Manuka Spoon Part III - the Modus Operandi

Been a bit of a fail couple weeks for Cooking Bush. After having to work on my bush day last week, I then succumbed to the office plague and I spent the whole of this week sick in bed. Really hanging out for a camp fire.

I've been thinking about my M.O. - my Modus Operandi, method of operation a.k.a why the heck I am doing this blog.  It started out earlier this year when I was going through a bad patch with my mental health. I am bipolar and was having a very uncharacteristic extended manic/mixed mood winter. I may have mentioned before but I spend a lot of time looking at American preppers and my manic mind latched onto the idea of creating a bug-out camp. It was then a hunt for a suitable location began, and I started lighting fires and cooking stuff. 

I quickly decided my day trips would be most helpful for my mental state - exercise, introverted me time, out in the green, fire and food. To further this I endeavour to take a weekly trip instead of staying in bed playing computer games. Time to indulge and occupy myself, something for my manic brain to semi constructively scheme about. 

The problem is sustaining it once the manic moods have gone, and this is part of the purpose of this blog which is to be a spur to keep me going out. I love to write, I like to cook. It seems like a natural thing to do. Despite having spent a lot of time tramping and the odd bit of hunting I realised that it takes quite a bit of skill to cook something well on an open fire with a very minimal of gear and that became the focus of this blog. 

I'm keen to get into lots of near things - building a 'bug-out' shelter, foraging and cooking NZ wild foods, bush crafts, gear reviews. All in good time. The spoon is one of the first of my projects for use in my bush cooking. It will be divine pleasure using it to cook.

Manuka Spoon is looking rather gorgeous! After getting it into shape I scraped along it with my knife to make it all smooth.

It has a bit of a mean crack on top (it does not go right through) - I've widened it out since so that it won't trap food in it.

I started grinding the bowl using fine beach gravel and a stone to make it nice and smooth. I need to keep at it a bit more, but the grinding sound is too close to nails on a blackboard for my ears...

It has an insect hole in the bowl :( I'm planning on carving a plug and sealing it with pine resin. If anyone has any thoughts on how I can go about this let me know.

Unfortunately this is it for this week. I'm at the end of being sick now but don't have a lot of energy. Hopefully will be good as gold towards the end of next week and I'll be out rain or shine (I really do want to have a go lighting a fire in wet weather using my ferro rod).

Ka kite ahau!