Written by Terry Ward – Mr. Leon Franklin, our Scoutmaster, had just left the campsite, having reminded us that canned foods were not allowed on Troop 27 camping trips. Ever since I joined the Boy Scouts, this had been an ongoing, unchanging rule.

No cans? No problem. We had gotten pretty good at tinfoil stew — a concoction of diced potatoes, carrots, celery (which I routinely avoided), hamburger meat, and a little salt. The procedure is simple: Carefully crimp the foil around this culinary masterpiece of raw ingredients, then place it in the coals at the edge of the fire. And remember, yes remember, to take it out before the foil melts and you find your only dinner oozing into the embers, never to be recovered.

So there we were at Camp Echockatee preparing our evening meal. Several younger Scouts were experimenting with the classic tinfoil stew recipe while a few of the older ones were being somewhat more creative with stew making. Theirs were made the old fashioned way with the above-mentioned ingredients but also included several small cans of Beenie Weenies for flavor, texture, and entertainment value at a later time.

As we sat around the fire and tended our meals, we noticed that Bob McCallum had quietly opened a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli in the shadows to avoid detection. He placed the opened can with the folded back lid at the edge of the fire. Few noticed this brazen display of rule breaking and most kept vigil at their stew pots or foil pouches.

Conversation was the traditional Scouting repartee when food was being prepared. It amounted to a verbal contest of gross-out. How crude and disgusting can you be in describing a younger Scout’s uncooked food? Great fun for all except the poor Tenderfoot, and a crowd-pleaser for the older ones with a more refined vocabulary.

Meanwhile, Bob sat watching his can of ravioli.

“Bob, you might want to check that ravioli,” someone suggested. “Not supposed to use cans, you know.”

“It’s opened. I’m not dumb enough to put a can on the fire with the lid on. It’d go off like a bomb,” was Bob’s casual reply.

As we went back to our high-level conversation, I noticed that the contents of the ravioli can had started to creep upward. The partially solidified ravioli was now about a half an inch above the rim.

Someone near me, also noticing this, said, “Bob, that ravioli is about to spill over the …”

He never finished the sentence. With a muffled foom– not unlike the sound of an underwater detonation — the heated can of Chef Boyardee’s finest ravioli exploded in countless directions. Those standing nearby got the worst of the pelting. No one within a ten foot radius escaped bits and pieces of the flying pasta, complete with tomato sauce, making their mark (or marks) on the innocent bystanders.

We all erupted with laughter. Bob sat stunned. His expression was that of utter disbelief. And his shirt showed the unmistakeable signs of standing too close to the incendiary device manufactured by Chef Boyardee.

With tears in our eyes and stomach pains from laughing, we finished our dinner as best we could.

The laughter erupted again as someone, on their way back to their tent, found a ravioli–completely intact–stuck to the front of the tent flap.

I suspect that Bob will continue to hear the retelling of this story for a very long time.

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Terry Ward moved to Asheville in 1996, is an educator at AB Tech, writer of poetry, short stories, and historical fiction. Also an itinerant musician and incurable punster.