20  The worst meal I ever cooked

Unrequited food cravings are an inevitable side effect of an extended life in the bush or on a backpack. In Feb 1970, Larry and I’d been in the Kalahari for only a few months, and Eric had been with us only two weeks. One afternoon at our K area in the Gemsbok Park, I was viciously attacked by a craving for a chicken, sweet pea, and rice casserole. I have no idea what prompted that particular craving – I’d never eaten this casserole. In retrospect it sounds dull. But at that moment, it was what I craved.

It was my night to cook (we traded off this chore). I tore into the wooden storage crate in the back of Molly (our Land Rover), searching frantically for the required ingredients. Alas, no chicken, canned or otherwise. Alas, no peas, canned or otherwise. Alas, not even rice! On our last trip to town, we decided to try something called “Tastic,” which was advertised as “looks like rice, tastes like rice, but is cheaper than rice.” So, I was forced to use Tastic as the caserole’s matrix. [Note: as of 2014, Tastic was still available in South Africa, but the ads say it is parboiled rice, not a pseudo-rice as I’d remembered.]

A can of beef stew had to substitute for chicken stew, but no canned green vegetable was available. So I made and served a beef-stew, pea-less, Tastic casserole.

It was awful. The beef stew must have been off. Eric and Larry wouldn’t eat it. Pride forced me to swallow some.

Embarrassed, I tried to compensate by making popcorn, but I clumsily dumped too much oil in the pot. The greasy popcorn was also inedible. I was humbled. A horrible meal – from start to finish.

Eric and Larry probably scrounged something to eat and soon went hunting for geckos, which we all loved to do. Me? I passed up geckoing that evening. I felt weak, almost paralyzed. I lay down on a cot and didn’t move for at least an hour. To this day I don’t know whether I was slightly poisoned (perhaps I should use the active voice here and write “whether I slightly poisoned myself”), or whether my my double cooking disaster had completely deflated my cooking ego, which I had nurtured since my Cub Scout days (Chapter 6).

The K area, where this unpleasantness occurred – was one of my favorite study areas. It was wild, and we were always on alert for large predators. The following September, I saw a pregnant leopard walk right through K. I was alone at the time, and I remember suspecting that a very pregnant leopard find an unarmed and solo herpetologist to be an easy prey? I was hyper-alert when lizard hunting that day and kept my distance from trees. And at night, I often heard lions roar-belching in the distance and regularly noted spotted hyenas sniffed around our camp late at night. Remembering Patti Muellman’s advice (“Don’t let a hyena eat your face.”) (Chapter 15), we always slept inside of or on top of the Land Rover when we overnighted at K.

But back to February 1970: When we eventually retired for the night, I left out the pot containing my beef disaster – I didn’t have the energy or desire to clean it that night and figured I’d clean it the following morning. But we were awakened in the middle of the night by a loud slurping sound. We all looked out Molly’s side windows. There, a foot or so directly below us, was a big spotted hyena, slurping the remains of my beef stew, pea-less, Tastic casserole. Spotties are huge, reaching almost 3’ at the shoulder. We were only a couple of feet from that beast’s powerful jaws, separated only by Molly’s windows! The hyena showed no interest or fear of us but continued to slurp away.

Being an altruistic fellow, I felt I should warn the beast. After all, I would feel responsible if the beast became sick or paralyzed. But then I realized that hyenas are hyenas. They can eat anything. So, we just let the beast finish its meal. Eventually, it pushed off into the veld. As far as I know, that hyena survived and told its grandchildren about a delicious freebie meal it once had in the Kalahari.