So You Want to Go Camping, Volume 2

Welcome back. 

Glamping. Also more blankets than I recommend.

We're glad the length and general direction of Volume 1 - Tents - didn't chase you away, and we hope that you've used the ensuing weeks between advice columns to run right out there and buy the nylon palace of your dreams! 

In the great survival question of which comes first - shelter or food - we've comfortably checked what we here at BSD think is the first most important; as we mentioned in Volume 6 of our Hiking/Not-Dying in the Woods series, one can last up to 3 weeks without food, and 3 days without water. Hypothermia and bears will kill you a lot faster. 

Speaking of bears, after setting up your grade-A shelter for the week, you'll certainly be as hungry as one! We here at BSD have some amazing tried-and-true camping recipes of a surprisingly sophisticated nature - I like to call it cuisine d'irt - and in fact shared our cooked-over-a-campfire chili recipe lovingly called "Dad's Extra-Fart Chili: Campfire Option." There will be, for our loyal readers, many more where that came from.

Recipes, not farts. Well...let's be honest: both.

But this Volume is about the things with which you cook and eat your haute - and hot - cuisine. Today, we're talking about the Camp Kitchen!

Remembering my general refusal to use a camper, we can all safely assume together that a full-on electric or propane oven and stovetop is right-out; however, we already covered the meager and survivalist methods by which we cook when on the backcountry trail. This, my friends, is a solid in-between, by which we show off our cooking chops by making Very Advanced Food using very basic equipment.

Cooking at Camp Smitty requires 3 heat sources for making food less gastronomically dangerous:

1. Propane burners
2. A grill
3. A fire ring. With a fire in it.

I am informed, before I get too deep, that perhaps my posts can get a tad...Tolstoy. I don't mean "spiritual transformation," or "morality," or "militarism." Though, witness us whilst camping, and you may notice a healthy dose of the former, a nearly total lack of the middle, and a decent helping of the latter (especially during set-up- and tear-down-day). I digress: I mean length. I mean that I get verbose. I have Very Important Information to convey, and I get lost in...wording. 

So this time, let me get right away to the meat of this advice column by way of a picture. Here, campers and outdoors enthusiasts, is a picture of my humble camp kitchen:

How many Michelin Stars do I get?

Fire. Fire.

Hereupon this modest space, we cook full bacon-eggs-and-pancake breakfasts; barbequed chicken thighs; chili; burgers and corn on the cob; breakfast tacos; french toast and sausage; loaded baked potatoes. And it even turns out edible!

This much propane should be sufficient
for a week at camp

Now, sure, I could get one of those propane griddle tops, and a propane oven, and a propane coffee maker, and a propane refrigerator, all of which exist for real in reality, probably. However, I am limited to what I can carry in and on top of my vehicle - a Chevy Traverse. I also need to put 4 people in said vehicle, or I'll get super lonely, and as a card-carry extrovert and Secretary of the worldwide collective of extroverts, I don't do "alone" very well. Perhaps soon I'll buy a trailer to haul more camping stuff in, and then the world will be my oyster.

At any rate, as one can see, the vast majority of my cooking equipment is Coleman. Weight isn't an issue and bulk is only a minor issue, and I love Coleman's stuff for its affordability and durability. People are camping with their father's and grandfather's Coleman equipment like it's an heirloom. I could wax nostalgic about my Coleman Series 5459 2-burner stove that I don't think the company even makes anymore, and yet it is one of the centerpieces of my camp kitchen. I also use the Coleman 2-in-1 burner and mini grill, which is also something they don't make anymore, but that still works like a charm for me. Sure, they have adjustable knobs that give the illusion of minutely-controllable flame output, but I'd be lying if I said that's accurate. These burners and grills, as you adjust the knobs, have 3 settings: off; kinda-medium; full-blast. You adjust your cooking to the flame, not the flame to the cooking.

How I picture myself

The only other thing I use for cooking - meaning for producing heat and placing things on that need heat or transfer heat - is an actual camp fire and a plain old Coleman campfire grill grate. It's not adjustable. You make a fire, you put the grate over it, you cook. You adjust the flaming logs or smoldering coals under the grate, and adjust your cooking to the heat, not the heat to the cooking. 

In other words, cooking at Camp Smitty requires attention and fiddling, which, if I'm being totally honest, and I usually am unless I'm telling a funny story, is time away from modernity and worry and the constant anxiety of life in the modern era. It's poking fire with sticks. It's stirring and flipping and watching food cook with a mind away from chores and projects and the looming shadow of career and 24-hour accessibility. I'm outdoors, under blue sky and amongst the trees, cooking chili in a cast-iron pan over an open fire the way god intended.

Which brings me to: when I cook over the camp fire and need a pan, I use The Lodge. I picked this 12" (it's actually 14") skillet with a bear on it, because it has super tall sides for making chili, and it has a bear on it, which I felt was thematically-appropriate for outdoor cooking. And I grab it with fireproof oven mitts. I grab and move flaming logs with the same. The way god intended.

