Boy Scout Veggie Packs

I always seem to be a day late and a dollar short - but hope we aren't to late to share a bit of our own fireside warmth with you!!

Now, fireside warmth. Hmmmm...... For us eating by the fire usually entails camping with the fire, of course, being a campfire, and the source of heat for cooking the food that we then eat by the campfire.... Camping in February, however, is not on the top of our list of things to do. (It may have something to do with it being cold - but we did have that nice warm spell here with temps in the 70's). Regardless we decided to camp out in front of the wood stove, and actually try and cook our meal by that fire.

One of our classic family favorites while camping is a vegetarian take on an old boy scout recipe my brothers fixed way back when we were kids (I was the only girl amongst three brothers and never got to go camping with them - and I have no clue how I learned this recipe - osmosis maybe).

So here is what you will need:



For four servings:
4 veggie burgers (you can use regular hamburger but I would pre-cook the patties if you plan to do this on a wood stove rather than campfire!!!)
Two potatoes
One large onion
1 red pepper
1 package of your favorite dried soup or dip mix (Knorr is a good brand but I used this Cuginos that I had on hand)
Drizzle of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste



Slice up all your veggies into rings or rounds. Potatoes do better with the skin on.



Given the uncertainty of cooking on the wood stove I took the precaution of zapping the taters in the microwave to partially cook them.



Mix all your veggies together and then drizzle with some olive oil. Add the packet of soup/dip mix and toss well to coat all the veggies. This was plenty salty so I didn't add any extra.

Now to assemble the packets:



On a sheet of foil add a layer of the veggies, then top with the burger, and then top that with more of the veggies.



Wrap tightly in the foil.



Then wrap tightly in a second layer of foil.



I decided to add in a side dish of wood stove cooked green cauliflower - I tossed this with some salt, pepper and Ms. Dash then wrapped it up just like the burgers.



Now onto the top of the woodstove.......



I cooked these for about 1 hour turning every 1o minutes or so. It started out slow but then they did indeed start to get too hot to handle and tongs were brought in to help with the flipping.

SO....... did it work?



The packets came out hot and steaming with potatoes completely done, and the cauliflower half done (you can see the gradation from near burnt to raw.....)

,

Cub Scout Neil is checking out the outcome!! He now wants to do this on a "real" fire - hmmmm, now I thought that was what we used!!!!



Lily, Little Miss Chipmunk Cheeks, gives her approval and she ended up cleaning her plate. This actually worked out much better than I had expected and now we know what to do when camping indoors or during power outages!!!