I was a Scout Master with the BSA for about 10 years and thought I'd share a great memory. I found it in my old recipe file and thought I'd share it here.

The Thanksgiving Meal

Description:
Several years ago we took about 20 Scouts on a camping trip during a Thanksgiving Vacation period. We couldn't have picked a worst weekend due to the extremely wet weather but decided to stick it out and make the best of it. We had tarps hung in trees for shelters and a box truck load of oak scraps from a local stair manufacturing company to keep our fires hot and to keep us warm. We had a bonfire going that would evaporate the rain before it cleared the tree line and many parents had asked why some of the boys had red faces after they returned home.


Ingredients:
Read Below

Directions:
Any ways we had planned to do a full thanksgiving meal on this trip and that is just what we did. ( The boys made several turkies on their own. Myself and a few other leaders made the one that follows for demonstration purposes for the boys.

To do the turkey we used a method that involved a spit that was driven into the ground. The turkey was then prepared and then set down over the spit. Kind of like a chicken going over a beer can. The spit went up through the turkeys cavity and then was secured to the spit. We crudely made a tin foil dripping diverter to catch any drippings from the bird and to run them into a pan set at the base.
We made tubes from chicken wire that you could stack about 15 charcoal briquettes into. 4 of them that were then attached to stakes forming a square around the turkey. The stakes made corners roughly about 16" from the turkey on the center spit.

Heavy duty tin foil was then wrapped around the corner stakes.Around the bottom of the stakes the foil enclosure was about 10" off the ground.

The turkey we had was a 22 pounder. After the coals were set we then place a foil cover over the top and just added more coals as needed as they burned off.

I made home made corn bread stuffing with cranberries. When I say home made I went all out, lol. I made the corn bread muffins first and then used the muffins for the stuffing. I did cheat enough to use the Betty Crocker Muffin mix though. It is a favorite for preparing this stuffing. Besides the usual of carrots onions and celery I also used MBT chicken stock, cranberries and walnuts. I ended up making two large dutch ovens full of the stuffing.

For some reason that to this day I haven't wanted to figure out the turkey was completely cooked in about 2 1/2 hours. I would say that maybe the heat had been to high but it wasn't. The skin was beautifully golden and the meat was perfect. The boys all lined up for the food and we started serving. The rain was pouring down and the chill was in the air but no one seemed to mind. The mashed potatoes, the sweet potatoes, the assorted vegetables, bread and rolls, the pies and the gravy. I'd swear that those kids hadn't been fed in months. When I finally sat down to eat myself it was like the old rhyme about Old Mother Hubbard going to the cupboard but the cupboards were bare. I just looked at the turkey carcass sitting there thinking to myself jokingly about turkey vultures, lol.

It was a great experience had by all that participated and the best damn turkey I have ever had.

IC