Why are stock photos?

Though there are full modern bathrooms when we camp at Wilderness, there are no water hookups. You get your water from community potable water taps scattered about the campground. We fill two Coleman 5-Gallon water carriers (with taps!). We use these super-handy Field and Stream collapsible sinks to wash and rinse the dishes, and we use Dawn dish soap. If it's gentle enough to wash animals after oil spills, it's gentle enough on campsites when we finish washing. And our wash rags and dish towels hang on this handy gear line.

And I can't tell you how much I love the Pack-Away Folding Camp Kitchen table. Holy crap. I hang all my cooking utensils on it, do food prep on it, it's got room and a handy stand for my stove/grill, and I can even hang my lantern on the hanger at night. It's the coolest piece of gear. This table goes next to it for more stove and prep space, and I bring along a plastic 6' folding table like you use for parties and banquets for "counter" and cleaning space. 

Not a "time-out" tent

Look back up at my camp kitchen picture, and you'll see a tiny 2-person Youth tent, rated for 2 whole children, backyard camping. Why do we have that, who sleeps in it, and is it creepy? No one, and no. That tent...is our pantry! Rather than haul stuff in and out of the back of my vehicle all week, we store everything - from paper towel, heavy-duty aluminum foil, and cleaning supplies to non-perishable foods - in plastic totes, and put all that in that handy little tent. Keeps it out of the sun, out of a car that gets one-billion degrees in the sun, and keeps curious and hungry woodland creatures out of our food and out of our sleeping tent. Perishable food and drink goes in Coleman Xtreme Series or Yeti coolers, and we're only replacing ice once on a 5- or 6-day trip. Now, my vehicle is empty of all camping-related stuff so that my boys can start to fill it with 16-tons of "wow this is a cool rock" that they find at the beach over the course of 5 days.

Eat at a table outdoors, like you're civilized

The rest? Use your head. We eat on cheap plastic "outdoor dining" plates, bowls, and cups. We have
inexpensive utensils that you'd buy for eating on your back deck. Don't bring your Wusthof or Miyabi knife set to camp; find a cheap-ass santoku-style chef knife and a cutting board you don't mind throwing away every 2 years. Stirring spoons, slotted spoons, flippers, spatulas, measuring cups...just get whatever generic kitchen crap Meijer sells, and that's good enough. Everything you need to cook and clean at home, get for camping. Just...buy inexpensive stuff, because nature is harder on your stuff than your climate-controlled house.

And everything, all those utensils and supplies and things all pack into big plastic totes I shove back on shelves in my basement to haul back out again the next time we hit the road.

And there you have it. I have again utterly failed at a brief post, but we're talking kitchens and organization, and you're here for advice. The meals can be as extravagant as you like, but don't think you're limited to hotdogs and brats for a weeks'-worth of food. 

And speaking of food: how about I share some of my favorite camping recipes? Yeah? Tune-in next time for So You Want to Go Camping, Volume 3: haute cuisine for the discerning camper.

So You Want to Go Camping, Volume 1

The State Flower and State Tree of Michigan are in full bloom. Michigan's migratory animal starts moving North en masse, pulling its rectangular, seasonal, temporary appendage - truly a wonder of

Are we there yet?

evolution - as it seeks vast bodies of water and to settle amongst deep-green trees for the Summer. It's Michigan, it's Summer, and that means it's time to enjoy the Great Outdoors!

For my myriad long-time readers - all 5 of you, to whom I am eternally grateful - I gave some advice a while back in a 6-part-plus-1 series about backcountry hiking and camping (start with So You Want to Go Hiking, Volume 1): the kind of camping where everything is on your back and you buy real nice boots that probably don't give you blisters, and instead of sheltering away from bears, you more or less sleep right with them.

This is what we all have in mind

I appreciated everyone's loving and insightful comments, and was beyond-thrilled that I convinced perhaps 2 entire people to take the overnight hiking plunge! I haven't heard back from them about how it went, but I assume that since neither the State Police nor the FBI have asked me anything about them that they must have lived, if not enjoyed it.

I also received a lot of feedback along the lines of "is there another kind of camping, with less chance for serious illness, injury, and bear attacks?" or "I'm not ready to overtly risk life and limb to enjoy the outdoors; is there something less intense?" You're in luck, advice-seekers! There is, and my boys and I do that too! 

We call it: Car Camping; or, Comfort Camping.

A Note on Glamping

OMG close the door you're
letting bugs in

I mean, if that's what gets you into the woods, then by all means, glamp. And in all honesty, when my sons and I go camping, it's actually not terribly far-removed from that picture. Glamping is sleeping in a hotel room that just happens to be kind-of outside. It's glamorous, cozy, and usually comes with someone else worrying about feeding you.

