creative campfire cookery
Last week at book club our hosts had a fire and lots of pears from their tree, so of course the kids worked on roasting pears over the fire (seen here). They discovered that it's quite hard to make them entirely delicious just holding them over the flames, but that wrapped in tin foil and cooked in the coals they came out pretty good. Yesterday it was our turn to host a book group with some of the same people—and the ones with pears brought some, so naturally there was a call to repeat the experiment. This time one of the kids asked for a skillet so she could slice the pears and cook them in butter. Unfortunately the fire was so hot the pear slices burned in the pan even faster than they would have over the flames; I don't think the sugar they added to the pan helped any. Then after they gave up on pears, the kids collected about a half-cup of iris seeds and toasted them in the skillet. Checking with online resources revealed that irises are actually fairly poisonous, so they didn't taste the seeds. Harvey also declined to eat the eggs I cooked in the same pan this morning, which maybe makes sense; but I can tell you they were as delicious as usual, and I haven't gotten sick yet. That was my experiment.