall tents.
We actually had it pretty good in camp, as it was stocked at the beginning of each season with gear and supplies, compliments of Sam, Jim, and Katy — our much-appreciated district pack horses. At the beginning of the summer, we had brief and glorious access to butter, eggs, cheese, and cream . . . and we even had an ice cream maker for our season-end Ice Cream Feed — the snowfields providing us with just enough “ice” to “freeze” the cream. Albeit, the ice cream ran a bit on the soft side, but it was pure 100% wilderness luxury.
Mitch the Mobius was what you would call an Unknown Quantity. He came from Havre, Montana, and was a self-professed jack-of-all-trades. I don’t know about the veracity of his self-professing, but one thing we were quick to learn about Mitch: He was an Ace Bull Shitter who ruled camp with a Mighty Spoon. What Mitch made, we were to eat . . . all according to the Rules of Mitch. And that was that. His was a simple system: Whatever we didn’t finishing eating the night before was added to breakfast. Whatever we didn’t finish eating at breakfast was added to dinner. And so it went. This might not sound that bad, but think back to your past few meals. And imagine combining them all together. Trust me. It’s a bad idea.
No matter how much complaining we did, Mitch stuck to his Zero Tolerance Policy of Leftovers. Mitch added dinner macaroni to breakfast scrambled eggs, and he then added said macaroni-scrambled eggs to beef barley soup for dinner. There was no end to the ludicrous chain of combinations. Leftover Morning Coffee was used as the liquid ingredient for dinner cornbread –> coffee-cornbread went into the next day’s breakfast pancakes –> coffee-cornbread-pancakes went into dinner biscuits. I think you get the idea. You had the sense that what had been served as our first meal our first night in camp was still morphing itself in Mitch’s Petri Pot of Anthropological Proportions — resulting in an enduro of marathon indigestion that would only end when we ate our final camp meal in early September.
This is when I started to make my own Bircher muesli. I could guarantee that I was going to start my day right with food that wouldn’t sucker-punch my gut later in the morning. And it was simple. I would soak my muesli in my mess kit the night before and hang it in the bear bag. Voila! Instant healthful breakfast awaiting my morning.
It all came round right when the district’s horse wrangler came up the hill to pack our gear out for the season. It was Tradition that the wrangler would come bearing berries for pie and cream for the ice cream maker. All of us were quite vocal, along with some strident cussing, that Mitch was not to lay the breath of a single fingerprint on our end-of-season Berry Pie a la Mode. No, as much as we all knew the rules of the trail to respect Camp Cookie, Mitch was not going to throw a tangle into our Ice Cream Soiree.
Love and happiness . . . this picture makes me feel good inside. It makes me think of a rundown little honky tonk in a tiny town . . . one of those towns with crooked streets and more taverns than there were bakeries, grocery stores, and churches combined. It was the place where my sister, Ranger, and I used to go dancing every Friday night. Friday night dancing . . . we wouldn’t have missed it for all the Joe in Latin America, Africa, and the Asia Pacific combined — the music was just that good.
With love and xox, Boots the Badass Coffee Babe
Hey y’all. Boots here. And as we are going into hiking, camping, and glamping season, I am thinking about ways to keep your coffee hot and your coffee cold. In other words, we are going to be talking about thermal mugs, insulated containers, and the good ol’ homely, tried-and-true coffee thermos in the next few posts.
Now this thermos had to be one of the most trail-worn thermoses I have even seen. It was one of those tall green Stanley models that looked like it had been handed down through the ages since the dawn of Manifest Destiny. You couldn’t help but think of all the lunch hours and picnics that this thermos must have poured its way through to get that mean looking. It was scarred up, dented, and ugly, and it truly was a testimony to the quality of the Stanley company’s product line. It was still keeping the Banks’ family coffee hot through all of the abuse it had been subjected to.
One of them would pull the coffee boiler from the fire while the other readied the Sacred Stanley to receive its daily sacrament of Joe. Usually Bill poured and Doreen steadied. Doreen would cluck about the importance of being careful while Bill filled the Stanley to the very brim.
I dug for a spell until Doreen told me to stop. She laid Bill and the Stanley to rest, and I can’t tell you how enormous that moment felt. I have been to funerals before, and have shed my share of tears. But this. Seeing someone being laid to rest in one of his favorite spots on the planet in a damned thermos gave me pause. I could see how our physical selves all truly return to the ash from whence we came. The Cycle of Life is enormously dizzying and, if we are lucky, we have someone special in our life who we can hold on to to ease the spin.
When we returned to the campfire, I laid a blanket around Doreen’s shoulders. I poured her a Coffee Nudge and sat with her for a while. No one else knew that she had just laid her best friend and husband to rest. It surely does occur to me that hidden sorrow has to be one of the most difficult things that we carry with us in life.
Cabin Door Coffee 