A Note on Trailers and RVs

All the comforts of home, in
something slightly larger

Ahhh, the Winnebago. Famous vehicle of the nomads of the summer circuit, explorers of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Or, for those without a CDL but who intrinsically understand the impossible algebra of backing-up-with-attachments, perhaps pulling all manner of camper trailers is what gets them outside. Our ancestors traveled in covered wagons on the same routes we now take, and perhaps the Winnebago, the RV, the pop-up trailer and the camper trailer is a throwback to the halcyon days of the covered wagon. Meals by campfire. Whiskey. Cowboys. Songs and dysentery. 

65% of all campsites at my most favoritest State Park in Michigan is occupied by RVs and trailers. It is not glamping, exactly. It is indeed risk-free, as one has actual beds, a fridge, a real stove, robust protection from all the elements, and a TV.

Car, or, Comfort Camping

This is what we do.

Camping, real camping, involves a tent. This is a Law. What tent-camping strives for is just a little hint of risk-of-nature. A sniff of could-be-trouble. An intimation of what-happens-about-weather. "All the comforts of home" defeats the purpose of camping; just stay home or find yourself a migratory, temporary dwelling called a cottage. The whole point here is to reconnect with nature, and to a greater or lesser extent, be at its mercy. 

How...rustic?

Like Bored Suburban Dad's series on Hiking, we're going to break this down into a number of volumes to really help my dear readers with advice that, hopefully, when it's all done, are long enough that you've forgotten everything, but you still somehow survive.

Make sure you packed everything

Herein, we start with the first of two absolute necessities, unless getting rained on, snacked on by mosquitos and spiders, and crawled on by a thousand crawly bugs or small or medium or large mammals is your fetish: the tent.

Unlike backcountry camping and hiking trips, for a camping trip, you are certainly allowed more gear and a lot more weight than you can fit on your back! A whole carload, if you like! You're limited only by your imagination and size of trunk-versus-passenger space. [note: experienced campers will sometimes pack their families like the rest of their gear: wherever there's space]

Blank Slate

Our amazing State Park System, on the whole gives every camper: a parking pad; a steel fire pit; a power hookup; and a big picnic table. Most also provide a community shower and functional bathroom where you have basic privacy from other campers, but not other mammals or daddy long legs. Yes, there are exceptions, from the more-convenient like water hookups, to the less-convenient like only vault toilets, and on. But let's start with this basic blank canvas. The rest is up to you and your nomadic spirit.

Comfy!

Paging Dr Darwin

You'll need a place to sleep. This seems obvious, but as we have disinvested in public schools over the last several decades, I feel like I should spell this out. I mean, remember this, with laundry detergent? 

Anyway, you want a tent, and when you jump online or head to your favorite sports or big-box store, there are just So. Many. Choices. What's right for me and my friends or family? How much or little? What does it need? Where do I start?

Fear not: I'm here to help you unpack (yeah, I said it) all that and find the shelter for you!

Selecting a Tent

1) Do not. Go cheap. On a tent. 

Maybe you aren't camping today, because you grew up, like me, in an era of bad tents. I remember, growing up (I'm a mid-Gen-Xer, for reference), when my Dad (the man responsible for my absolute love of camping and outdoorsing) would kindly remind me 1,000 times to not touch the sides of the tent. Doing so would wick the water from outside the tent magically to the inside. I knew this to actually be true not only because my Dad reminded me 1,000 times a trip, especially when it rained, but because I would also very much indeed touch the insides of the tent to watch the wa

ter wick inside the tent. Also, those old tents weren't very breathable. We would squeeze 4 people - 2 adults (but to their credit, my parents are tiny) and 2 kids - into a 2-man pup tent. Whether or not it rained outside, 4 people crammed into an itty-bitty too-small tent would create more or less a rainforest-like microclimate, and it would rain inside the tent on occasion. And let's not even get started on old tent waterproofing spray...

Seems we had a little weather
last night

Jesus, it's a wonder I kept camping. But, I was a kid. And when you're a kid, you tend to miss or overlook the bad stuff and focus on being in the woods and the magic fun of camping. Oh, to stay a kid.

Good, modern tent fabric is made of some fabric that is made of magic. It is highly water-resistant to the point of being waterproof. It's also breathable at the same time. Magic. Seams and zippers are waterproof-taped. The floor is thicker and waterproof-er. 

Going for a cheaper brand-knockoff tent to save a couple bucks will get you the same experience as camping in the late-1970s and through the 1980s. You get what you pay for. Don't skimp on the tent. The very lowest-cost cost-effective tent brand you should ever look at is Coleman. They've been around for a zillion years, and there's a reason they're prolific: their stuff works. 

But saving a few dollars in choosing between a top-of-the-line, Himalayas-tested all-weather Base Camp tent and a very good Coleman of similar size is a vast chasm of difference from going cheap. A 6-person tent should not cost $100. Cheap tents don't stand up to even the basic wear and tear of, oh, unzipping the door a couple times, or, wind at greater than 5mph, or, a light drizzle. Or setting it up once.

