Happy birthday to all who were born on 29th February! I hope you’ve all been enjoying your birthday cards picked from the children’s section this year as friends and relatives (and now strangers on the internet) gleefully make the same joke about you technically still being a kid.

The astute among you will have already noticed this auspicious date without my introduction clobbering you round the head with it. But for those still going about their month thinking ’tis the same as any other, let me spell it out by wishing you a happy leap day.

I know it’s cliched to get excited about the Gregorian reform of 1582 and even though every other month has a 29th day in it, I still find leap days slightly thrilling.

Perhaps it’s because they’re so infrequent, and one day feels so fleeting which in turn makes them seem so romantic? Everyone knows that the 29th February was, in Irish tradition, the day when women could propose to men. This tradition was supposedly based on the legend of St Bridget and St Patrick, where Bridget complained to Patrick that men took forever and a day to propose to women. Good old Pat generously suggested allowing women to take matters into their own hands by granting them permission to propose to their tardy men every 7 years (which does raise some serious side eye at the length of time these men were taking if seven years was quicker than the then-current option.) Bridget, a woman who knew what she wanted (and the limitations of her era) managed to beat him down to 4 years, and the rest is history.

But of course leap day proposals aren’t the only romantic thing in February. Valentine’s, another saintly day, occurred just two weeks ago. It’s hard to pin down when 14th February became associated with romance, but reference to a “beloved Valentine” appears in the Paston letters between Margery and her future husband in 1477. Aww.

Now that times are a little less rigid, for the most part anyone can declare their love for and propose to anyone they like whenever they like, but I enjoy imagining that on leap years of yore young single women would enter this month with something of the attitude of a professional hunter or a WW1 general embarking on a great military campaign to meet, attract and propose to a man within the space of 29 days. I find that courting men (yes, I said courting) and hunting have many similarities anyway; the thrill of the chase, the frequent meetings at local watering holes, the realisation that once the hunt has been completed the supposedly magnificent beast you admired from afar is actually just a bit fatter and less muscular than originally thought, and seems to be in the throes of early-stage mange resulting in hairloss and bad breath… Or maybe that’s just the animals I’ve caught.

Barbs aside, this post is in honour of these imagined women of the past, hunting for their victims men (or at the very least doing whatever the 18th century equivalent of looking confused in a B&Q was.) For them I have plucked a recipe from the manual of go-get ’em, proactive courtship: Scouting for Boys.

Tell me you didn’t plan this blog post off that one joke…

Written in 1908 by real life Action Man Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys was a manual intended to guide the youth of Britain in their outdoor survival pursuits. I am aware that Baden-Powell is something of a controversial figure, steeped in early 20th century imperialism. There is no doubt that his founding of the scout movement has lead to generations of joy and skill-building for countless people but passages from his original guide make for uncomfortable reading and indicates the popularisation of eugenics in Britain during the late 19th century and into the 20th: “Close observation of people and ability to read their character and their thoughts is of immense value… the shape of the face gives a good guide to [a] man’s character.”

However, historians of the scouting movement have, I believe, missed the true purpose of Baden-Powell’s book which is surely to teach lovelorn losers how to hunt, sorry, scout, for a mate of the male variety.

What else is a single woman to think when she reads instructions for a ‘Siberian Man Hunt’, in a chapter entitled ‘Scouting Games’? Or how to work out the physical features of a man from his tracks: “…from the size of his foot and the length of his stride you can tell, to a certain extent, his height [so that you may adequately make adjustments to the height of the doors in your house following the nuptials, if necessary]” (is what I imagine the rest of the passage would have read if Baden-Powell had had time). And don’t get me started on the section entitled ‘Leg raising from the Back’.

Anyway, for the month of love I thought what better way to trap – whoops, I’ve done it again – I mean entice a man than prepare him a meal from the book of love itself? So without further fanfare I present Hunter’s Stew – use it wisely, ladies.

Hunter’s Stew – chop your meat into small chunks about an inch or one and half square inches. Scrape and chop up any vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots, onions etc, and put them into your ‘billy’.

Add clean water or soup till it is half full.

Mix some flour, salt and pepper together, and rub your meat well in it, and put this in the ‘billy’. There should be enough water just to cover the food – no more.

Let the ‘billy’ stand in the embers and simmer for about one hour and a quarter. The potatoes take the longest to cook. When these are soft (which you try with a fork) enough not to lift out, the whole stew is cooked.

Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys

I used extra lean stewing beef for this which mean I had to adjust Baden-Powell’s cooking time by approximately seven years until it was tender enough to eat, but once it was cooked – wow. Such a simple recipe yet it really packed a punch, even in the comfort of my own home. I can imagine that were I out in my tent on a cold night this would be like ambrosia. The gravy was salty and rich, just how I like my men, and had percolated through the fluffy insides of the potatoes so that everything tasted of beef and salt – delicious.

In the end I got so distracted eating my stew that I forgot to leave any for my prey. Which was bad for my love life but good for ending this over used man-eater trope, thank god.

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