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Recipe: Cast Iron Campfire Waffles

Even far from an electrical socket, when I wake up in the woods I still have a few morning rituals. I need my hot cup of coffee brewed in one of a variety of ways: steeped, perked, or filtered. I usually try to eat a piece of fruit to start my day off right. And then I set out to cook a hearty breakfast for myself and the family.

Recently, and thanks to an amazing find at one of our local camping shops, that hearty breakfast has included fresh campfire waffles.

Yes, waffles. Over the campfire.

A small cast iron waffle pan open on a picnic table.

The easiest way to do set yourself up for campfire waffle success is by prepping some of your ingredients at home first.

In a plastic zip bag at home mix:

2 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt

In a bowl at your campsite mix:

1 bag of dry ingredients (as above)
2 eggs
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups of milk

Also, pack some extra oil for cooking and for caring for your waffle iron.

My waffle iron needs about five minutes to heat up over a cooking fire after you’ve oiled it. Having a grate or other surface to rest your iron on is useful.

When the iron is smoking hot (yes… literally smoking) open the iron wide (using heat-proof mitts) and add 1/3 cup of your waffle batter to one center of the grill plate. Close. Flip (and I do a gentle whirl to spread the batter out inside.) And return to the heat.

Add a bit more oil to the iron between waffles.

A plate of waffles on a colourful plate and picnic table setting.

Figuring out when the waffle is done cooking without that handy beep of an electric iron is as much an art as a skill. Added to the complexity is that you’re cooking over a fire with irregular temperatures. Look for less steam. Look for visible doneness at the edges. Get a feel for the time it takes and be prepared to over/undercook your first couple waffles.

Then… serve. Hot. Add fruit. Syrup. Whatever you like.

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Gear: Tilley H5 Hemp Hat

This week in my Thursday Tuck & Tech post (where I’m making an inventory of the gear I use or would like to add to my collection) I thought I’d write about one of my favourite hats.

Way back in 1993 I was a boy scout. I was one of twelve thousand kids who attended the 8th Canadian Scout Jamboree in nearby Kananaskis, Alberta. If you are wondering what this has to do with a hat, then just know that with some spending money in our pockets and a day trip into the town of Banff, a small group of us spent our treasure on Tilley hats as a souvenir of the week-long campout.

While I still have that Jamboree souvenir hat over a quarter century later, sadly my teenage sense of style and taste didn’t end up fitting with my adult groove. The “natural” hued cotton duck was also a little sweat-stained and grungy, and generally I really just wanted a fresh look.

That’s the logic behind why, in 2014, I upgraded and bought myself a model H5 Hemp Hat in mocha brown.

The history of the Tilley Endurables company reaches back into the eighties, and while the company has since been sold and resold, it started off as a true Canadian tale of success. For about twenty years there, if you wanted a high quality Canadian lid for your outdoor adventures, a Tilley hat was a no-brainer for your brain.

In the nearly seven years since owning this particular hat it has toured Canada, the US, Mexico, Iceland, Scotland and Ireland. It has climbed to the tops of mountains, wandered along the ocean-side beach, and explored countless forests. It has been driving, flying, cruising, boating, camping, backpacking, fishing, and represented Canada at an authentic Highland Games. In fact, I’ve worn it in no less than eight countries, and that’s all of the ones I’ve visited since acquiring it.

It’s starting to get a little sweat-stained and grungy, too.

Note: this is a piece of gear I’ve owned for a while, and this post is not an endorsement (at least, it’s not a paid one.)

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squall

as the door clicked shut
my headlamp broadcast a stark beam
slicing a path through the winter dark

as I took my first steps
my watch reached skyward for a signal
tracking my pace across the icy walks

as I started to run
my face caught the sudden rush of wind
sensing the winter air stirring ahead in the park

as I felt the sleet
my skin braced to the bluster crescendo
wincing at sudden needles of assaulting ice

as I turned back
my heart sunk at the lost moment
pondering my fortunes timing for not departing earlier

- bardo

I set out at about 730pm last night for a short evening run. From the time I shut the door to the time I warmed up my watch and started running, a rare winter storm, a blustery squall, had descended upon us and the still evening streets turned to sleet-pelted wind tunnels ... all without warning. It was all I could do to retreat back to the house as I was hammered with sleet.

I have reserved some space on this blog each week to write some fiction, poetry, or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.

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Iceland: Chasing Waterfalls

I snapped close to ten thousand photos over the course of not-quite-two weeks travelling around Iceland in 2014, and disproportional number of those pics included waterfalls.

for whatever one photo is worth:

Skógafoss is a huge waterfall on the Skógá River in the very southern bulge of Iceland. It was one of the first big waterfalls we saw on our trip along the ring road of the island and notable not just because it is an impressive waterfall, but having climbed up the slick and narrow path to overlook the crest I saw something even more interesting.

A trailhead.

On my visit I wasn’t carrying much more than a camera bag, but others sharing the trail with me were lugging much more substantial loads. Backpacking gear. Obvious overnighting equipment. Crampons. Warm clothes. As I turned to climb back down after snapping my photos, they were hopping over a low barrier and setting out on a serious backpacking trip.

The Fimmvorduhals Trail (as I researched later) is one of many incredible adventures in Iceland. From what I can tell it is part of an extensive hiking and backpacking network in that country and people come from all over to walk them.

To be perfectly honest, until I saw those people trekking outbound from where we had stopped for a tourist break, it had not occurred to me that there might be some seriously awesome backpacking to be had in Iceland. We were going to explore by car with the family including my (at the time) seven year old and her grandparents.

To be even more honest, it hasn’t left my mind as a backpacking trip I’d love to take on. Sooner than later. Had there not been a global pandemic, it was actually an idea I’d floated with a friend for this upcoming summer to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. It inspired me to see those people setting out, and a pang of jealousy has always stuck like a splinter in my brain that I got back into an SUV and drove on while they set off into the wilds for something far more epic.

This picture, then, as simple and beautiful as it looks is actually hiding a personal point of interest for me: it’s the trailhead of one of my bucket list hikes.