[Spit-Project] Cooking Pots

[Meisterin Katarina Helene]

This set of tips below were just posted on Medieval Encampments from someone in Australia... sounds like good advice (most of which I've heard before).  Does anyone know if her first hint really helps, however... I'd never heard that one before.  

~~ Katarina Helene
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Tips we have learned:
1) Soak your pots (complete immersion) in water for several hours/overnight
before you go to the event. We broke the most legs the year we forgot this
2) Don't put cold water in a hot pot, if you need to heat several pots worth of
water, leave some hot water in the bottom and pour slowly
3) Don't put hot pots down on very cold ground, we lost 2 to fine cracks in the
bottom one rather cold night when the fire was particularly hot (the legs of
one pot came out of the fire glowing red in the dark) they will be fine on
the ground on a warm day.
4) If your pot has no legs, use a trivet or stand so the fire can breathe
underneath
5) There is a good chance that at some point your pot legs may get chipped or
broken. You can still use a pot with uneven legs, (this is why they tend to
have 3 legs) nestle it in the fire so that it is level, or use a rock under
the short bit.
6) And the biggest tip, clay pots take a while to heat up. For fast hot water
(that first cup of tea in the morning) get a copper pot and boil it over a
fire made of small sticks (ours is tinned on the inside for health reasons
as we have small childern in camp)

you can see pictures of our cook setup here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacredchao/2363291660/in/set-72157604251182154/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacredchao/2362473985/in/set-72157604251182154/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacredchao/2363313140/in/set-72157604251182154/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacredchao/2362463791/in/set-72157604251182154/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacredchao/3440897003/in/set-72157616665378189/

We have recently added 3 South African potje to our kitchen, as the nearest
we could get to proper cauldrons. Clay was OK when we were feeding up to
about 10, but our camp hit 18 people this year and the clay pots aren't big
enough. Using the potje and a frame over the fire we fed 60 people for a
weekend event in January, cooking only over the fire.

Miriam