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Odds and Ends
Besides impromptu feasts of pine nuts or haws or maypops, one may have squaw kettle parties of fresh gathered skookum oolalies, which one of our Michigan pioneer grandfathers learned, from the Indians, meant good berries. Dunking camp bread in a gypsy kettle of huckleberries will take some beating.
But nowadays it's just as well to take along a can of Pecano, ground pecans that are perfect on almost anything (toasted marshmallows, for instance) or stirred into the new fudge mix at the finish. A box of Floridian guava paste will come in handy, together with gingerbread mixes, and Danish Dessert you have only to heat and stir.
For a watermelon party try plugging a big one, filling it with all the good red wine it will hold, setting it aside to mellow and cool for a few hours before sampling.
Most of this page is a shopping list of mid-century convenience products for the picnic basket; the only actual procedure is the wine-filled watermelon at the end. That part still works, and the rest is easy enough to translate.
- Plugging a melonCut a deep cone or square plug from the top of the melon with a long thin knife, angling inward so the piece can be lifted out and dropped back in as a stopper. Keep the plug — you will need it to seal the fruit while it soaks.
- How much wine it takesA large watermelon absorbs little at first, then more as it sits; the recipe simply says to fill it with all it will hold. Add the wine in stages as the level drops rather than all at once. A large melon may take on the order of a bottle, but the amount varies with the fruit.
- Soaking timeA few hours is the minimum for the wine to travel past the first inch of flesh; overnight in the refrigerator or a cooler is better. Stand the melon plug-side up in a bowl, since it will weep.
- Serving and yieldOne large melon serves twelve to sixteen as a dessert. The alcohol is not cooked off, so it is not a children's dish despite looking like one.
- PecanoA canned ground-pecan product of the period, which does not appear to be on sale now. Toast shelled pecans in a 350F oven for 8-10 minutes, cool completely, then pulse to a coarse meal — grind them warm and you get paste.
- Danish DessertA raspberry or strawberry thickened fruit pudding mix sold by Junket, still available in some markets. A cooked cornstarch-thickened fruit sauce does the same job.
- Guava pasteSold as goiabada or pasta de guayaba in Latin American groceries, usually in a flat tin or plastic tub rather than a box. Firm enough to slice, and good against camp bread or a hard cheese.
- Gypsy kettle of huckleberriesPresumably wild huckleberries stewed down over the fire; the text gives no method or sweetening. Cultivated blueberries stand in, though they are sweeter and need lemon.
Skookum oolalie is not Michigan Ojibwe but Chinook Jargon, the trade pidgin of the Pacific Northwest, in which skookum means strong or excellent and olallie means berry — a reminder of how far such words traveled in campfire and scouting literature, often detached from the people and places they came from. Spiking a whole melon with wine or spirits is a familiar picnic trick, and is also recorded with rum or brandy, though the origin of the practice is not documented here. The rest of the passage is pure postwar outdoor cookery, when a chapter on woodcraft foraging could end by recommending packaged mixes in a single breath.