Build and Cook with a Dakota Fire Hole - PEP BB rocket.sand.dakota

I dug a Dakota fire pit and cooked chowder today.

To get certified for this Badge Bit you must provide pics or video (<2 min) of the following:
 - The spot where the Dakota fire hole will be dug
 - Building the Dakota fire hole
 - Starting materials before fire with cold Dakota fire hole
 - Fire started
 - Additional wood added
 - Food cooking
      - If using a pan or pot, show it resting on something to keep from plugging the exhaust of the system

Site before:


Hole + Fire starting materials:

Fire started:

More wood + start of cooking:

Yummy!

Here is my submission for Building and Cooking with a Dakota Fire Hole - PEP BB rocket.sand.dakota:

This BB requires one to build a Dakota fire hole and cook some food on it.

Minimum requirement:
 - as in the Food Prep and Preservation aspect, no aluminum or teflon/coated cookware or plastic touching the food (including bowls and utensils) is allowed. Because I didn't want to cook very much, I kept it ultimately simple and toasted bread, using no cookware, only to demonstrate the subterranean fire and cooking potential.

To get certified for this Badge Bit I have provided pics of the following:
  - The spot where the Dakota fire hole will be dug
  - Building the Dakota fire hole
  - Starting materials before fire with cold Dakota fire hole
  - Fire started
  - Additional wood added
  - Food cooking

I've been excited to try this method of cooking for awhile! Finally, we had a night that wasn't too busy! So I dug out the stove. I was surprised that the side-ways part of the fire hole took the longest. Then I prepared fire-starting stuff and little wooden kindling. We had to blow in the non-fire hole to get it drafting. There wasn't much smoke, but still, getting my face down close to the ground to blow was eye-stingy. Anyways, I got the flames rolling! then I added this old grill grate to cover the fire hole and offer a cooking surface. We cooked marshmallows and had s'mores. With how many mallows and kids we had inline, we had to add wood several times to keep the small fire going. Still, we only ever had to use a few twigs at a time, an impressively small amount compared to cooking over an open campfire.

To get certified for this Badge Bit you must provide pics or video (<2 min) of the following:
 - The spot where the Dakota fire hole will be dug
 - Building the Dakota fire hole
 - Starting materials before fire with cold Dakota fire hole
 - Fire started
 - Additional wood added
 - Food cooking
      - If using a pan or pot, show it resting on something to keep from plugging the exhaust of the system

I dug the holes, and then kept them covered from rain until I was ready to try it.
Luckily, I get a lot of branches/sticks/etc. on my urban yard so I collected a bin and put them in my greenhouse to dry out more (we were expecting rain).
I also wrapped up a few handfuls of dried grasses from around the garden.  
Plus a bit of oily paper towel from doing the "clean an oily plate" BB.

Fired up my Dakota stove today and cooked some hot dogs using an old baking rack I had lying around and hadn't used in ages :)  They turned out perfect!