# Community > Resource Library >  NZ Forest Service Cook Book

## P38

A copy of the NZ Forest Service Cook Book.

Apparently rancid butter makes great scones. 

And in the Bush an attractively laid out plate looks much more appetising than one where everything has been piled up
together  :Have A Nice Day: 

Enjoy.

Cheers
Pete

Forest Service Cookery.pdf

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## 45SOUTH

That a neat book to have a read on thanks for posting that 

Quentin

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## hunter308

Downloaded and saved on computer, quite a good bit of reading especially the bit that describes the different meat cuts on a deer.

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## Scribe

What a good addition to the resource section.
 I notice so many of the modern day hunters will sit around the hut nibbling on noodles, lentils and scroggin and stuff until you turn out a bloody great camp oven feed. It seems they have never learnt to cook. What a pity. Good food plays an important part in the enjoyment we get out of our hunting trips. The camp oven goes everywhere with us. In the days of Internal Affairs and NZFS a poor cook was a lowly sort of creature. I have seen a man sacked for turning out a poor bread. I thought it was wrong at the time the guy had the makings of a good hunter but as the headman explained. If the guy could not take his turn at cooking and produce satisfactory meals to feed a hut full of hunters, track cutters or hut builders he was a liability. This is one of the reason this cookbook was written to help the average cook produce really good food.
 These are great recipes..The bread recipe in particular is great. Holding your hand under the camp oven and counting is an amazingly accurate method of judging temperatures . We still turn out loaves of camp oven bread at reunions cooked to this same recipe.

The baking and pudding section is particularly good. In one hut I remember (Ruahine Corner)we had a sock, a bloody big football sock blue and yellow ( I often wonder whose team colours it represented) it hung up above the fire and was not to be worn under the penalty of death. In this sock we made some of the best steamed and boiled plum puddings you ever tasted. We played cards or drew straws for the toe.

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## veitnamcam

Blue and yellow wanderers RFC

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## P38

Scribe

I've seen exactly what your talking about..... freeze dried meals by passed and discarded for a good old scoff of piping hot second day old Veni stew and fresh bread from the camp oven.  :36 1 11: 

Steamed puddings are bloody beaut on a cold wet night.

BTW

Blue and Yellow is Clive Rugby & Sports colours

Cheers
Pete

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## Scribe

> Scribe
> 
> I've seen exactly what your talking about..... freeze dried meals by passed and discarded for a good old scoff of piping hot second day old Veni stew and fresh bread from the camp oven. 
> 
> Steamed puddings are bloody beaut on a cold wet night.
> 
> BTW
> 
> Blue and Yellow is Clive Rugby & Sports colours
> ...


God how we used to eat...Wet days at a hut were devoted to bread and pudding making and stuffing ourselves. Then we would be off flycamping somewhere for as long as the fine weather lasted then back in again to the hut as lean as hungry dogs.

We used to be supplied with powdered full cream milk in a blue tin. It was great stuff, we would mix icing sugar with it and beat it and it came up like whipped cream. We used to have it with all our puddings.

I dont know what they did to the powdered milk then but that stuff we got after that in green tins was just crap.

I bet that is where our pudding sock came from alright 'pete' Its a Shitty colour but Clive is not that far from Ruahine Corner.

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## EeeBees

[QUOTE=P38;21384)

And in the Bush an attractively laid out plate looks much more appetising than one where everything has been piled up
together  :Have A Nice Day:    [/QUOTE]

This seriously cracks me up...I know for a fact that after you have ripped your innards coming up out of the Ripia, you are sure as heck not going to do a Gordon Bleeding Ramsay over how your meal is plated!!!!

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## Scribe

> This seriously cracks me up...I know for a fact that after you have ripped your innards coming up out of the Ripia, you are sure as heck not going to do a Gordon Bleeding Ramsay over how your meal is plated!!!!


I dont know about that 'EeeBees. (I think) good presentation is nearly as important in the hills as good food. Under some circumstances it can mean that the extra effort is well worth it.

I was once stuck with the job of taking a new, 'potential bonus hunter" on a tour of the block. He had a severe case of the 'bot' when he arrived and after a week in the hills this 'bot' turned to bronchitis. I was early spring and I dragged his sorry ass up hill and down dale and in and out of rivers that were running high until we got stuck between two flooded river systems. It rained solid for a week and blew its guts out before turning to snow,  We ran out of meat because this sorry prick barked like an old hind every time he took a step and scared every bit of game out of the area for miles around. We ran short of food then and even the tobacco had run out a few days before as well.
By now even sleep was non existant because this guy barked all night too. 

One day I found myself seriously offering to pat him on the back with the sharp edge of the axe. So you see 'EeeBees this guy would not have dared to serve up the remainder of our food up all mixed together like slops. I am sure hunters must have been dissappeared from the face of the earth for less under similar circumstance over the years.