2) What Else Makes a Good Tent

• "Included rainfly"
• Polyurethane tent walls with a "hydrostatic rating." This is a very science-y word that means "how much standing water can just sit on this bastard before it leaks." Anything in the hundreds-of-millimeters is very good
• "inverted stitching;" this is a very fancy and technical-sounding phrase that means "we stitch extra stitching on here to keep anywhere where there's stitching from leaking"
• Taped seams. Special waterproof tape has been added to any "weak" spot where water could maybe come through. You can see and feel it; it looks like someone melted scotch tape onto any stitched seam.
• Flooring: the floor of your tent should look and feel like a super-thick, multi-ply tarp. Not a cheap-ass $8 tarp you thought would cover your junk in your trailer but instead tore itself to pieces once you hit 25 MPH. No, I mean the one where you splurged for the "nothin's gettin' through this baby" tarp, and indeed, nothing does, in part because it was an expensive-enough tarp that you can't bear to use it for tarp things. That's what the floor of your tent should look and feel like.
• Ideally, it's not just the bottom floor. Ideally, the company also makes the tent so the tarp floor actually rises 2 or 3 inches up the sides of the tent too, which really helps defend against running water. Which...happens.
• A door zipper with a waterproof flap. Keeps the zipper dry, and helps the door zipper not snag at a million o'clock in the morning when you have to get up to pee because you're 48 years old, but it's so dark you can't see to keep the zipper from snagging because you're trying to be quiet and man you have to pee
• Easy enough to set-up alone or with just one other person, because your smaller children will be spectacularly-unhelpful in setting up your tent, but you still need to set it up fast, because when you finally yell at them to Just Get Over There For a Minute, they could wander off, and you don't really have a minute.

3) How Big of a Tent Should I Get?

10 dead people??

We have a very American thing we do here, and it's based on not yet having adopted the metric system while adhering to the wild and varied Imperial measurement system in which measurements aren't related to one another in any way. This very American thing follows this formula:

1. Person A gives a measurement of, say, a distance, in yards
2. Person B expresses some mild confusion over how long that may be
3. Person A gives example in some other length that somehow makes more sense to Person B

For example:

1. A: From this site, the bathrooms are only about a hundred yards away!
2. B: ???
3. A: ...about 1 football field.
4. B: Ohhh, got it!

Buying tents works the same. Tents have a tag on the package that shows or says how many people it holds. Lies. That's how many people a tent holds if they're packed-in like sardines, and haven't brought anything at all with them other than a sleeping bag. See, this number, like the "about 1 football field" example, is merely a visual representation of volume. 720 cubic feet means absolutely nothing to us. 10 grown adults lying down? Ohhh, got it!

So, what's the right sized tent for you? Dear reader, over 4 decades of camping has allowed me to perfect the following formula:

• Minimal: Take the number. Subtract 2. That's how many people will comfortably fit in your tent for a few nights (3-4), in sleeping bags with ground mats under them. Not mattresses. Not inflatable mattresses. Roll-up mats. And a small duffel of clothes and accoutrements. 
• Minimalist: Take the number. Subtract 2. That's how many people will fit comfortably in sleeping bags, mats, with your backpack or gear inside, for 4-6 nights
• ...but what if the number on the tent is 2?
• Then it fits 2 if you're willing to sleep on top of your gear. 1 with gear. Or 2 with gear in an attachable screen or vestibule, which most quality 2-person tents include, because tent manufacturers know this volume measurement system. They've known it all along. It's some sort of conspiracy. And now you're in on it too.
• Best: Take the number. Cut it in half. That's how many people will comfortably fit in sleeping bags, on cots or Single inflatable mattresses, with 4-6 nights of shit and stuff and junk and extras

4) Other Considerations

• Should I buy a tent footprint? Not strictly necessary. If you're setting up on really rocky or rooty ground, it'll help keep the floor from getting holes in it.
• Many modern tens have a little Velcro flap on them for a power cord! When you "car camp" or "comfort camp" as we say it at a State Park, many of them come with a power supply. This handy little flap allows you to, without having to keep a part of your door open and welcoming for 5-zillion insects, run a long extension cord from that supply to your tent. Next thing you know, you're charging phones with a fan blowing on you so you can stay inside your tent all day and ignore nature just like at home!
• Dome tent? Cabin tent? What one?? 
• Lots of room to just spread out and make a huge damn mess like your bedroom? Cabin.
• Setting up in a crammed spot? Dome.
• Camping in an area known for not just high wind, but gale-force winds? Dome.
• Might be rainy or stormy a day or two? Either.
• Camping on Mt. Waialeale? Dome.
• Like sleeping on cots or mattresses? Cabin.
• Have to carry your tent a half mile or more from your parking spot because you couldn't get the right spot or didn't know what you were doing when you reserved one? Dome.
• Good, summery weather, temperate, gonna be there about a week? Cabin.
• Bottom line: a dome works well in smaller sites or if you're expecting really bad weather for an extended period. Cabin tents are great if room and weight isn't an issue and you want the convenience of just tons of space and can literally just walk around inside it

Final Recommendations? 

