Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 23, 1994 TAG: 9408230074
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Forget about thoughts of play when you barely have the energy to drag your tail into camp when the day's work is done - and you've got somebody like Whit Watts cooking for you.
Watts helped Virginia Tech students work on a handicapped-access trail in Giles County this month, but his most important task was to cook for the crew.
And cook he did during the two weeks they spent in the woods: North Carolina chopped barbeque, spaghetti carbenara, black bean salad, twelve-boy curry and, as ae is it's based on one cycle of a hardwood fire," he said last week as he stirred the paella, a dish that combines a base of tomatoes and rice with chicken, mussels, shrimp, calamari and grouper. "If you do it right, you shouldn't have to add wood. ... It's a thing of beauty when it's done."
Indeed, it was. After an appetizer of "graflix," a Swedish marinated salmon on crackers, came the main course.
Each mouthful was a surprise. A bite of perfectly tender chicken here, some succulent fish there and, throughout, rice that had soaked in so well the onions, garlic, red pepper and other spices.
"It's like a moral victory when you get the vegetarians to say, 'Well, maybe I'll try it,'" said Watts, who's been back-country cooking since Boy Scouts, though this time around it was more of a "car camping" experience, with many of the accoutrements of a well-stocked kitchen on a nearby fold-out table.
And lemon meringue pie for dessert.
During the cooking, Sheryl Mills, landscape architect with the Forest Service's Blacksburg ranger district, ambled by the campfire and said, "Everything coming out all right, Whit?"
"I don't know. I'm a little worried."
Silly Watts.
Not one complaint was heard and, notably, the hungry students conducted themselves with decorum and civility as they waited in line for seconds and thirds.
by CNB