“The big sawmill
camps had really good cooks,” he explains, “but
the smaller camps didn’t.” A big camp might
have thirteen or fourteen men living in it while a small
one would have three or four fallers and two teamsters,
the men who worked with the horses.
Charlie said that
a quarter of beef would be hanging from a
tree
outside. Because it was winter, the meat stayed frozen,
so the cook would just go out and
hack off what he needed and fry it up.
“That meat was tough,” he notes. “And
we ate a lot of mulligan stew and beans.” For those
not familiar with it, a mulligan stew is made with whatever
ingredients happen to be available.
One camp cook always
underestimated the amount of food the men would eat.
She’d
prepare one potato and one carrot for each man working in the camp. The
men, who’d done hard, physical labour all day, complained that they
were starving. Some of them even quit because of the meager rations.
Another
camp cook was simply inept. She added eggshells to the ground coffee
believing that she was providing the men with extra calcium. While her
intentions were good, she forgot to empty the eggshells and coffee grounds
so the eggshells
rotted in the coffee pot.
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