Cozy! Only takes about 2 dozen 
people to set up!

Again, Coleman is tried-and-true, and cost-effective vis a vis quality versus price. Core is comparably-priced and gets wonderful reviews. Eureka, MSR, and North Face are also very high-quality tents, but you're gonna get expensive. If you want to really impress people and have lots of disposable income, I guess you could buy this monstrosity.

For me and my family? I have the Coleman Sundome 6 and the Core 10-person cabin.

Amazing! Now you're ready tp spring for a new tent and try this camping thing! 

But wait...I probably need to eat? How do I cook food? Stay tuned for our next installment: So You Want to Go Camping, Volume 2; the Camp Kitchen!

In the Beginning... A Nerd History Lesson

Hey kids! It's time for a Bored Suburban Dad Nerd History Lesson!

First, look what I got!

Oooooo...old dusty books!

Aww yeah. But perhaps you're asking yourself, in order:

1. Two copies of the same book??
2. Yay, I guess, but why is this book significant?

You're seeing the name H.G. Wells as the author. And as an avid reader of this blog, you're either: a) outdoorsy; b) gamer-nerdy; or c) both. And thus you're like "Ahhh yes. H.G. Wells. Author of such tomes in my vast Nerd Library as War of the Worlds and Dr Moreau’s Island, the movies for which are...unique. But here I see he's written a book about what's this now?"

And perhaps herein you see such truly intellectual irony that you grab your tweed jacket and your pipe,
and with a knowing nod say "well, of course, you know that Wells was an avowed pacifist, and yet here he writes a book about war." And you take a self-satisfied sip of your delicious and very peaty scotch. 

Ironically - but not - he wrote the book Little Wars in 1913. He based it on a long-played Prussian military exercise for their Officers: Kriegspiel; literally, War Game. Little Wars was, no, is, a tabletop miniature war game. It's a set of rules, from maneuver to firing and even hand to hand combat between little toy soldiers. It has maintained a cult following for years and years, and is considered not just the start, but the very progenitor of much of today’s tabletop gaming. 

So as a Prince in the Kingdom of Nerds, it’s my duty to own this book, being an Origin Story of gaming. Origin stories are important to us, you see. Fanfic and all that.

Well, I mean, it was a different time then, umm,

The green book on the left is as close as I have been able to find, in all my wanderings in dusty old used bookshops, to the first printing. It’s a second printing, dated January, 1931. An even bigger prize? Look at that hand-scribbled inscription: a John Collins of the 2nd Light Infantry! We haven’t really used that moniker in the US - perhaps in the 30s and maybe my Army friends will know - but if not, some British officer owned and played this game! The hands this book has passed through!

Hilarious side note: I love the second/alternate title of Wells’ book. “…that more intelligent sort of girls who like boys’ games and books.” 😬😳🤣🤣 Frankly, that’s most women I know? Anyway. 

Now, to the meat. Why also the 2nd, newer copy of the same book?

Diorama-meets-war

Like I said, this book is considered the beginning of tabletop gaming. You play any game, from a board game to a tabletop miniature wargame, like Warhammer 40k? Star Wars X-Wing? Risk? Twilight Imperium? Thank H.G. Wells and Little Wars. 

My loyal readers all know that my closest friends and I go to GenCon every year in Indianapolis. Why is a tabletop board/miniature gaming convention in Indy called GenCon when the only connection betwixt them all is the "Con?" Well, you see, if you didn't know, GenCon was started as a tabletop miniature wargaming convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1968. Little Wars was a feature, as were hundreds of other home-brewed games and professionally-produced (but little-known cult-followed) games. Pretty soon, though, the convention outgrew Lake Geneva, and fits now in 2 massive complexes in Indianapolis, taking the entirety of the Indiana Convention Center and next-door Lucas Oil Stadium.

And it is there, on the (covered) football field, the gridiron where NFL teams do battle, where is homage paid to the origins of GenCon: a massive area in which from the simplest to ultra-complex tabletop wargames are played.

That's a lot of tabletops. And....nerds.

But Noah, you claim, not quite yet bored to tears, that's all fascinating, and I kind of see the connection between modern tabletop games and Little Wars, but where is this headed vis a vis this red book?

There’s another game - maybe the most important game in gaming - that finds its origin in Little Wars, and finds its origin in the person who conceived of GenCon. The clue, my clever cyber sleuths, is at the bottom of the newer, red book: the Forward was authored by none other than Gary Gygax! 

Ohhh, right. Some of you are not nerds. 

