The Savage Awakening (A preppers Perspective) (5 page)

If your camp cooking calls for stewing or frying, you'll want to drop most of those top coals down and shove them under the oven. If you're baking breads, then maybe move a couple from underneath up to the top.
Just remember that a ring around the top and a ring around the bottom is your base starting point and tweak it from there.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this is exactly how I do it with real wood coals. Since coals are irregular and you can't count them, I put a ring of coals around the top and bottom and it works out practically perfect. I'm lazy and like the simplest way to do something. :-)

Maintaining Even Heat

No matter how evenly you distribute your coals above and below your dutch oven, there will be some spots that get hotter than others due to wind, quality of fuel, and phase of the moon. To prevent burned and raw portions of your meal, you should just rotate your oven occasionally, maybe every 10 minutes. You can do it however you like, but I've got an easy way - remember, I'm lazy.

• Lift the whole oven off the campfire cookin coals by the wire bail.
  

• Turn the oven clockwise 1/3 of a revolution.
  

• Set the oven back down on the coals - with three legs on your oven, it should sit in the exact same spot it started in with coals between the legs.
  

• With a lid lifter or pliers, grasp the lid handle.
  

• Twist the lid counter-clockwise 1/3 turn - the logo on the lid should be in the same position it started at.
  

   
  

I like this way because both the top and bottom heat moves in relation to the food inside and there's nothing for me to remember except that the lid logo always looks the same.
Taking a quick look inside at this time will give you an idea if the coals are cooking too fast or slow. Just be careful to not drop ash in or let heat out.

M
aintaining Long Heat

Your first batch of coals will probably keep the oven hot for 30 to 45 minutes. That's long enough to cook most things, but you sure don't want to let the oven go out for those 1 hour or longer meals.
Just make sure you check your oven every 20 or 30 minutes to see that the coals are ok. Where you see spaces with just white ash, fill in with a few more coals. Or, you can just brush all the ash and coals away and put on a new batch all at once. If we're just sitting around the campfire cooking s'mores, talking, or playing cribbage, I tend to do the former but if the fish are biting I do the latter so I don't need to keep checking on it.

Stacking Heat

When you really get going and have 3 or 4 dutch ovens outdoors cooking, there is a lot of ground space chewed up and a large part of the heat from the coals is heating the surrounding countryside instead of the ovens. I recommend that the first dutch oven you buy is a 12 inch model and then your second purchase is a 10 inch model. This allows you to stack the ovens.
Stacking your dutch ovens is a great way to save ground space, fuel, and time - besides, it looks really cool to have 3 ovens making a tower.
The coals on the lid of one oven serve as the 'underneath' coals for the oven stacked on top. And, the oven on top helps trap heat for the oven underneath. All this makes heat estimating more difficult so you should only tackle this after you've got some experience and are willing to practice on a few meals.
The most important thing to remember is that items needing more heat should be on top. Your bread or dessert should be the bottom-most oven since it wants very little heat underneath. Then, your meat to roast in the middle and a stew on the top. It takes some planning, but an entire meal can be fixed this way so it all gets done at the same time.
Rotating stacked dutch ovens takes a bit more work. Take off the top ones, rotate the bottom one, and then work your way back up the stack. Move as fast as you can without spilling so you keep the ovens hot.

Temperature Tips

Finally, just a few tips to tuck away for later:

• You can cook food, but you can't unburn food. Use less heat and cook longer rather than overheating.
  

• Preheat your dutch oven for frying or searing meat. Otherwise, put the food in cold and let it all heat up together.
  

• Keep adding wood to your campfire to ensure you have a supply of camp cooking coals available. If your fire burns too low, it may take extra time to finish your cooking while you make coals.
  

• Some briquette users just set new briquettes next to burning ones around the dutch oven so they light and continue providing heat as the first batch burns out.
  

   
  

“
Damn Dennis you expect me to remember all that?” Monica fumed while chiding Dennis for being so long winded about a simple question.

“Nope I don’t expect you to remember, that’s why it’s written down in one of my books at home for you!” Dennis said with a grin.

“Which reminds me, I cant stay to long and mom asked if you would help her sort out my kitchen cabinets.” Dennis said and proceeded to get the couple to help him unload his truck of the dehydrated food he was giving them and advising Monica she was getting some can goods also for helping his mom out.

“You don’t have to give us any can goods Dennis, I would be happy to help your mom out.” Monica objected.

“I know you would! I am sorry, I just termed it wrong. What I meant was you could help her sort out the first batch we are sharing and get things inventoried so we can figure out the next.” Dennis said diplomatically.

“You sure guy? We got enough food to last us awhile and I never expected all that dehydrated food you just gave us.” Charles asked as if it all was too generous.

