Coffee can Dinner

[Greatoutdoors]

Well, we have made coffee can ice cream so why not dinner? A friend of mine told me that they do this for their dinner the first night of every camping trip, and the kids love it.

Hamburger, or small pieces of steak
Medium potatoes
Carrots
Onions
1 clove garlic
Mrs. Dash seasoning
Salt (optional)
Butter or olive oil
2 large coffee cans
Heavy duty aluminum foil

Put a small amount of oil or butter in bottom of coffee cans. Peel potatoes, carrots and onions. Cut into chunks and put into coffee cans. Add the meat, seasonings and a little more oil or butter. Cover tightly with foil. Set in coals to bake for about 1 hour or until meat is no longer pink and the vegetables are tender. Serve with fresh crusty buttered bread.

You can also make this without meat, or with fish or chicken, and any seasonings you desire.

[charley]

Sounds good except I never peel potatoes or carrots unless they are real bad.

[oldsarge]

That's like wrapping all the ingredients in foil and laying it on the coals. We use to do that. The coffee can would be better at containing all the juices though.

Now I'm hungry again!

[Gabbie]

Well that would certainly give you something to do with all those big coffee cans that you just hate to throw away! We've never tried this but will now. And we are like you Charley, we don't peel our potatoes or carrots either.

[ppine]

Great,

Good job.
Talk with your grandparents about how they camped. People made whole outfits out of old cans and bailing wire. I like to cook on a shovel or with 2 gold pans. The simpler the better. It gets us back to the origins of camping.

[Grandpa]

Originally Posted by ppine

Great,

Good job.
Talk with your grandparents about how they camped. People made whole outfits out of old cans and bailing wire. I like to cook on a shovel or with 2 gold pans. The simpler the better. It gets us back to the origins of camping.

Old timers used their empty cans for a lot of things. There is an old cabin back on the Yankee Fork where they flattened out the empty cans and nailed them over the caulking on their log cabin. Kept the weather from washing out the caulking.

[ppine]

Grandpa,
I have spent a lot of time looking at old historic buildings and trash piles, sometimes for pay and sometimes for fun. The old fuel cans like for kerosene in 2 or 5 gal size were flattened for all sorts of things. There are plenty of old roofs shingled with them. Houses were made of mud and bottles, rr ties, etc. There is a saying in Nevada, that old building materials circulate around the State. When a mining camp closed, people would salvage the old materials to build a new camp. The International Hotel in Austin was brought out in about 1874 from Virginia City on a railroad car. It is still in operation.

There is actually a book that describes all of the stuff in a typical trash pile from mining camps, logging camps, and sheep camps. It is possible to date milk cans, Prince Albert cans, and tomato cans by examining the solder patterns, and dimples made in the cans during manufacture. With practice, you can look at a trash pile and announce things like that it was active between 1903-1908.

[rayne]

I do admire your style Grandpa. We could all do with a lot less than we do now. I wonder sometimes though, how many would perish if they didn't have grocery stores and department stores. I just don't believe that some folks would survive. Do you?

[Grandpa]

Thanks for the kind words Rayne. Some of the happiest times I can remember are hunting trips high in the rockies with a storm moving in. Soaking wet, not wanting to leave partners alone up there, we get a fire going under an overhanging ledge and wait until everyone shows up. The warm fire, good friends sharing the last of the sandwiches or candybars, telling war stories from hunting trips past, you realize just how little it takes to be truly happy.

Most of the folks, Rayne, will be in denial that this could be happening and when they realize it is happening the panic sets in. At that point, they do have small chances of survival but those chances are mostly because of dumb luck.