The Forward was authored by none other than the guy who created GenCon and created and authored Dungeons & Dragons: Gary Gygax! 

self-explanatory

Gygax had a copy of Little Wars, and was an avid tabletop war gamer. It inspired Gygax to first create a game in which, instead of blocks of toy soldiers battling it out in a table, one would instead imbue some of those toy soldiers with traits, like how strong they are, how tough, how quick - and then those trait-imbued toy soldiers would duke it out. This game was called Chainmail, commensurate with Gygax’s fascination with medieval warfare. 

Idle hands...

But for a genius like Gygax, there was another natural progression: if this miniature soldier not only had traits, well then it must also have motivations, likes, dislikes...personalities.

And thus was born Dungeons and Dragons, imbuing each miniature with…humanness. 

Oh! And spells. And sometimes pointy ears. 

That’s why I’ve got 2 copies of the same book. One, because of its historical significance and its proximity to The First; one because the same book meant so much to the guy who means so much to so many of us in the gaming world, and it is cool to see his thoughts about it, in his own words. 

I often wonder what Wells would think about what his book has wrought. Again, the irony is Wells’ well-known pacifism. Why write a book about how to fight a war? He sums it up in his appendix in the old 1931 book: “If Great War is to be played at all, the better it is played the more humanely it will be done. I see no inconsistency in deploring the practice while perfecting the method.”

The game I and zillions of others love to play - I’ve played D&D for 34 years now - is one of the logical conclusions of these old tabletop games! So many of these tabketop miniature war games are played today, and I've even herein reviewed a few: my boys and I love to play Star Wars X-Wing and Star Wars Armada. I have to say, it feels oddly satisfying to own a copy of The Thing That Started it All, as in this house, not only do my boys play Armada; they also devise their own rules to wage war between little green army men or Lego guys, and we all play Dungeons and Dragons together! 

I’m happy to have now in my house the beginning, and it’s progeny. And I know it’s not the end!

Let's Set Things On Fire

We've had a lot of fun on this here blog recently, going on about camping and camp fires and such and a few dear readers who are in the exploratory phase of wishing to go outdoorsing have asked:

Great! So...how do I build a fire?

You've come to the right place. Destroying things by fire is a specialty here.

In outdoorsing and camping, there are 4 kinds of fire for cooking, telling stories, drinking beer, and being generally relaxed:

1. A-Frame, or, Teepee
2. Square, or, Log Cabin
3. Cheater
4. Fuck It

Additionally, in outdoorsing and camping, there are 2 places in which it is acceptable to light a fire:

1. A DNR- or National Park Service-prepared steel and cement fire ring at an official campsite
2. A small, very burned looking circle of stones or ancient, rusted-through steel ring at a National Park Service-designated backcountry or dispersal camping campsite

DO NOT.

If it's not on this list, and you're not on the show Alone, please don't.

Now, Smokey Bear will tell you that the 4 kinds of fire are Teepee, Lean-To, Log Cabin, and Criss-Cross. Smokey Bear is indeed an authority on fire, but I believe his authority more leans towards forest fires and their prevention. In all my years of camping and fire-making, the Lean-To and Criss-Cross are really just what happens to the A-Frame fire when it really gets going and all your carefully stacked and balanced wood collapses. Which it will. 

In fact, after the fire is lit and is at the point where you're adding "fuel" -- by which I do not mean gasoline, but instead I mean increasingly larger logs -- all fires really just become Fuck It fires.

The Fires

A-Frame and Log Cabin fires are the romanticized Scouting type fires. You need 4 things:

1. Tinder
2. Kindling
3. Fuel
4. A thing that makes heat

What are Those Fancy Words?

Tinder: dry pine needles, dry leaves, dry grass, itty-bitty twigs, dryer lint (I'm not kidding...bring a bag of that stuff in your camping gear), ripped-up newspaper or pictures of people you loathe; things that are tiny, DRY, and absolutely will burn, quickly

Kindling: Sticks and equivalent things made of wood, about as big around as your pinky-finger. 

Fuel: Sticks and equivalent things made of wood, of variable size, from about as big around as your thumb, to your wrist, to your forearm, to your leg. Please make sure it's not your thumb, your wrist, your forearm, or your leg.

A thing that makes heat: matches, candle-lighter stick thingy, lighter, flint-and-steel, white phosphorus grenade

The Process

1. Make a pile of tinder, like about as big around as your hand (unless you have tiny hands), about fist-or-so-high. More is better.
2. Have a bunch of kindling nearby. Stack some of it loosely around the pile of tinder like a tent.
3. Light the tinder with your heat-making device. Light it in multiple spots.
4. As the flame grows, stack more kindling around it, again kinda like a tent. You know: an A-Frame!
5. Keep adding that, layer by layer, as it catches fire, and your pile will look more and more cone-like.

