Dear daughter did not cook, at least not more than toast and hot chocolate, until one high school summer, when she went to work at the city of Berkeley's family camp in Tuolume. This camp, which dates to the 1920s when urban California cities were wont to establish mountain camps for the healthful recreation of city dwellers, has long prided itself on food that is many cuts above the usual camp fare. Generations of Berkeley kids have spent their summers working (and playing) in the high Sierras at this institution.

[Berkeley Tuolume Camp, RIP]

DD spent her first summer washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and eventually being allowed to help with food prep. She was quite young - 15, I think? - and had never been away from home for long. She cried at night, got burned, and thought about coming home. By summer's end, she was voted the most improved staffer.

She returned to work every summer. The wages were modest, the kitchen was hot, and the hours were long - $44 for a 10 hour day, six days a week. But she enjoyed the camraderie, pace, adrenaline, and instant results of commercial cooking. In a commercial kitchen, six teenagers working to feed 300 guests, there are no excuses, no places to hide, and the food is either good or its not. You must understand that the population of Berkeley tends toward the discerning and demanding, as far as food goes, and camp is not a cheap place to go, so overcooked or underseasoned dishes don't get much of a pass and every dietary peccadilo is expected to be seamlessly accomodated.

Also, on their time off the staff had miles of woods to explore and, I'm told, hold monster parties fueled with plenty of substances and big battery-driven sound systems. Being teenagers, they could work ten hours, party all night, and work the next day.

The summers passed, DD graduated from high school and went to college, and in the camp she became an assistant, then an assistant supervisor, then a supervisor running meals on her own, training and directing younger staff.

One year, an illegal campfire lit a raging forest fire that burned hundreds of miles of the most beautiful mountain terrain around Yosemite National Park, including Berkeley's beloved camp. The campers were evacuated, the staff stayed and pumped water from the river onto the buildings and trees until the fire turned toward the mountainside and glowing smoke covered the ridges, then they were evacuated with just what they could carry. The grand old hall, the theatre, the bathrooms and kids' activity rooms, the nature center with rabbits and books, the cabins and lounging chairs, a hundred years of Berkeley family traditions, all burned. Many tears shed, no people were lost but something died.

The city moved Berkeley Tuolumne Camp to another, smaller, long-neglected and perenially loss-making city-operated kids' camp in the Tahoe mountains. A much smaller and still-traumatized staff arrived the next summer with the mission of bringing the Tuolume traditions and standards to the Echo Lake camp, and keeping Berkeley's family summer camp programs alive, and Berkeley families returning, until the Tuolume camp could be rebuilt.

DD was one of the crew. Now Head of Kitchen, she was in charge of all training, menu, scheduling and supervision. The new camp was smaller, they were only feeding 200 a meal, but the kitchen was terrible. They had no ovens and no grills, just four burners and a large flattop, a dishwasher that didn't work, vent hoods that didn't vent. The former camp manager only ever fed young kids, and after a summer of boiled hot dogs the kids never came back and usually the staff didn't either. The loss of Tuolume camp had blown a hole in the city's summer camp program - it subsidized all the other summer camps and activities - and staffing was tight. Some families were willing to try the new camp, many stayed away knowing that nothing could be as good as their beloved Tuolume had been. That summer the kitchen staff all worked 12 hours a day, sometimes more, in makeshift conditions, knowing that every family would return to Berkeley and tell others the new camp was great - or terrible.

That was a few years ago. Now DD is the head of all things food-related, the hiring, budget, ordering, menu, training. The city has invested in the Echo camp, upgrading the kitchen, hiring more staff. The camp is soundly profitable and completely sold out all summer. Families are saying the food is better than it ever was, even at Toulume. Even the families who fill out dietary cards requesting no dairy, no meat, and no vegetables - some people seem to subsist on organic air - are giving the food top marks. The city of Berkeley, its working teenagers, and its families have kept the camp tradition alive. Meanwhile, the forest and riverside at Tuolume camp are green again. The new Tuloume camp has been funded and is being designed, expected re-opening 2022.

DD still cooks at camp, when she can. Last summer she sometimes stayed up all night making breakfast pastries and working out new dishes. More and more of her time is spent recruiting and training staff to take over her job, because her time in the camp kitchen is coming to an end. She's "aging out", as the twenty-year old staffers sagely say about each other. One last summer. Time for new blood. Time to grow up and get "real jobs".

The benefit I get from all this - beside a kid who has learned how to work hard and manage people and crises - is that sometimes DD will cook for us at home. Admittedly I am forced into service as her sous-chef, with lots of "do this" and "yes chef", but we enjoy it. When we do large dinner parties, like the Seven Fishes, she and I hang out in the kitchen the whole night. Other times, we'll do a small dinner and I'll get to sit down at the table.

Last night we had some friends over. The husband is from the film industry - you've seen his work - and his son is in film school, something that DD has been thinking about. So she made more fish dishes.

[poached scallops in an egg-butter-lobster sauce]

[mini puffs stuffed with lobster in some sort of hollandaise like sauce]

[salmon deviled eggs]

[lemon garlic pasta]

[asparagus after-thought - really, we forgot about it - so it was simply broiled, sprinkled with sugar, and carmelized with a torch]

[our small dinner party]