Thinking Back...

We've done some camping in our day...both inside and outside.  My earliest recollection of camping with Dad, Mom and my brothers, we were up around Lake Placid, NY.  Dad had built a camp fire and he and Mom were going to cook supper for us kids. I watched as Dad rubbed a bar of soap all over the outside of the kettle that we used to use for picking blackberries in the summer. When I asked why he was doing that, he explained that it would make the pot easier to clean the soot from when we washed it.  It's a tip that I've never forgotten, and have used many times in our camping....even when we've cooked over the fireplace flames.

Another bit of advice has stuck with me.  Dad once read in the Yankee magazine that you can keep creosote from building up on the walls of your fireplace or woodstove chimney by burning your potato peelings in the fire.  I don't have any idea if that's  truth or falsehood, but I used to do it when we burned our fireplace, and I never had a chimney fire, and very few chimney cleanings.

It's funny, with all the little things you hear in your lifetime, what things stick with you. I could probably come up with a big dump truck-load of things that Dad or Mom have told me that would be far more valuable to my living than those little bits. But...that's what I'm thinking about today!  I'd love to hear if you've got any helpful tips like that, that you've never forgotten. Just curious...