Now here's where it gets different:

YES. This is perfect. Then just keep adding bigger
wood in this pattern (heh..I said "bigger wood")

With the A-Frame, start adding fuel. Begin with stacking 3 or 4 pieces of thumb-sized sticks around your flaming cone of fire. Then wrist-sized. Don't start adding the much bigger logs until this base really gets burning, lest they topple and smother your fire (remember: fire wants oxygen). Keep adding wood 3 or 4 pieces at a time, with a size commensurate with how giant you want your fire, by stacking them on the burning pile of flames bottom-down, point up, so they lean against each other and keep making that A-Frame/teepee shape.

Eventually, the logs are big, the frame collapses, but you've got a big bed of angry-hot coals and flames licking the sky, and you can just toss logs onto the inferno where it feels like you should. Go with it. Your primal proto-human neolithic paleolithic genetic code will assure you instinctively know how to keep a fire going, and your ancient, medieval, viking/barbarian/Greco-Roman/conqueror genetic code will assure you know how to instinctively make a fire bigger/worse.

I mean, make sure it's in a fire ring and not next
to dry leaves...but...perfect example otherwise

With the Log Cabin, start adding fuel. Begin with stacking 2 pieces of thumb-sized sticks parallel just to the left and right of your little burning pile, and 2 more sticks parallel top and bottom. You know, like Lincoln Logs when you made a Lincoln Log cabin. That you've also set on fire. You want those sets of parallel stick to juuuust be touching your burning pile so they too burn eventually. From there, as the fire grows, keep adding larger and larger sticks, then logs, in that same Lincoln Log box shape, each successive layer just touching the flaming layer, until you get to a point where you can add the logs right on top of the burning layer (they're logs at a certain point, and thus strong enough to handle the weight of a new log).

And then, as above: Eventually, the logs are big, the frame collapses, but you've got a big bed of angry-hot coals and flames licking the sky, and you can just toss logs onto the inferno where it feels like you should. Etc etc re: genetic code for fire-keeping and fire-bigger-making.

What's the difference?

A-Frames make a great bed of coals, quickly, for cooking. A-Frames go through lots of wood quickly because....uhh...physics about burning. Log Cabins make for nice, hot, long-lasting camp fires; they take a little longer to get going, but really give you lots of places to keep tossing logs for a nice long night of burning wood and drinking.

The Cheater Fire

Trading Outdoorsiness with convenience. Hey...
It's your soul.

Buy those firestarter logs. Chuck some dry tinder on top. Put some wrist thick logs along each long edge of the firestarter log. Light with heat-making device. Add wood. Feel mild shame, but give no shits because you have a fire.

The Fuck It Fire

Pile tinder. Pile logs all over it. Douse in Coleman/MSR white gas. Stand back 15 - 20 feet,

Still less harmful than Gender Reveal parties

and chuck lit matches at it. After the mild **WHOOMP**, add logs as necessary. Do not do this a Parks. Do not do this. But everyone is tempted because the beginning stages of building a fire takes a lot of TLC and time. You can't just light and walk away. You gotta baby it. Except...here. In this case, you kinda, like, get outta the way.

A note on Things that Make Heat: 

Campfires take a minute. Even with real good tinder - real super inflammable stuff like dryer lint soaked in butane and molded into melted candle wax (yes, that's a thing) - sometimes, you have to light it again, or start over cuz you burned all your GOD DAMN hard-earned tinder before you stacked the kindling right, DAMMIT (this is an autobiographical statement).

Wood matches? Good. They, too, you see, look like and are the size of tinder. Light, bury in tinder. 

Paper matches? Meh. Maybe light the whole packet at once?

Those stick lighters? Fine, great.

Butane fancy-pants lighters or Bic? Fine, just watch your fingers and knuckles as you angle it around.

Torches? ...sure

Phosphorus grenades? Probably illegal??

Flint and steel/starter stick? Awesome and outdoorsy. Hard - you gotta absolutely baby that tinder when the sparks hit and it starts to smoke, but then you feel like a survivalist badass.

That rub-a-stick-real-fast thing? No. Don't. Calories expended versus the calories you'll eventually replace with whatever you cook over the fire? Totally unbalanced. This method is indeed possible but so un-worth it as to be a wives tale or legend.

Related tangent: I have a super fun story about an old friend, an unlit cigarette, a hat made of tinfoil, a metal folding chair, and a thunderstorm. Ask me over beer some day.

In Conclusion

There you have it. Fire-making for you campsite fire ring or backyard firepit. Impress your friends. Cook food like the ancients. Commune with Prometheus and thumb your nose at the rest of the gods.

3 more fire types, for some other day when we talk about survival, or because you pissed off Zeus (see above, re: Prometheus):

1. Lean-to. Good for making fires when it's super windy and/or rainy
2. Cross. Good for tiny little fires when you don't have much wood but need to warm your hands or cook something little
3. Dakota Fire Hole. This sounds...dirty. But this is a family blog, so I can assure you it's a type of camp fire and not, uhh, something else. Good for extremely high-heat fire built in gigantically windy conditions or if you want to build a fire that for some reason you don't want people to see from a distance. Like Zombies or something? 

