The cooks were skeptical.
They covered a tilapia in clay, placed it in an outdoor fire and waited to see if the fish would cook properly Thursday.
An hour later, they were picking away at the flaky delicacy and complimenting each other for coming up with yet another way to prepare a tasty feast without electricity.
Common Ground on the Hill offered an outdoor cooking skills course for the first time this week. The food preparers used a wood fire, cast-iron Dutch ovens and their own ingenuity to make meals without using any electricity.
The course is one of an increasing number of offerings based on centuries-old skills at Common Ground, two weeks of roots-based courses, concerts and demonstrations in the arts at McDaniel College in Westminster.
Gwen Handler, the chairwoman for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, taught the class with Colonial Williamsburg blacksmith Shelton Browder, who brought tools he made himself to help with the cooking process.
"This group has learned so much in one week," Browder said. "They all came with cooking experience, of course."
It was just a matter of adjusting to cooking with the flame. They made beef stew, corn bread, pineapple upside-down cake, salmon and more in their makeshift outdoor kitchen near McDaniel's art building.
Trees shaded them from the relentless heat that gripped the area this week as they learned skills that could one day be helpful if another extended power outage affects the region similar to the one that knocked out power to more than a half-million BGE customers last week.
"I think we would be survivors in a tough environment," class participant Melinda Byrd said.
Students were fascinated to see how tilapia would bake in clay donated by Carroll County potter Nick Corso. The clay hardened in the flame, the fish steamed inside and the students waited anxiously to see how the final product would turn out.
One by one, they picked off pieces, tasted it and smiled.
"This really keeps in the flavor and moisture," Byrd said.
The class successfully made a meal for 16 Thursday in roughly 90 minutes. The class made beef, venison and chicken stew in the Friday finale.
The course is expected to return to Common Ground next year and possibly expand to two weeks, Handler said.
She already has ideas in mind to broaden the content, including making a complete breakfast and, perhaps, a field trip to the Union Mills Homestead to see how grain is ground there.
"This is just one class period this year," Handler said, "and it could be much longer than this. We're going to tweak it a bunch."
