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Tip o' the Day

Instant bread dough, packaged in a cardboard tube and found in any supermarket, can brighten an otherwise humdrum backcountry meal.

We used a Dutch oven for baking during our summer roving packtrips. Four or five coals underneath and a dozen on top are about right for baking bread or cakes in a preheated Dutch oven.

We find a cast aluminum oven is better than either cast iron or steel. Weight is, of course, a big factor, as is serviceability -- an alumnium oven weighs less than half that of an iron or steel one of the same size. Cast aluminum is not as susceptible to breakage as cast iron. In addition, we also use our aluminum Dutch oven for washing or rinsing dishes -- a practical use that would destroy the "burning-in" process vital for cast iron or steel cookery. Not only do we save weight difference between aluminum and iron, but we save space and weight normally required for a dishpan.

Aluminum Dutch ovens can usually be found in stores or catalogs serving whitewater rafting and backcountry camping enthusiasts. Expect to pay upwards of a C-note for a 12-inch one.

You don't have a Dutch oven? Wouldn't know how to use one if you did. Take the bread dough anyway. It can be shaped into donuts, deep-fried in oil and shaken in a paper bag with cinnamon sugar to provide a surprise snack or dessert. Or roll the dough into long strips and wrap it around a green stick to cook slowly over an open fire -- stick bread. Or wrap the same kind of dough around a wiener and roast over the campfire. Serve with mustard.

Our favorite griddle for campfire cooking is also cast alumninum, but it's from an unusual source: the lid from an old Maytag agitator-type washing machine. The lid makes an ideal griddle for grilling fish, steaks, potatoes, bacon, hotcakes or eggs. It's 16 inches square, with a half-inch lip that holds grease well. And it, too, can be washed without affecting its cooking properties.

These little outdoor cooking touches can add immeasurably to memories of taste and place. Jane often wanders from camp while dew is still on the grass, picking a cup of huckleberries to add to breakfast pancake batter. Wild onions diced into soup or stew always improves the taste. And there's nothing -- nothing at all -- more flavorful than grouse breasts in the fall, boned, rolled in salted flour and deep-fried in bacon grease.

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I listen to your radio program every weekday morning on KLBN in LaGrande, OR and really like it. The program you had on OCT. 17 - 18, 1995 about the men who robbed the Paisley, OR post office during hunting season in the 1950s was real interesting to me. Anita Banister, the Postmaster, is my aunt! She still lives at Paisley, and is a widow and great-great grandmother. * Marit Kalmbach / LaGrande, OR

A swift synopsis of that story is that two gunmen decided to hold up the Post Office on the day the payroll for the town's biggest employer (a small sawmill) was to be delivered. There are several clues in this story to provide hints about the genius of these two crooks:

First of all, Paisley is a small one-horse community served by only one two-lane paved highway with no road junctions for a hundred miles in either direction.

Secondly, the sawmill whose payroll they were after had not been in operation for six months.

Thirdly, the day they chose to pull their nefarious deed was opening day of Oregon's hunting season and the surrounding hills and valleys were filled with red-clad hunters, each of whom carried high-powered rifles.

Fourthly, as the purveyors of dastardly crime fled the scene, they shot and killed the most popular guy in the town who was just entering the Post Office.

The criminals fled north, up the narrow highway and into central Oregon's lava fields. The State Police had plenty of time to set up a roadblock. Spotting the roadblock, the nefarious evildoers whipped around in the middle of their highway and headed back -- only to run smack into an irate posse of hunters and Paisley townspeople coming in pursuit.

So went two episodes of Trails to Outdoor Adventure, Roland's radio show that is once more airing across America. For a current listing of participating stations near you, go to www.rolandcheek.com

Listeners weren't the only ones with words of praise about Roland's radio program:

Thought I'd take a moment to let you know how much we enjoy your program, Trails to Outdoor Adventure. When I heard the demo tape you sent I knew we were on to something, and I haven't been disappointed. You bring a quality to the program that doesn't exist with similar programs, which often give great information on fishing or hunting. But your show weaves the outdoors into everyday lives. I love it * Jerry "G" Miller, Program Director, KSEI / Pocatello, ID

Thank you for your recent contract to renew KDTA's commitment ot the very enjoyable Trails to Outdoor Adventure. Your show is well received and fits in perfectly with our programming for the Delta / Montrose area. In these days of declining values it is an honor to know someone such as yourself. Thank you again and may all trail to outdoor adventure be good ones * Brad Link, Station Manager / Delta, CO

Trails to Outdoor Adventure was an easy sell. I presented a sample of the program to Ron Carter, Owner of the Old Mill Bargain Center. Before I finished playing the excerpt, Ron said, "I'll take it" -- even before I'd priced it * Jake Grossmiller, Sales Manager KODL / The Dalles, OR

I believe it is the best outdoor program I have ever heard * Al Wynn, President KODL / The Dalles, OR

BOOK BANNING: FIRST STEP IN MIND CONTROL

Our daughter worries about her mom and dad, With Mom she's wasting her time and knows it. But with Dad she might have a point, especially when her father sticks his neck out in a venue she understands -- like classroom kids and hostile audiences.

