If you have ever desired or dreamed to go on a journey in a canoe, this is the place to start. Although this could potentially be challenging, canoeing can also be a fun and most memorable experience to enjoy with your family. However, as a beginner, learning and preparing yourself as much as you can is key to a successful and safe canoeing trip. This guide below is a great, first step to learn for one of the most important aspect: cooking meals while on the canoe
FOR the canoe, you will need specific food supplies and the necessary utensils for cooking carried in a single box or chest. Preparing this box will help you have everything in one area to prepare your meals on board while having a fun and stress-free journey.
If on a long cruise most of your food supply may be kept in other parts of the canoe, but the box should contain enough for at least three meals. However, the food can be restocked from a larger store when stopping for the night or at a camping place for any length of time. The larger the box that your storage room in the canoe will allow, the more comfortable and better prepared you will be in the canoe.
For starters, the box can be made of wood, tin or galvanized iron, and however you are willing to pay for materials to build the box is completely up to you. If the box is properly made and well taken care of, there should not be any trouble in keeping it for a long time. Keep in mind a box that is either japanned (a technique which includes covering with a hard, black varnish), painted tin, or galvanized iron will withstand much more without breakage. Of course, if made of wood, the joining and dove-tailing must be well-done, it should be varnished inside and out with shellac or boat varnish, and it must be water-tight!
How to get started with dovetailing
As for the dimensions for the box, this cannot be explicitly instructed for the box should be built according to your canoe size, amount of provisions, and the size you are desiring. Therefore, first determine what amount and variety of eatables you will carry, and then construct the box according to your needs and your storage room.
If made of wood quarter inch or 5/16 stuff (pine) will do, and if the box is to be used as a seat the top and bottom pieces should be heavier, say 3/8 of an inch. The cover should be two inches deep and the handle by which the box is carried should be a thin, wide, flat strap tacked to the cover. If the box is not used as a seat but is stowed under the deck it will be found an advantage to have the flanges of the cover fall over the side pieces of the box and the strap tacked to one end piece, carried over the cover and fastened by a hook to an eye in the other end piece in reach of the hand, so that the cover may be removed and articles obtained from the box without taking it from under the deck. If used as a seat the cover may be hinged on one side and two hooks fastened at the ends on the other, and for the back rest two pieces of three-quarter inch pine are screwed to the sides, running aft horizontally six or eight inches from the aftermost end of the box, holes being bored in them an inch apart "athwartship" and cut opposite each other, through which a quarter-inch brass rod is passed for the back rest to play on. As the lower end of the back rest strikes the end of the box near the floor when in use, it may be "slanted" as inclination demands by changing the brass rod from one set of holes to another.
To carry the provisions in the box so that they will not mix or spill, several water-tight tins should be used. The Consolidated Fruit Jar Company, 49 Warren Street, New York, makes tin screw-tops for jars and canisters that are perfectly water-tight. Send for several of these tops, of assorted sizes, and have a tinsmith make the tin cans of the dimensions you desire, so that they will nest in the box closely. The same company will also furnish you with a pint or quart earthen jar with water-tight screw-top, in which butter may be kept sweet for a long time in hot weather, and which may be enveloped in a net and lowered to the bottom of the river or lake without fear of its leaking.
To figure out what items to stock in the tin cans, they can be as followed:
(A special screw-top is made for fluid cans.) Pepper and salt are in small spice boxes with two covers. Eggs are safest carried in the tins with the flour, coffee and rice. Bread and bacon (or salt pork) are wrapped in macintosh and put near the top of the chest. The vinegar goes in a whisky flask (Recommended: mark it to avoid mistakes). Lastly, canned goods, condensed milk, and baking powder, etc., can be in their own cans.
The alcohol stove and utensils to cook the meals should go in the box, such as coffee pot, cup, fork, knife, spoon, frying pan and plates. The coffee pot should small, with handle and lip riveted. Cups or plates should be of tin or granite ware. The fork and knife should have their coverings of leather inside the box cover. The plates should nest in the frying pan, which should have no handle, and is fastened inside the chest cover by two buttons, so that it may be easily accessed.
