Thread: NZ Forest Service Cook Book

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

Enjoy.

Cheers
Pete

Forest Service Cookery.pdf

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

Quentin

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

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.

Blue and yellow wanderers RFC

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

Cheers
Pete

Originally Posted by 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.

Steamed puddings are bloody beaut on a cold wet night.

BTW

Blue and Yellow is Clive Rugby & Sports colours

Cheers
Pete

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.

[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 [/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!!!!

Originally Posted by EeeBees

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.

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.

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 ..

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

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.

Thank you very much for posting that!

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