Monday night was an evening filled with fun, along with a solemn ritual, for the members of Troop 118 of the Boy Scouts of America.

The troop, which meets at the Georgia National Guard Armory on Wilshire Road, not only had a “cook-off” between two patrols, but also had a formal flag retirement ceremony.

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On Saturday, the troop took part in taking down the old flag at the Senior Adult Recreation Center on Kingston Road and replaced it with a new one. At Monday’s meeting, the troop had an official flag retirement ceremony, where it was burned according to Boy Scout protocol. The ashes will be buried later as part of flag etiquette.

After that, it was a cook-off between the Owl and Raccoon patrols of Troop 118. Each group had a three-course meal that was cooked outside with Dutch ovens and charcoal.

Alan Shepherd, part of the Raccoon patrol, said members use some of these skills on cookouts.

“We will sometimes cook with Dutch ovens on a campout,” Shepherd explained. “You’ve got to know how to keep the coals hot, and you need gloves. We’ve cooked a lot of things like this before, like dumplings and peach cobbler.

One patrol cooked deer stew, corn bread and brownies, and the other patrol cooked pork chops and rice, cheese biscuits and coconut cream pie,” he added.

Scout leader Stan Reynolds said the troop puts their cooking skills to good use several times each year.

“When we go to Camp Sidney Dew, we have a family-style cookout where we use Dutch ovens,” he said. “We also go up to Rock Creek sometimes for trout fishing, and we use them for the fish fry. They learn a lot of outdoor cooking skills like using Dutch ovens, making ‘Hobo dinners’ in aluminum foil, and they’ve even learned how to make an omelet in a bag, which they boil in a pot of water.”

Reynolds said the two patrols picked their own menus for Monday’s cook-off, and he said it was one of several friendly competitions between patrols.

“Each patrol put their ideas together, and we got the groceries for them to use,” he explained. “They are competing for a large Boy Scout duffel bag. I thought this was a fun learning experience for them.”

Troop 118 and others around the United States are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.

Monday marked the centennial anniversary of the Scouts.

Monday’s cook-off was complete with judges and taste testing, and Reynolds said at the end of the night, it was a dead-even tie — so both groups won a prize.

“It was something fun and different for the guys to do, and I think they enjoyed it,” he said.