I finally got him out down a river that was still running high, it took for ever as he had to stop for a barking fit every couple of minutes. Ended up parking his even sorrier ass by this stage in the Mokai Station Woolshed and went to get him some help...I have never seen or heard of the man since. He probably decided to take me off his mailing list.

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## Scribe

I was just thinking I can no longer even remember the mans name and all that remains to remind us now of his brief passage through our mountains are his entries on the sputum covered pages of the various hut log books.

Ahhh but a falling stars light shines but briefly.

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## nzbushbunny

Thanks for the Cook book Gentlemen ..
been Living in the bush & cooking in camp ovens over an open fire for years , I'm looking forward to  reading through this cookbook .. had an Uncle in the Forest Service & my 1st Backpack was the Wooden framed Forest Servce Pack back in the 70's , i did alot of miles with that Pack & a Billy Can ..

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## gonetropo

my father worked for the NZFS and we lived at the woodhill village for many years, were good times and us kids were all shooting before we were 10

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## Woody

Still have my book and treat it as treasure. Worked with Ian Lyall for quite a while.
 @EeeBees, the presentation was important. A fine meal was a sort of morale booster; like "we're as well off or better than in town, and can create our own joy with what we have" and a comfort when warmng up and drying out gear by a fire. Broke the harshness of the environment down into a more equable and balanced life. This was important for morale when spending extended periods in relative isolation. Bit hard to explain, but it is real.

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## norsk

Thank you very much for posting that!

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## trooper90

I have this book in my book shelf must dig it out thanks!

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## Woody

Thinking a little more about those meals we used to cook up. One of the main factors I think was that our hunting or animal survey jobs were actual work; with targets to be met. Basically 7 days a week until moved out. It was'nt like a few days semi glide time hunting holiday--- it was work; but an enjoyable sort of work for most of us. There were few, if any cut tracks or anything other than rough bush or terrain. Even gas stoves were virtually non existent so all cooking was over an open fire. Collecting and cutting fuel was an essential chore. Personal washing was mostly in the nearest  stream. So actually the only time we could more or less call our own was cooking and enjoying the sheer pleasure and innovation we applied to it, along with the gallons of billy tea and a few quiet smokes in the evening. Mostly the only after dark lighting was with candles mounted in used tins for reflectors. Clean  the rifles, try to dry your socks and warm the boots, then read a book in the old farta before sleep. Unless high up, wet feet were a constant part of life each day from dawn till dusk. So--the busheman beer in the morning, a hot breakfast, and  the evening cookup were our main relaxation and pleasures. Baking a new camp oven of bread and scoffing it hot was an ace pleasure, as  @Scribe has described; even though it was sometimes what we termed "raisin bread", if the rats had got to the flour sack hanging in the rafters  :Wtfsmilie:

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## Cordite

Great read.  Thanks for posting.  

First time I came across "ptomaine poisoning" and had to look it up, just called food poisoning nowadays.

ptomaine [to´mān, to-mān´]
any of several toxic bases formed by decarboxylation of an amino acid, often by bacterial action, such as cadaverine, muscarine, and putrescine.
ptomaine poisoning a term commonly misapplied to food poisoning. Contrary to popular belief, ptomaines are not injurious to the human digestive system, which is quite capable of reducing them to harmless substances.

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## Woody

yep. with tinned food we always looked for a swollen top or any signs of pressure when the can was pierced. if so, it's contents were not consumed. One time we buried some butter and flour under river shingle to lighten our packs during a long distance fly camp trek. Almost a month later we returned, pretty hungry and dug it up. We cut about a fingers width off the outside and made damper with butter and flour. Was good as I recall. Another time we were getting a bit lean on it and shot a parry duck. We stuffed it with dried beech leaves and contents of some maggie soup packets. Then we wrapped it up in the empty packets and placed it under the ashes of our fire for an hour or so. better than nothing and tasted good but a bit dry.

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## Carlsen Highway

I've had an old copy of that book for years. I remember lugging a camp oven in with me to some godfaorskane place once an a the end of the trip there was absolute silence as four trampers who only had some bags of dried fruit left watched me make battered venisen, some version of a scone bread with raisens, which I called a cake, and later on some pancakes in it on an open fire outside the hut. By the end of the night I had spent the night cooking and fed them all and there was bugger all for me! 
I wish there was a cast iron camp oven in every hut. And more open fires in the huts. The modern DOC stoves down here are rubbish for cooking anything.

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## outdoorlad

@Carlsen Highway a wise mate of mine once told me, "trampers & Kea's -never feed them otherwise you'll never get rid of them"  :Grin:

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## Woody

Yep. Putta putta putta. Drive you nuts.

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