Cooking the cowboy way
<p>BRIAN WALKER/Press</p><p>Spirit Lake's Valorie Hoover prepares peach cobbler during the Dutch oven cookoff on Sunday at Ron and Sherrie Dayton's ranch near Athol.</p>
<p>BRIAN WALKER/Press</p><p>Ron Dayton checks on potatoes cooking over river rock during Sunday's Dutch oven cookoff.</p>
ATHOL — Dennis Marshall has cooked a lot of different ways, but he believes nothing beats Dutch ovens.
"Cooking the old cowboy way — for some reason, it just tastes better," the Post Falls man said during a Dutch oven cookoff on Sunday at Ron and Sherrie Dayton's ranch near Athol.
"It's pressure cooker-like, and I love cooking this way."
This was the 16th year that the Daytons hosted a cookoff at their Sunwood Fjords and Carriage Co. along Ramsey Road.
This year's event, which featured the meal, cooking, cowboy dress-up and pellet gun target contest, a poker run and campfire music, was held in remembrance of fellow cowboys Howard Berge, Dean Burley, Lee Klawitter and Leon Remington.
This year's cookoff also had a different flair from previous years as Ron completed a log cabin with no power on the hill behind his home.
"We're doing it the old-fashioned way on our back 5 acres to go back in time how it was done in the early days," he said. "I came here 40 years ago to build this log cabin, and two years ago I finally started to put it together with wood from our property."
Dayton said he's always been intrigued with how folks made do during the cowboy days.
"My mom grew up during the Dust Bowl, so she wanted modern stuff," he said. "I never experienced that so it's good to get a taste of the hard times. Not that we have to rough it."
The cookoff featured soups, a pot roast, chili, bread and desserts with the common bond of the participants being an appreciation for the way life used to be.
"It's fun to get back to doing things the old-fashioned way," said Valorie Hoover of Spirit Lake, as she prepared a peach cobbler. "There's nothing like cooking the cowboy way outside."
Diana McHatton of Hayden made bean soup with a Dutch oven.
"It's as close to a Crock-Pot as you can get outdoors," she said. "You can also stick them in the oven when the weather is too bad. They were as indestructible as you can get when cowboys were cooking on the range. They're also really handy when the power goes out."
Contestants were given a number tag to put on their back, resembling rodeo participants. The cookoff blossomed out of the Daytons taking people on trail rides and wagon trains with their horses.
"It gets people together for a good time, a social outing," Ron said. "The cooking is a lost art that we're keeping alive."