From time to time, the Scouts will spend an evening backwoods (not backwards!) cooking. This is cooking on a fire without pots or utensils, although we often cheat and use tin foil.

The most basic thing is to wrap sausages and burgers in about three layers of foil. If you get your fire going quickly, you can do baked potatoes the same way, but they take at least half an hour.NB don’t wrap several pieces of meat in the same parcel; the outer bits will cook, while the inner ones are still raw.

If you’re looking for ideas and recipes, here are some good resources that others have put on the Web:

• Shurdington Scouts have scanned an old supplement from Scouting Magazine with lots of ideas and diagrams
• Lots of recipes from Scouting Ireland
• Scout Help has an introduction
• Reigate District Scouts have some ideas, although some of them use pots and utensils, which we are trying to avoid; save those for summer camp!
• The International Badgers Club take time off from swapping Scout and Guide badges to do a bit of catering
• The Dump even has a 1953 Scout cooking book scanned; something for the keen to read, but probably a bit more than you need for one short evening
• The award winning ‘The Essential Camping Cookbook, or How To Cook An Egg in an Orange!’ by Nick Allen

Or Google for yourself.