T23 Thanksgiving Cooking Trip at Pouch
Confirmed
C
Participating
Participating
When and Where
When:
November 6-8, 2026
, 6:30 pm — 10:00 am
Nights:
2
Location: William H. Pouch Scout Camp / William H. Pouch Scout Camp — lean-tos; site confirmed closer to the date
🙋🏻♂️ RSVP
Passed
When: 10/19/2026
✅ 6 ❌ 0 🤷 15
💰 Mandatory Fee
Passed
When: 10/19/2026
📋 Permission Slip
Passed
When: 10/19/2026
🩺 Medical Form
Passed
When: 10/19/2026
📝 Duty Roster
Upcoming
When: 10/26/2026
🍽️ Meal Plan
Upcoming
When: 10/26/2026
🍳 Adult demonstrators confirmed
Upcoming
When: 10/26/2026
📦 Patrol Box
Upcoming
When: 11/02/2026
🛒 Shopping
Upcoming
When: 11/05/2026
🚗 Go
Upcoming
When: 11/06/2026
Advancement Opportunities
Opportunities offered at this event. Per-scout credit varies with attendance; for some metrics, adults record the qualifying portion after the event.
Once a year the troop goes camping specifically in order to cook. Every other trip treats food as a thing that has to happen between activities; on this weekend the food is the activity. Every meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner — is cooked at several stations at once, each making something different, so that scouts are not all making the same thing and anyone who wants to learn a technique can go stand next to someone doing it.
The idea is straightforward: a scout who can only make one meal outdoors is a scout who eats that meal for the rest of his scouting life. By the end of the weekend everyone should have cooked something they had not cooked before, and eaten a great deal of everything else.
It closes with a Thanksgiving feast built entirely on camp stoves, dutch ovens and open fire.
Each meal runs on several stations, each making something different. Breakfast might be eggs at one and pancakes at another; dinner might be a dutch oven at one and a skillet at the next. Scouts pick a station, work it, eat everything, and rotate at the next meal. On Saturday some of the stations are run by parents.
The menu is genuinely open to suggestion — this is the trip where a scout who wants to make his grandmother's stuffing over a fire should say so. Menu proposals go to the patrol leaders and are due well before the trip, because they determine what equipment we bring and what we buy.
Two constraints on any proposal: it has to be cookable on a camp stove, a dutch oven or a fire, and it has to feed a lot of teenagers. Beyond that, ambition is welcome.
Advancement
This is the single most productive weekend of the year for cooking requirements, and scouts should come knowing which ones they intend to finish.
Rank cooking requirements — Tenderfoot through First Class all carry them, and they build on each other: helping prepare a meal, then planning and cooking one, then planning a menu with nutritional balance, buying the food to a budget, and supervising the cooking. A scout who works deliberately can close several of these in one weekend.
Cooking merit badge — the camping requirement asks a scout to plan and cook meals on a campout, including one meal using a lightweight stove and one cooked over a fire without utensils. This weekend supplies both. Scouts pursuing the badge should talk to a counselor before the trip, not after; the requirements ask for planning documents that have to exist beforehand to count.
Bring your handbook and a pen. Things get signed off here.
The Weekend
Friday evening
Gather at OLA, load the cars, and drive to Pouch — under an hour. Set up, then a light supper and an early night; Saturday is a long day at the stoves.
Saturday
Troop opening. Breakfast at the stations, then the first block of demonstrations. Lunch. Afternoon for demonstrations, camp skills and free time. The Thanksgiving feast in the evening, then the campfire.
Sunday
Breakfast, scout's own service, break camp and police the site — we are back at OLA by mid-morning.
Parents are invited to come and cook on Saturday — for the whole day or for part of it, without staying overnight — and to stay for the campfire after the feast. It is the one trip of the year we invite all the parents to. How it works is under Adults: We Need Cooks below.
William H. Pouch Scout Camp
Camp Pouch is the Greater New York Councils camp on Staten Island — a wooded property in the middle of the Staten Island Greenbelt, close enough to Brooklyn that we can leave after dinner on Friday and still make camp comfortably. That proximity is the whole reason this trip works: it is a cooking weekend, not a travel weekend, and nobody wants to spend four hours in a car before they start chopping onions.
The troop camps in lean-tos here, which suits a November trip — canvas walls, a roof, and no tent to strike in the cold. The exact site is assigned closer to the date.
Pouch is familiar ground: the troop has used it for the opening trip in 2024 and for the Thanksgiving weekend most years since 2023.
William H. Pouch Scout Camp
Address:1465 Manor Road
Staten Island, NY, 10314
Coordinates(i): 40.590362°, -74.126285°
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Adults: We Need Cooks
This trip runs on adults who are willing to teach something. Not chefs — parents who can make one thing well and are prepared to stand at a station with a few scouts and show them how. Parents come to cook, not to watch: on Saturday every meal — breakfast, lunch and the Thanksgiving feast — has places at the stoves for parents.
The point is not to impress anyone but to show the scouts something they will want to make again. If there is a family breakfast your son loves, come and teach his patrol to make it. It could just as well be a dutch oven cobbler, a decent chili, proper scrambled eggs for twenty, or how to cook a whole meal on a single burner.
Places at each meal are limited, so the earlier you pick, the better your chances. Sign up at the parents' evening on the Monday the permission slips are due, at 8:00 pm, half an hour before the meeting ends; the sign-up sheet will be on the table. Dishes are confirmed a week later (both dates are in the deadlines on this page), because the cooking slots shape the menu and the shopping list.
An adult who comes for the day pays nothing — the trip fee is for scouts. We would love it if you could bring at least some of the ingredients for your dish; it makes the logistics a lot easier.
Stay for the campfire. After the feast come the skits — scouts and adults both, and some of them are legendary — and Mr. Turner's songs. It is the one trip of the year we invite all the parents to.
Every adult on the campsite needs current Safeguarding Youth Training, day guests included. That is a Troop 23 rule; the course is online, about ninety minutes the first time, and how to take it is here. Adults staying overnight must also be registered members of Scouting America and have a completed Annual Health and Medical Record (parts A and B). Registration takes an application, a background check and an approval, so start it well before the trip — what it involves, what it costs, and why we hope every parent registers. Once it is done, you can come with us on any trip.
What to Bring
Early November on Staten Island: cold nights, often damp. Lean-tos block wind and rain, not cold.
- ⧠ Executed permission form from ScoutBook
- ⧠ Ten Essentials
- ⧠ Backpack
- ⧠ Class A for travel, Class B for camp
- ⧠ Sleeping bag rated to at least 30°F, sleeping mat
- ⧠ Mess kit and eating utensils
- ⧠ Warm layers, hat and gloves — you will be standing still outdoors for hours
- ⧠ Rain gear
- ⧠ Closed-toe shoes for the cooking area — no sandals near a stove
- ⧠ Refillable water bottle
- ⧠ Handbook and a pen
- ⧠ Work gloves, if you have them — dutch ovens are hot and heavy
- ⧠ Your menu contribution, if you proposed one
Thanksgiving at Camp, Year by Year
- 2024 — Pouch, in lean-tos. The two-station format, and a statewide burn ban that arrived the week of the trip.
- 2023 — Pouch. The one scouts and adults both rated highest, and the reason the format has stayed the same since.
- 2021 — Alpine. Before the trip settled at Pouch.
The skills that make this weekend work — fire, stoves, patrol kitchens — are the ones taught at the opening skills weekend at Alpine in September.
Last updated on October 18, 2026