GorpStew

GorpStew.com owes its name to an event that occurred years ago in British Columbia.

By 1992, I had been panning, sluicing, sniping, dredging and metal detecting for gold for 16 years. In the spring of that year, my then prospecting partner “Skinny” Tom and I launched our gold prospecting season from Alaska. We started out in the Forty Mile Mining District southwest of Fairbanks and worked as far north as Coldfoot on the Dalton Highway above the Arctic Circle.

Dalton Hwy—Mile 256.

By late summer, we had drifted south from Alaska and were prospecting in Yukon, British Columbia. Early one evening we plodded back to camp, bone tired and hungry, after a long day of hiking and metal detecting only to confront our most despised camp chore–food procurement .

Skinny Tom and I had little patience and even less talent for cooking. Our culinary efforts often ended in disaster, and no one had ever accused us of being cooks , not with a straight face anyway. In fact, one visitor to our camp who invited himself to dinner, insisted after spitting out his first and only taste from our pot, “You damn well ought to be arrested, tried, convicted and hung for committing foodicide .”

To ‘capture’ our meal, our strategy was always the same. First, we planned our attack. Then, we rounded-up weapons, the camps utensils and sooty, misshapen ‘cooking’ pot, and chipped off yesterdays grime. Next, we gathered ammo (dented cans of beans, moldy cheese, foul eggs, hot sauce and such). Lastly, it all came together in that nights assault on the kitchen , where we faced our enemy (reluctantly) in our push to be victories.

In spite of our gallant efforts though, by campaigns end, we usually sat down to a meal scorched to a cinder, or at the least shamefully brutalized.

lamentably, after years of camping and turning out one botched meal after another I had come to view starvation as a fate only marginally worse than ingesting my own cooking. Therefore, I usually tried to “partner-up” (if I partnered-up at all) with someone that could throw together an eatable meal, but, as my luck would have it, although Skinny Tom was an excellent, hardworking prospector, his meal creations failed to attain the splendor that he had promised and turned out to be only very slightly preferable over mine. Sad but true.

Skinny Tom brutalizing a ‘pancake.’ (We were on the road in British Columbia when the horrifying incident occurred).

Anyway, we were running low on supplies and half starving that evening, so into the pot with haste flew a bit of whatever we could lay our hands on, which that day was macaroni, jalapeño peppers, and chopped onions from my “pantry” paired with diced carrots and spicy chunks of Kielbasa from Skinny Tom’s.

We stoked a fire under the pot and pretty pronto it was bubbling and venting forth an enticing bouquet so alluring that even we, so jaded by defeat—dared to hope.

Maybe, for once, we had actually produced something edible (even if it was by accident). We could hardly wait to give it a go.

Minutes later, surrounded, shielded, and sequestered by majestic wilderness, not having a care in the world, and comfortably lounging upon a flat-topped boulder, I cheerfully dipped a piece of only slightly moldy bread into my whatever stew.

“Damn Tom, this grub’s mighty fine! So good in fact, it demands a name. Any ideas?”

“Gorpstew.” Skinny Tom grumbled between bites

“I really like that handle Tom, it’s—inspirational.”

The name stuck and ever since, the ingredients for Gorpstew have been pasta and meat mixed with whatever the heck we could lay our hands on to toss into the kettle.

Me (on left) and Skinny Tom. (Photo taken in front of his 18 wheeler, when he was driving for JMI—between prospecting ventures).

Although, the basic staple of Gorpstew is pasta and meat, the concoction is usually unique to the occasion, limited only by ingredients at hand and the cook’s inspiration.

Consequently, one’s taste buds never know exactly what to expect. It adds a certain suspense and nervous anticipation to what otherwise might be just another boring meal in the bush…and that’s a good thing.

I couldn’t even guess how many times since that I’ve had a tasty, steaming bowl of Gorpstew in Gold Camps throughout Alaska, British Colombia, and the Continental American West. Admittedly, not all attained the utter perfection of the original masterpiece, but most did at least exceed the average camp fare in taste and nutrition.

Me in front of a Survival Station in Northern B.C. (on the road to Atlin, one of the most beautiful settings I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting).

When I decided to build a blog around a static core of “ingredients” (my prospecting tales) and mix in true stories and features from outside, for spice, I was stumped for a name for my website. Then I thought of Gorpstew and was immediately struck by the parallels. And—yada, yada, yada—welcome to Gorpstew.com!

Thusly ends my horrid tale of culinary brutality in the wilds, subsequent path to redemption, and “How GorpStew.com Got Its Name.”

That’s my version. And by golly, I’m sticking to it!

Copyright © http://gorpstew.com/ 2007-2008 by Jason Kincade. All rights reserved. To inquire about permissions, contact Jason.

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