“No problem my friend, you and I made a pact long before this day to help each other if the SHTF, it has so plan A is in full effect.” Dennis said reassuring him and then he thanked him again for being there for him and supporting all his efforts.

“Meats done Dennis, you want to go fetch your mom and eat here or you want to eat over at your house?” Monica asked.

“Well any other time I would say I would bring her over to get acquainted with your place and the dogs but she is waiting on you Monica so we better go down their pretty soon. What is yours and Charles schedule? You want to stay here awhile or comeback with me?” Dennis asked.

“I want to come back with you, Dennis and help your mom after we eat breakfast over there. Charles are you coming or do you have something you have to finish here?” Monica asked as she covered up the meat container with foil.

“I got about a bazillion things to do here starting with all that bread but I have time for breakfast and can walk back up, that is if you don’t have something more pressing to help you with Dennis?” Charles said while closing all the vents on the grill and its attached smoker to shut down his fire.

“
I was going to start getting my garden beds ready today and start on a few other things but you have me intrigued about a few of the stores being open in town.” Dennis said debating if he should of already left to go check them out.

“Like I said there isn’t hardly anything left on the grocery shelves? Wal-Mart’s is open but I didn’t go there and I am not sure they would be selling anyone ammunition anyway. I can probably assure you they don’t have any propane or kerosene left. The grocery store had a limit of one basket or $100 of goods. I got a cart and paid cash and Monica used up her food stamps so we managed to get some stuff. We got a weird conglomeration of stuff by the way. There were limits on everything you could buy if they still had it and you can’t buy pet food on food stamps so I bought mostly pet food and Monica fought with folks over the remaining cans of
Chef Boyardee
and anything else she could get. I am glad we had those discussions about what to grab on small money that might be available after a run on a grocery store in a situation like this or we would have been lost. I did get some cooking oil, Crisco, salt and flour though. We went to the grocery store first before I got all that bread and flour.” Charles said sheepishly.

“I started to get some sugar but Charles said you had plenty which worked out for the best.” Monica added

“I did get some corn meal, I debated on some canning jars but they were expensive. I got a bag of hard candy, carnation instant breakfast, there wasn’t any peanut butter left on the shelves but they had that Nutella stuff, I guess because most folks are not familiar with it. Anyway, I wouldn’t suggest you go down there, most everything is gone and folks are getting bitchy.” Monica advised and suggested they just bring the whole pan of BBq meat down to Dennis’s and separate it there and get some more ice for the coolers from him.

With everyone in agreement they loaded up in Dennis’s GMC and headed to his house.

“Hey Mom, I am back and we got company.” Dennis announced as he unlocked and opened the front door.

His Mom, Mary had already been told that Charles and Monica were basically great neighbors and if she envisioned a old biker and his girlfriend that was the way they would look when Dennis brought them over.

His mom greeted them warmly and began to happily chatter at Monica, glad to have another woman to talk to as Charles and Dennis brought the meat in and began pulling out plates and silverware for a meal.

“Dennis, are you going to cook up some baked beans or something to go with that?” Mary said briefly separating herself from her conversation Monica.

“Yea Mom, We are going to go outside and fire up the stovetec first. We will be back in a bit.” Dennis told her as he guided Charles towards the back door and what was serving as his outdoor kitchen.

“Women are such a joy to behold when they first meet another, they somehow have a 100 things to talk about graciously as they send non spoken signals to each other” Dennis told Charles as they went to the back deck Charles had helped him build last summer.

“That’s a fact!” Charles said grinning while watching Dennis point to a couple of cases of hot beer he hadn’t stored in his prep shed yet.

“A barbecue is one of those unwritten rules or restrictions about drinking a beer before 5 that both sexes have agreed upon to sometimes make excuses for.” Dennis chuckled.

Dennis wished he knew why the weather had been steadily overcast or rainy for days after the great grid calamity occurred. The effect of a nuke blown in the atmosphere might have caused some of this bad weather but he had no idea if it did or not. His problem now was that a lot of his batteries were not fully charged before the grid went down and even hooking up all his solar panels wasn’t going to change that until he had a few days of good sunny weather. Luckily he had a backup to his backups. In his preps he had a PRACTICAL PREPPERS™ CRANK-A-WATT™ generator.
Crank-a-Watt™ is touted to be the World's only portable "Human Powered Generator" for any emergency or survival situation.

He liked its portability and was always figuring out new ways too use its versatility. It so it was quite useful to
Charge cell phones, lap top computers, rechargeable flashlights, tv's, ham radios, Ipads, boat batteries, power drills, walkie-talkies etc.