Cooking: love it or hate it

[funscout]

My brother loves to cook, and my mom maintains that he acquired his love of cooking from being in Boy Scouts. My sister and I were both girl scouts, (through 7th grade), but neither of us likes to cook.

 

Do any of you current or former Boy Scouts also enjoy cooking due to your experiences in Boy Scouts?

[orennoah]

Me!

[Venividi]

And me - though I wasn't a boy scout, and I didn't pick up an enjoymnet of cooking until I was an ASM. My son's troop had a great SM (whose shoes I later stepped in to). His enthusiasm for cooking in a dutch oven was contagous. The troop had scouts that prepared dinners such as roasted cornish game hen with baked potatos and corn on the cob.

 

Have since bought a dutch oven of my own, and bunch of us still get together regularly to play with them.

[funscout]

So maybe there is still hope for me. I'm planning on crossing over to Boy Scouts with my younger son next year. Or, better yet, maybe my boys will love cooking so much that I won't have to do any more of the cooking at home!

[resqman]

My grandma and mother encouraged me to cook at home. Easy stuff at first, scambled eggs and the like. My troop started out with the regular fair of poptarts and hot dogs. After a while someone brought a dutch oven to a campout. It became a tradition to make a cobbler on Sat night. From there it spilled over and all the meals starting getting better.

 

As a teenage I worked at a fast food restuarants. Couple of the other scouts also worked in restauants. We decided to show up all the other patrols with our menus and cooking skills.

 

I am starting my Webelos den in the tradition. Our Pack has a cobbler during sat night on the campouts. They chose a menu at the last den meeting and during the pack campout next weekend they will be cooking all their meals as a den.

[John-in-KC]

I won't say my earning my Eagle Required Cooking Merit Badge made me want to cook, but it did give me essential skills I use almost 40 years later.

 

Take time when your son becomes a Boy Scout, Ms funscout, and help him learn the skills. Helping him learn may help you find the fun again.

 

IMO Cooking should return to the Eagle Required List!!!

[sst3rd]

funscout,

 

Yes, my basic knowledge of and my joy of cooking came from my Scout days.

 

sst3rd

 

 

 

I agree John-in-KC,

 

And this has been posted on many times before, but the Cooking merit badge needs to be returned to the required list.

 

 

sst3rd

[CalicoPenn]

Interesting question - makes me wonder if I enjoy cooking because of Scouts or if I enjoyed Scouts more because I liked to cook...except I really don't like cooking outdoors much (except for barbecuing and open flame roasting). When I go camping now, I rarely cook anything (other than maybe a steak, chicken breast, or pork chop/steak roasted over an open fire). Instead, I tend towards a diet of "raw" foods - fruits, vegetables, nuts, salads, cheese and sausage, etc. Winter is an exception and even then my "cooking" is heavy on boiling water for oatmeal or pasta.

 

Most of my early cooking skills came from my Mother who made it a point to teach us skills we would need to be self-sufficient later on in life (like laundry - it amazed me to no end how many 1st year college students, both male and female, didn't know how to operate a washing machine or dryer when they got to school).

 

Cooking Merit Badge was a breeze for me (and I agree, it should still be required for Eagle).

 

I would say that it was because of Scouts that I found I enjoy the challenge of cooking for large (50+) groups of people. It was definitely from the Scouts that I learned how to crack and open an egg with one hand (and not just with one hand, but also to be able to crack and open an egg in each hand at the same time) without leaving any shell in the egg mix.

 

CalicoPenn

[anarchist]

funscout,

 

well mom taught me to cook the basics...so I would let them sleep in on weekends...(Dad used to work the night shift)...

 

But scouts is where it took off! Most of the guys liked to eat, most couldn't cook (at the start, anyway) so I got "elected" for that slot in the patrol duty roster...and why did I like it so much???(you ask) Well in out troop if you cooked, you got a pass on other chores...especially dish washing...which I still do not relish...

 

It (cooking) served me extremely well in college, where I discovered women liked a guy who could cook almost as much as the guys with money...heck I do most of the cooking at home...wife loves it!

 

It carries on today...our troop (scouts and adults) cooks up a storm...we have enough "iron" to ballast a small ship and our older scouts even compete in a "scoutmaster challenge" cooking contest each year...

anarchist

[Lynda J]

Love it. I grew up in GS and we camped and cooked.

When I was about to get married my dad told my soon to be husband that I could cook anything he wanted to eat, over a campfire, but he wasn't sure I knew how to turn the stove on in the kitchen.

He wasn't far from wrong. I expect my boys to cook. I fixed cook books for each patrol. The PLC decided that they would do a new recipe every campout. They do pretty good. One patrol talked about doing salmon this last outing but since we are under almost a total burn ban and can only use propane fed coleman stoves decided to wait until we can do charcoal cooking. They also wanted to do accorn squash. But it will wait also.

Push your boys to try different things. They might cook the same dish but try cooking it different ways. They should be advancing their skills.

By the way. Kevin cooks at home probably 3-4 times a week.