When we married, I knew how to cook eggs and bacon for breakfast. I could make oatmeal and pancakes. I knew how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I could cook spaghetti and make a passable spaghetti sauce. I learned how to cook a few more dishes from reading cookbooks that we received as wedding gifts. Three of those cookbooks come to mind: 1) The Impoverished Students’ Book of Cookery, Drinkery, & House keepery; 2) The Something Went Wrong What Do I Do Now Cookbook; and 3) The Joy of Cooking. From the first of those books, I learned to cook rice and how to make a passable tuna fish casserole. From the second, I learned about ingredient substitution. The third book, now nearly 49 years old, is still in our kitchen and I refer to it regularly. The page with the recipe for whole wheat bread is so worn and stained from food spills that it is barely legible, but it is just one page that I’ve read multiple times.

When we had been married just two years, we became managers of Camp Mimanagish, the summer camp of the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference of the United Church of Christ. We were responsible for planning, grocery purchasing, and preparing meals for groups ranging in size from 30 to over 100. Our camp was more than 40 miles from the nearest grocery store, 20 of which were on a rough dirt road. Our kitchen and dining hall had been constructed as a temporary building for the Civilian Conservation Corps and barely passed muster for the county health inspector. We operated that kitchen for the last two years of its operation before it was replaced with a new building. We learned to cook complete meals for large groups. We made a lot of food from scratch.

We have shared meal preparation duties for all of our marriage. Each of us has special recipes and skills when it comes to food preparation. Susan almost always prepares soup in our household. I do most of the break baking. We generally prepare different menus, though both of us know how to prepare some of our partner’s recipes.

We don’t eat out very often. In general we prefer to cook our own meals. It is one of the reasons we enjoy traveling with our camper. We like to cook our own food. We feel like we have more control over portion size, ingredients, and other factors when cooking for ourselves.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have favorite restaurants. When we can find local lamb, I will occasionally prepare Gyros, but when we are in Rapid City, South Dakota, we head to a cafe run by Turkish friends. We make tacos and enchiladas, but we also enjoy the fare from Bordertown Mexican Grill. We prepare fresh seafood from the Lummi Nation Market, but for a special treat on occasion we like to go out for seafood. We have learned to cook a few Japanese recipes, but there is a local sushi place that does a better job than I. When we want Thai food, we end up going out.

New to us since we have moved is our discovery of food trucks. There is an El Tapatio truck that parks on Grandview Road a few miles from our home that goes well beyond tacos. Their beans and rice remind us of Costa Rica. At the end of last summer we discovered the Wild Alaska fish and chips stand. It is a trailer, not a truck, and it spends the entire summer at the same address on the waterfront in Blaine. Somehow we ate there just enough to miss them when they went away for the winter. Their return to their summer location was May 1 and yesterday, on May 2, we picked up two orders of fish and chips for a special supper. It is a luxury and an indulgence, but we don’t do that kind of frying at home. It is probably a good thing for our health that we don’t eat that fare regularly, but it is a treat on occasion.

I know from our years as camp managers that food service is hard work. When you aren’t cooking you are cleaning. The hours are long. Most people eat their breakfast and dinner more than 12 hours apart. When you serve three meals a day, the days are long every day. I love to cook, but any fantasies I ever had about operating a restaurant have long since faded in the reality of the hard work involved.

Since I know how hard people in food service work, I try to be generous with tips and I try to treat those who work in restaurants with respect and, when possible, a sense of humor. Yesterday, when ordering our fish and chips at the window of the trailer, the clerk was having trouble with the computer that records sales. Somehow, it wanted to assign the name of the previous customer to my order. Another employee tried to correct the situation. I tried my best voice of Flower from the old Bambi movie and said, “Thats OK, she can call me Isaiah if she wants to.” It got a laugh from the older person. Later when the older person asked me if I had gotten the condiments and plastic ware for our order, I replied that we were taking it home to eat and we had plenty of vinegar at home. She responded, “You’re my favorite customer.” I replied, “You’re my favorite fish and chips place.” It was silly banter. She at least learned my name (“Mr. Isaiah Ted”). I don’t know her name, but we had a brief connection on the human level.

I can remember being a bit embarrassed by my father’s love of talking with every stranger he met. He would go on and on with a waitress or cook when we went to a cafe. At the time, I wished he’d just place an order and get on with it. Now, I understand him completely. I’ve become him. Even more fun, I notice that our son shares the love of talking with the people who serve us in coffeeshops and cafes. I’ve even noticed that he can embarrass his children on occasion.

We all eat. We all appreciate food. It is a good way to connect with other people.