Food was an integral part to our Kiptopeke experience. The meals consisted of pancakes, BLTs, spaghetti and meatballs, scrambled eggs and sausage, ham and cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, and tacos. The pairs of chefs that cooked the meals were Stinson and James, Foster and me, and David and Nicholas. While each chef did a phenomenal job curating meals to fulfill our energy, Stinson and James were, by far, the superior food connoisseurs!

On the first day that they were cooking, they added the extra touch of burnt flavor to our meal. They also made the executive decision to create an innovative, makeshift alarm to wake us all up. James set butter on the pan for too long, thus causing the milk solids to burn away. This act of burning the butter resulted in a thick smoke. James and Stinson then proceeded to physically and metaphorically “twiddle their thumbs” as the smoke from the pan rose and set off the smoke alarm. The lightly blackened chocolate pancakes lightened up our cohort’s mood for the rest of the day.

For dinner, James and Stinson cooked spaghetti and meatballs. Although the consumption experience brought me to the fourth dimension, the cooking was comparatively mediocre compared to the earlier morning’s food. However, for dessert, James was put in charge of baking the cookies. One might ask, “How is it possible to make an item, like Tollhouse cookies, better than it already is?” Well, James bakes the cookies so well that I went into a coma for 4 hours because my brain could not handle the dopamine produced by simply ingesting the cookie. James had also used a dab of burnt flavor. The secret to his baking was watching the oven intently. Dr. Vallery noticed that the cookies were “burning” and asked James if the cookies were done. James confidently said that the cookies were almost done, and then proceeded to spectate the card game. Afterwards, the cookies also turned out lightly “blackened”, just as James intended it to be. The food was a success!