Backpacking Biscuits

.

It's my Dad's fault.

He was the one who decided that my parents should take up backpacking when they were in their 50's. Not that my Mom was not game.... one of my great teen memories was of her attempts to learn to water ski. She could get on top of the water, but somehow her legs just would not straighten and so she would drag half around the lake getting a terrific spanking as her bu.... uh, derriere dragged in the water. She was grimly determined to do it and have fun if it killed her. Backpacking would not have been her idea, but she did it and was good at it.

So, we all got into it. One of my nephew Daron's fondest memories was of a backpacking trip with my Dad and my nephew Tom......... SO, after a hiatus of some years, he got us to go backpacking as a group again last year. My Sister, Bobette, Daron and his kids, and me. It was fun. Honest. And we are getting ready to go again. Tom and his kids will join us this year, as will Jim, Tom's brother.

On that trip I tried the old boy scout trick of roasting biscuit dough on a stick over a campfire.
I was never a boy scout. There had to be a reason, and my results with biscuit making may indicate some of them.

BUT, I do love biscuits and the idea of biscuits on a backpacking trip is just so compelling. AND my later experience with a Dutch oven in camp were really encouraging. So, why not do that on a backpacking trip? Uh, no way am I gonna lug a dutch oven up a mountain. But why not do some experimenting with those lightweight aluminum throw away pans and see what can be done, right?

THIS is why a grown man was baking biscuits in a make-shift dutch oven over a campfire in his driveway at 7 o'clock in the morning.

It was my Dad's fault.