Camping, the Outdoors Adventure

When I was a kid I was always in love with camping.  My Grandfather gave me my first Boy Scout tent when I was 5 and I remember having so much fun in the backyard with it.  Later on I was able to go away each Summer to one of the top sleepaway camps in Western Maryland where we had fun doing all the things you expect when you're a kid at Summer Camp.  I remember I was best at Archery and Boating but never a dab hand at Arts & Crafts.



In the ad above from 1923 we have the Kampkook Stove, a grandfather as you will of the Coleman Camp Stoves we are used to today.  It was portable and easily set up and used regular gasoline as fuel.  The 1920's saw a surge in camping as people started embracing the automobile culture and driving to the national parks that Teddy Roosevelt had set up a couple of decades earlier.  There were a number of companies that soon started manufacturing the products that took the edge off of living in the wild for a weekend.

When I was a Civil War Reenactor though we weren't able to use all these comfort products.  For us it was getting back to the basics of history and camping like the soldiers in the Civil War would have camped.  It was then, nigh on 12 years ago now, that started me on the path towards being a researcher of culinary history.  That path soon became a road that has led me to setting up this blog and every time I step into the kitchen I discover a new adventure becoming in essence a Kitchen Indiana Jones.

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