Cheri is a high school English teacher in a city not far from San Francisco. She lives even closer yet to that bastion of eclectic and one might say eccentric education at the University of California, Berkeley. It's odd, given her possible exposure to the abnormal, egregious, Bohemian behavioral characteristic of some Bay Area inhabitants that she may actually share a more prudish view of mankind's proclivities than that held by her parents. I'm sure, however, that she believes us naive, and she may be right. She also knows her father to be impatient, bold, to hold strong convictions, and to be basically unable to suffer fools gracefully. It was largely because she so well understood her father's weaknesses that she became concerned about him moving more and more toward speaking engagements to school teachers, students and library groups. "Dad," she said, "what are you going to do when you get verbally beat up by unruly students?"

I laughed. "Cheri, I was an unruly student myself. I'll handle that. What concerns me more is not being able to get across to them the importance of developing a reading habit throughout the rest of their lives."

"What about censorship?" she asked. "How will you respond to someone wanting to ban books they dislike from schools?" When I looked bewildered, my daughter suggested I go to a certain group's website and check out the books they wish to ban from America's schools. So I went to www.pabbis.com. "PABBIS" is an acronym for Parents Against Bad Books In Schools. Cheri wished to know how I would respond if someone from that organization asked how I felt about their group's objectives? In my letter to our English teacher-daughter, I wrote a sample of my response. Here it is:

"I'd agree with them. I'd say there certainly should be limits to the kinds of things to which our children are exposed. Personally I find pedophilia aberrant. Beastiality is off my table, too. And having been married to the same childhood sweetheart for more than fifty years, you've got to know I like girls better than boys.

"The only nagging little question I have to ask is where will you stop?

"I see Exodus by Leon Uris is on your restricted list. Why? How could you? How could you remove such an earth-shaking book with so many powerful social ramifications from the offerings, let alone the required lists, of today's public school youth? I suppose you could say your inclusion of Exodus on your list might be a mistake; that it's inevitable some eggs are broken in order to make an omelette. But someone else wants another egg broken, and someone else another, until soon there are no eggs left.

"Though I agree with you on your efforts to sanitize the subjects our sons and daughters might read, I want to know your limits. That is what I might not agree with -- especially if you insist on banning books I think sacriligious NOT to make available to my son and daughter in their school.

"Come to think on it, you might not agree with my limits either. And someone else might not agree with either of our limits. But what's especially nagging is that probably none of us are qualified to exercise professional judgment on the educational value of a particular literary work. Apparently, in my view, Exodus is one glaring example of your inability to do so. That's why we hire educational professionals whom I believe are, without exception, vitally interested in preparing your children and mine to be future leaders and fellow travelers in American society.

"Aberrant language? Is that your focus? Can you provide me with a list of words to which you object? What if I don't agree with you on every word selection you deem inappropriate to use in every case? And what if our neighbor down the street fails to agree with those on which you and I both agree? Is it sex scenes in literature to which you object? Then provide examples and let's examine them together and see if we can agree that they have no intrinsic literary value to the enclosed work. And by the way, we'll have to apply the same standard to each book on your suggested removal list; a list that includes many of the most respected names and titles in literature, such as James Michener's The Source, E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Toni Morrison's Beloved, James Clavell's Shogun, David Guterson's Snow Falling On Cedars, Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, Colleen McCullough's The First Man of Rome, and Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club.

"What's fair is fair, though. Fairness would compel me to provide you with a list of books that I think essential to the education of our youth. (Exodus would certainly be one of the books on my list; so would others of the books you choose to have banned -- For instance, I consider Shogun to be one of the most educational books of my lifetime.) One might say I'm biased toward some of the books you are biased against. Will your bias trump mine? I'm adamant in feeling you have no right to project your own biases into denying my kids the educational tools they need to face tomorrow. What happens then?

"There are some people who think one book is all anyone needs. Those who hijacked airplanes and flew them into tall buildings on September 11 belonged to such a group. Another such group burned books and "witches" in Salem, Massachusetts. The Nazi's burned books by the millions and pushed Hitler's Mein Kampf on the German people as the solution to all their needs. I don't agree with any of those dominant groups book limitations, and I already know I won't agree with your book limitations. Nor will I recognize that anyone but educational professionals should be entrusted with making educational selections.

"Thank you. And may God open your eyes to the Dark Ages travesty you're engaged in designing."

 

Or something like that . . . .

 

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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