Fruitcake? Oh heck ya.
How before you roll your eyes and moan and get your collective panties in a bunch (Panties? Can I say panties here?) Let’s spend a few minutes and define what a fruitcake is and just how it really applies here to a collection of canoe traveling outdoor camping types.
Stepping into the hot tub time machine we can travel back to where ancient Egyptians placed a fruitcake on the tombs of loved ones, perhaps as food for the afterlife. Culinary historians believe that a form of fruitcake has been around since cavemen started collecting grains and nuts and fruits. These cakes provided food on long trips and helped the folks get through when Ug missed that easy shot with a spear and they had to eat fruitcake for dinner that night. In fact the idea of a long lasting cake of grain, nuts and fruits is in my opinion the first camp ready rations for folks on the go. But like a lot of things we can’t just leave good things alone and we had to improve and other things started to get added from animal fats, to honey (Ok, that was a pretty good idea) to other nuts and fruits as we started to wander around the globe. By the time the romans were expanding new Territories like Walmart on a building binge they had perfected the art of creating what we would recognize as a fruitcake and its troops embraced this as field ration in the field. During the middle ages troops on the crusades prized the lowly fruit cake as a battle ration.
By the time we have a sort of standard for fruitcakes as an important wilderness travel and military ration food source the fruitcake suffers from a major setback. It got trendy. I’m talking that sort of trendy of where everyone decided that they all wanted fruitcake, started giving fruitcakes as gifts and even I’m sure had a “Mrs. fruitcake” beauty contest. Heck it had to be like the trendy outdoor late 80’s where everyone started looking like they has stepped out of a LL Bean ad to run to the post office. In fact things started getting so bad the church had even outlawed the addition of butter in fruitcakes as being to sinful. It took Pope Innocent VII in his famous “Butter Letter” that finally said God was ok with the addition of butter in fruitcakes. I betting the old Pope was fruitcake sort of guy. The brits were firmly hooked on fruitcake and while having a long run of wet weather that started producing mold on their family treasures they solved that problem with a liberal soaking in rum that stopped the hairy addition to fruitcakes cause I’m pretty sure no one likes a hairy fruitcake. Well except for that guy in Ohio.
The fruitcake tradition after surviving for centuries was once again under assault by none other but us Americans. Not being able to leave good enough alone we decided that the addition of nuclear colored atomic fruit bits would brighten up the cake and the south looking for an outlet for large bumper crop of nuts dealt a two fisted hammer blow to this culinary treasure in a race to see just how much atomic colored fruit chunks and nuts one could stuff into a single cake. What crawled out of the late 50’s was a sugar, nut mix with chunks of pre gummy bear off casts shoved into tins with out right lie’s taped as Christmas notes giving claim as this was aunt Ida’s famous or grandma’s famous fruitcake. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
So what to do? There are a few mail order companies but I’m not a fan, in fact I think the humble fruitcake is the perfect outlet for the homemade stuff. From dried apples, pine nuts and perhaps some whole grains blended in a bowl and dumped in a loaf pan it really doesn’t get much easier.

Your post does the lowly fruitcake some justice- I still ain't gonna eat it though...

Best Fruit Cake Recipe Ever

I used to love my grandmother's fruit cake. It had a touch of rum in it that made it special to me.

What are those green things in there, anyway?