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Grabbing That Last Slice of Summer

Entree for the Summer Camp Challenge

By Ryan WilkinsPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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When I think of the perfect summer food nothing jumps out as more iconic than Pizza,

Yes... Pizza. “But pizza can be enjoyed any time of year?” I hear you say.

And you’re absolutely right. Pizza is the ultimate form of food, the king confectionary, the bees literal knees and possibly our greatest achievement as a species, (the moon landing can suck it!). Its crowd pleasing, good any time of day or season and any mood you’re in you just kind of want pizza right? Though what makes it my iconic summer food is not the perfect slice on a perfect day, but poorly made attempts at a near impossible task.

Let me explain.

At one point I worked for one of the largest outdoor centres owned and operated by the YMCA in Ontario and as one of their senior staff I did a few campouts every summer. Where the kids would go and pitch tents and make fires out in the “wilderness” of our lawn and we would attempt to do everything as if we were really camping. The goal was to try to be “cut off” from the comforts of the main lodge just up the road.

These events were fun and the kids loved it, but for dinner options that needed to comply with all allergies and sensibilities and could be made over an open fire by the kids themselves, the management staff in their infinite wisdom decided that the clear choice was pizza. The kitchen staff would pull up on the large ATV and would hand deliver proportioned ingredients for pita pizzas. For most people a pita pizza is a pretty easy meal to make in an oven, minimal time, decent taste and if you use good ingredients their great for a home date night. But to make one from scratch on an open firepit was considerably more tenuous.

How do you cook it on all sides evenly?

How do you get it over a fire without dropping it?

How do you put a raw pizza on a campfire grill without it falling through the grates?

How do you eat something as hot as a fire without plates?

The answer to all these questions and more are simple. Be very, very, very, VERY carefully. Now if anyone here has actually met a child or been a child you probably understand that children don’t really act “carefully” even when warned of obvious consequences. You’re probably saying right now, “Well you should have waited for the coals to die down so it cooked over a lower heat.”

And that’s true, but when you have 12 hungry kids who don’t understand why they’re waiting and the sun is setting you just kind of make do with what you got. Of the 10+ pizzas we would make each week, I would say about 2 were decent. Decent being burnt in the middle and basically raw at an edge.

The insanity of the task is what made the campers love it so much. As children built all manner of contraptions to better attempt to cook their pizzas. Multi-layered stick shelving units, rock lined cooking platforms, brick shaped pizza dens all in vain to really accomplish the task. And yet somehow, I never once heard anyone complain about their meal even amongst the pickiest of eaters. Not even when they dropped a whole pie into an ash pile or it caught fire or was too raw to call pizza. They were all a little too proud of their individual work, opting to taste test each other’s “fine” cuisine, offering to share when someone lost their whole meal in a sudden collapse of a pizza tower.

This is why I consider pizza to be the ultimate summer food. Nothing could ruin the joy those kids were having on those hot days camping out in the valley. No amount of rain, or wind, or hard times could take away from what a fun food pizza really is.

humor
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About the Creator

Ryan Wilkins

Don’t Panic…

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