On outdoor trips at St. John’s, bannock was a staple and fresh caught fish a treat. Over the years stories of the bannock “masterchefs” are legendary. And all fish stories are, well … fish stories.
What are your memories of the bannock chefs and great fish catches?
September 3, 2013 at 1:01 pm
John Corkett and I started the bannock craze. We had a couple pancake breakfasts for the Bloodvein trip — Grade 8’s. Not quite as intense, and we knew there would be a morning some day that wasn’t get up and rush. Besides. Add some salt and pepper to pancake mix, and it makes decent batter for frying fish.
And it got used, both ways during the first two weeks of the trip.
We get to Bloodvein, the reserve, for resupply, and there are no pilot biscuits. No hard tack. There was squishy wonder bread.
“Let’s do bannock” So we bought two sacks of flour, a couple tins of baking powder, and half a case of lard. For the remainder of the trip, part of my chores in the evening was to make 21 bannocks for lunch the next day.
From Bloodvein to the school the route is on Lake Winnipeg. It takes very little wind on that lake to become windbound. Our progress was fitful. John asked me to make up a double batch, but make them half size. He wanted 4 bannocks per person. We’d also caught a lot of jack fish waiting for the wind. We deep fried all the jack in 2″ long chunks. At 4 p.m. the wind started to die. We ate supper, and pushed off. At 8 p.m. we went to shore, bannock, peanut butter, jam, and a hunk of cold fish. And set out again. As the lake got too dusky to see, we stopped, refed, and crashed. A couple hours sleep, and we were on the water again at 2:30 in the morning, having feasted on more fish and more bannock. At 5 we had bannock and cheese. At 9 a.m. the wind put us ashore, and we took time to make oatmeal.
That was our routine for the next three days. Build up a supply of bannock, and feed the kids every 3-4 hours, and just keep moving whenever we could.
September 3, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Bannock worked well for lunch. It was easier to carry flour than it was pilot biscuits. On the Methye we had it as our standard lunch fare. But on that trip we had 49 people. We had a griddle and a frying pan. A griddle could do 6 bannocks. The frying pans 3. Still, it took a long time. We ended up with a crew just for bannock. They would start when we hit the shore, two guys mixing it up, and two building the fire. Bannock on a griddle takes about 10 minutes on each side to not be gooey in the middle, so 20 minutes a batch, 9 per batch. Two hours minimum, once you had the fire right.
Sometimes we camped late. I would stay up and deep fry them. This was faster, but used far more lard. And it still took a long time.