Bored Suburban Dad Cooks: Campfire Cooking

Maybe 3 or 4 steps above Neolithic

As always with BSD Cooks, recipes first:

Bored Suburban Dad's Extra Fart Chili...Campfire Option

The ingredients below are for my tried-and-true Extra Fart Chili Recipe. The Instructions are how to make it over a campfire, like your Gramma (or Great Gramma for you young-'uns) used to have to do in their "Greatest Generation" Great Depression unnaturally hard life until WWII ended kind of way.

Ingredients

2 T high-heat oil (like canola)
1 large sweet onion, chopped all rough like a cowboy would, because they had shit for knife skills
1 jalapeño, chopped, seeds and everything 
8 garlic cloves, chopped
2 lb ground beef
1 lb Bob Evans or Jimmie Dean ground sage sausage (or spicy if you want more kick)
¼ C chili powder
2 T ground cumin
1 t paprika 
1 28oz can diced tomatoes; juices and all
2 15oz cans kidney or pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 15oz can of some other bean, I dunno, pick one
14 oz (canned or otherwise) beef broth (smoky is best)
Sour cream and grated cheese of your choice for garnish, but no cilantro because that tastes like soap

Special ingredients:

1. 12” cast iron pan with sides at least 2 ½” deep

2. Campfire cooking grate of your choice

How

1. Get that fire going 90 minutes to 2 hours before you need it; you’re gonna want a nice roaring fire and a bed of hot coals, but you'll want the fire spread out so your grate and pan isn't, you

   

   Good for French food, but bad for the campsite

   
   know, engulfed in flames because you made a fire with 28-inch logs standing on end

2. Adjust your grate so that it’s just above - a couple inches - the actual flames; perhaps a foot or so above the coal bed

3. Set that heavy, cowboy-lookin' cast iron pan on the grate. Make sure everything is sturdy cuz you’ll be stirring, and the last thing you want is for the grate to collapse and dump your pan and its lovely contents into the fire. This is not an autobiographical statement, because I’m a gods-damned professional

4. Oil the bottom of the pan with a high-heat-tolerant oil like canola; just coat the bottom, but not so much that what you’re putting in it is swimming. 

5. Onions. Saute until brown, like maybe 5 minutes or until they're...brown

6. Add jalapeño and garlic, for like a minute or two

7. Add ground beef and sausage. Brown it, mix it all around.

8. Add all the spices to this aggregate and mix it all around, covering everything

9. Add tomatoes and juices, the drained beans, and mix it all around, but carefully-er because your pan is getting pretty full

   
   

10. Add only about half the broth. You’re going to save some, because this chili will thicken faster than the stove, so you’ll want to add broth occasionally to keep the chili from getting too thick too quickly, not cooking through, and sticking to your pan

11. Boil like crazy for 30-45 minutes. Add broth when needed. If you run out of broth, add a little water if you need to

12. Move the pan around the grate too, to find a slightly cooler spot if you need to.

13. Time’s up, ring the dinner triangle, call the cowboys in, serve it up the same way as above: sour cream, cheese, etc. Maybe find very manly bowls and manly spoons.

Not only a consequence...but also our goal

There you have it: a chili for the stovetop, made over a fire. Super easy, actually, and your campers and all the surrounding campsites will look upon you with something akin to worshipful adoration. They will talk about you in a legendary sort of way, looking wistfully at the sky whilst they recall that one time this one guy made chili in a big-ass cast iron pan over the open fire, just like our Grammas used to do right after they got done hand-grinding the cow they slaughtered that morning and all the other chores Grammas did in addition to cooking over open fires because of the Depression, and they did it all after they walked uphill both ways from whatever horror they had to do by hand prior to that.

Seriously, I'm not sure what Grampas did, and frankly, we keep holding cowboys and vikings to all this ancient hand-wrought badassery, but history shows us it was consistently the women who did that kind of badassing, and the men apparently just beat the shit out of each other and chewed loudly with their mouths open.

Finished and ready for methane production

I make this chili with lots of extra beans and I made sure to add ground pork to the initial recipe as I made this up a few years ago, because those two things in combination add to your methane output. Hence: extra-fart chili. Our tent, enclosed, that evening, is testament. My boys love this chili not only for the fart factor, but also because it's a fairly flavorful but relatively mild chili, which pleases their chicken-nugget/pepperoni-pizza palates. Doing it over the campfire added this really nice smoky quality to it.

The boys ate with a gusto - an abandon - akin to all those gross, loud, eating-parts of action movies,
where everyone eats with just a little bit much joie de vivre and open-mouth smacking while breathing really loudly through their nose. Seriously. Why do movies do that? Why is the thing with badguys or dudes about to go out on a thing that everyone chews with their mouths open, breathing like they just ran a marathon? Anyway, it was horrifying, but they ate a lot, so I was fairly happy.