SECTION 1: STICK

What and Why

Stick cooking is a common way to introduce kids to campfire cooking. It’s easy enough to poke simple food onto a stick to warm it up over a fire! S’mores are often the first recipe kids “cook” over flame.

Stick cooking can be done with a whittled stick, a roasting fork, or a pie iron. You can also grill skewered proteins and vegetables. Cooking breads over the fire works better with a wooden dowel rod.

Advantages

• Sometimes it’s fast (like S’Mores or hot dogs).

• Can be cooked or warmed to individual preference

• Each girl has responsibility for her own meal or snack

• Individually prepared portions easily accommodate picky eaters and diet choices.

Concerns

• Sometimes it’s slow (like pie iron sandwiches)..

• Girls may tire out easily from holding the stick over the flame.

• Impatient girls might burn fingers or tongues if they try to eat the food before it cools down.

• Large groups will need to take turns with available cooking tools and time around the fire pit.

• Metal roasting forks and pie irons get hot. Remind girls to touch only the handle.

• Food on a stick can get incinerated over the fire! Girls need self-control to handle their stick safely, and not whip their flaming marshmallow out of the fire and into their neighbor.

Advice

• Set clearly defined rules about how to carry the sticks around the campfire area. Nobody wants a stick in the eye (walk slowly, hold stick vertically).

• Tie back loose hair with elastics, hats, or bandanas.

• When reaching toward the fire, have girls maintain three points of contact on the ground for good balance.

• The best place for stick cooking is above the flame, not in the flame.

• The best place for pie iron cooking is in hot coals, not flames.

• Pie irons are made of cast iron, so don’t use soap on them or bang them together when they're hot—they might crack.

S’mores did you know it’s a Girl Scout thing? Yes—the first appearance of the S’more recipe was in a 1927 Girl Scout book!

“Some More”

• 16 graham crackers

• 8 bars plain chocolate (any of the good plain brand broken in two)

• 16 marshmallows

Toast two marshmallows over the coals to a crispy gooey state and then put them inside a graham cracker and chocolate bar sandwich. The heat of the marshmallow between the halves of chocolate bar will melt the chocolate a bit. Though it tastes like “some more” one really is enough.

Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. New York: Girl Scouts, 1927.