For Labor Day weekend, I went camping. Why I chose to go camping in another state, when California has such gorgeous state parks? Because I haven't flown anywhere recently and I missed airports. Result of all the flights (and of the fact that we put off reserving a campsite, as good procastinators do), we went camping for one night. Still major fun though.
After a 2 hour hike to nowhere and back, we decided to start the fire and boy did it take a while. It had rained the day before and so the ground was damp-ish and the firewood wasn't completely dry. So it was a super smoky fire which took forever to start. Damned weather. It wasn't particularly cold, so we could have done without a fire, but I wanted smores and was unwilling to let all the campfire food planning go unfulfilled. Despite blowing at the embers till I felt my lungs would give out and carefully burning our ration of newspaper and kindling, the logs just wouldn't catch fire. They just sat there and smoked, like a bunch of chain smokers on their lunch break. When the first log caught fire, I almost wept with joy, though it might have been all the smoke in my eyes. I added another log and had to start revving up my lungs again because the fire dwindled. While prepping the burgers and the potatoes, I realised that we had a whole block of butter. And we weren't planning to use more than a smear for the potatoes. And then I had my eureka moment. I started greasing the logs with butter and man was it effective. At that moment, I felt like I deserved my own Survive-in-the-almost-wilderness TV show. I was meant to be outdoors! Guess I get it from my grandma, who insisted on drying her own firewood and using that to boil bath water even after we installed water heaters in our house.
So there you have it folks, if your fire just won't catch, add a dollop of butter. Expensive fuel indeed, but when push comes to shove, I say throw in a stick of butter.
P.S. Don't the coal embers look like rock candy?