Next, the knife and fork have a covering for a pair of small blacksmith's pliers. This instrument serves as a handle to the frying pan, a lifter for everything on the fire, and can always be kept cool. A three-quart tin or granite ware pail is necessary for cooking stews, and two smaller ones may be nested in it, of two-quart and three-pint capacity, respectively. Put the can of condensed milk in the smallest pail. That way it will be out of the way and won't make anything sticky inside.
If you carry potatoes, onions or others, be sure to always have enough in the chest for three meals. The provisions, such as vegetables, extra bread, crackers, flour, meal, pork or bacon, etc., should be carried in waterproof bags and can be stored away wherever necessary to slim down the canoe.
These waterproof bags may be used also for clothing and blankets. They are made of unbleached muslin, sewn in a lap seam, with a double row of stitches. When sewn they are dipped in water and slightly shaken to remove the drops, and then while wet a mixture of equal parts of boiled oil, raw oil and turpentine is applied to the outside with a brush. This takes about a week to become thoroughly dry, and then another coat is put on without dampening the cloth, and if a little liquid drier is added to the mixture, this coat will dry in four or five days.
Having prepared several bags, the provisions, clothing, blankets, etc., are put in the bag, and its mouth is inserted in that of another bag of the same size, the latter being drawn on like a stocking as far as it will go. If several bags are used instead of one or two large ones, the canoe can be trimmed and packed to better advantage.
A canoeist's portable oven is made of two small basins, one of which has "ears" riveted to its rim. The purpose is that when the “ears” are placed bottom up on the other the ears will spring over the rim of the second basin, making sure gases can escape. The basins should be made of sheet-iron, and, as their interiors can easily be kept clean, they go well for soup dishes. Instructions for baking in them will be given later. These should not go in the provision chest, as they will smear everything with which they come in contact. Butter is better in its jar outside of the chest than inside. Outside, too, are kept a small jug of molasses, and a jug of fresh water, if cruising on the "briny."
There is no perfect canoe stove. The "flamme forcé" is probably as good as any. It takes up a little more room than the folding "pocket" variety, and it does not give more heat; but it burns for a longer time and is not top-heavy when a heavy pot or pan is set on it. For cooking in large utensils have three of these flamme forcé alcohol lamps, light them and place them side by side, and you can cook in this way a dozen slapjacks at once on a big griddle, if you like.
Beware of "folding stoves" to use ashore and burn wood in. They are the greatest possible troubles - smutty, red-hot and cumbersome. Don't carry an oil stove. But if you really must, put the dirty thing in a large bucket, and only remove it from this receptacle when necessary.
Now as to eatables in general, condensed milk is a good thing, but condensed coffee, condensed eggs and condensed beef are disgusting to have. Self-rising flour, wheat, rye, Indian or Graham, is easily made into bread and slapjacks. The directions come with the packages. Pilot bread will keep an indefinite time and is not so inedible as hard-tack. Indian meal is very nutritious and easily made up, as it requires nothing to lighten it but scald it before using when it is not fresh. Canned tomatoes, corn, fruits, beans, soups, salmon, etc., are easy to prepare, and can be stored as weight in the canoe.
Mr. Hicks, of the Toronto Canoe Club, prepares certain kinds of food in cans for ballast as follows, according to the American Canoeist:
"Get a number of flat square tin cans made like oyster cans, of a handy size to lie under your floor boards. Then cook a turkey, some chickens, a sirloin of beef, etc. Cut the hot meat up into large dice-shaped pieces, and put it in the tins hot, then pour melted fat in till the tins are full, and then solder them tight. Get as much meat in as you can before putting in the fat. Put up fruit in square flat cans in the same way. There is your ballast, and heavy stuff it is. When the provisions run short let the crew feed on the ballast. The preparation described is far more nutritious than canned corned beef, is more palatable, and will keep indefinitely - that is, throughout a very long cruise."
I have not tried this method of preserving provisions, but I do not see why it would not be a feasible method. The Brunswick canned soups are the cheapest, are easily prepared, and as wholesome as any. However, I have known nervous canoeists who would not use them because they didn't like the way the powder looked. Dried beef, corned beef, lemons and sardines make good additions to an outfit. Potatoes, onions and other vegetables should be procured en route as needed, if possible.
As it may puzzle some beginners to know how much of each article of food to take in the canoe. Here, I give below the exact amount of provisions I carried on a week-long cruise last autumn. I did not run short of anything at the end of the week, but I had not have any left for three square meals: