Former Editor, Big Bear Grizzly Newspaper, Big Bear Lake, California (1997)

The first line of the recipe states: Crack 100 eggs. What? Over a lifetime? No, just over breakfast. And that's only the French Toast. A recipe of army proportions, it'll feed 150. Wait until you see the
numbers on bacon and sausage.

Camp chef Viki Spain has been cooking by those numbers for so long, more than a decade, that she admits it's hard to pare down the portions to feed her own family of four. The head chef at YMCA Camp Ta Ta Pochon near Angelus Oaks, Spain is a legend among campers enticing well-fed groups to come back year after year. She's so good at what she does that other camps have enlisted her aid in both setting up and renovating their own kitchens.

"When I was helping these other camps, I wanted to give them books to read that would help them get set up, but there weren't any. No kitchen manuals at all," Spain said. "Food For Fifty" was all that was out there, at a discount price of $70, and that wasn't enough. It's mainly a recipe book and doesn't tell you what kind of equipment you'll need to how to bring a whole menu together."

Spain adds that you can't produce quantity meals by taking a Betty
Crocker cookbook and multiplying a single-batch recipe by 100. "The percentages of crucial ingredients arent the same . They don't multiply directly," she explained, "especially salt and baking powder."

Industrywide, no manual.

So Spain broke the barrier and put all of her knowledge and experience into "The Camp Kitchen Guidebook." It's real food for ravenous campers. You want chicken fajitas for 100? The recipe is conveniently located next to Chocolate Chip Cookies. Apple Crisp from scratch? See Page 84.

Endorsed by the American Camping Association, its a take-you-by-the- hand, cook-in-a-book publication that could bring even those who burn water up to speed. Not just a recipe book, the guide covers everything from menu planning to food ordering, altitude baking and staff training.

Recipes don't just tell you what temperature to cook the food at, they'll tell when to turn the oven on. There's a whole section devoted to tips like how to avoid the pitfalls of brick-hard brown sugar, cardboard pie crusts and vulcanized pancakes which won't let go of the grill.

The book even talks about tomato sharks. Handy little gadgets. If you need to know about it, it's in there.

Spain says that key to a camp kitchen is knowing what to order and how much of it to buy especially for kitchens on a budget. "It's a critical point of success," she explained. "You can't make salad for 100 with just four tomatoes. Its a crime to run out of food. But you dont want to over order either."

"Cans that sit on the shelf year after year are a glaring sign of
improper food ordering. And when the cost of food exceeds salaries, thats inappropriate. If you have just enough left to feed the camp dogs, thats good. If youre throwing away five-gallon buckets of food, thats not good."

Integral to Spains book is camp pride. "One of the biggest problems in a camp kitchen is inconsistency," she said. "You either have new people every year, who have no training in how to feed 200 people, or you have retired cafeteria cooks who make the same five things and wont ever try anything new. To them, breakfast is oatmeal with the consistency of lumpy water, and they wont even serve brown sugar with breakfast. So many cooks are in a rut."

Friends and big wigs in the industry, YMCA CEOs, her own mentor and friend Karen Lapp Rowland, as well as the head cook at the Cottontail Ranch in Malibu, gave Spain a few of their own thoughts and suggestions, and a resounding nod to the final draft.

Remember the camp food when you were a kid? By the third of fourth day wasn't starvation a welcome alternative to the unidentifiable glop moving of its own free will across your tray? Did the entire bunkhouse formulate plans to save the free world by blowing up the mess hall? You should have been at Viki's camp. No prison line slop slung onto plastic trays. "Even the sound of that stuff going onto the trays is bad," she winces. "We make quality food for quantity people." "And macaroni and cheese and a cup of punch," Spain adds adamantly, "is not lunch."

This cook not only gets them coming back for more, she gets regular standing ovations for her camp fare. "There is no reason not to serve good food. People try and tell you that you cant expect food to look good or taste good when its served to 200 people, so just eat it. Absolutely not true."

Originally an English major at UC Riverside, Spain had planned to go into teaching. But the "true love" of her life, snow skiing, would put the kabosh on that goal. Five years with the National Ski Patrol, "before children," she laughs, found Spain on the weekends slopes from Mountain High to Snow Summit and Bear Mountain.

As requirements increased for ski patrollers, Spain enrolled at Crafton Hills College in the EMT program. A volunteer fireman from Angelus Oaks had signed up at the same time. His name was Mike Spain, and he was beguiled by the gorgeous blonde who showed up to class on a Kawasaki 650. One night a study date turned into a dinner date, and Viki found herself making almost daily trips to Angelus Oaks where Mike was also the manager of YMCA Camp Ta Ta Pochon. Viki was then an office manager at Loma Linda University, and these daily trips from the city bustle into the calm of the mountains were renovating for the soul.

It was during these visits that Viki's interests took a new turn. She met "the most glorious cook," Karen Lapp Rowland, and became her assistant. Rowland is the kind of cook, Viki says, who can take "a bit of this and a pinch of that" and transform it into a melt-in-your-mouth masterpiece. "Her timing was perfect," Viki said. "The food would all be hot and ready at the same time. She had it down to a science. That's rare."

When Rowland moved to the East Coast, Mike offered Viki the job. "You be the head cook," he said, "and I'll get YOU an assistant." "I kept the phone lines buzzing from here to Pennsylvania," Viki laughed. "I just melted right into the job."

These days Viki's breads are the talk of the camp. The dining hall is central to the camp, and giant whirling fans send the wafting aroma of freshly-baked french breads and rolls, brownies, cinnamon rolls and donuts, across 18 acres of evergreen forest. "Everyone enjoys fresh- baked bread," Viki smiles. "It's something most of us don't have time for anymore." She even bakes her own hamburger buns. Word is they're to die for.

Her most popular dish is her special pizza, on the menu since 1988. "The traditional, ready-made pizza," she makes a face, "is awful. You cut up the cardboard and serve it." She said she laid awake nights thinking of how to improve it, and now, "Make sure we have the pizza next year," has become the most repeated request from camp guests. Her fresh buttermilk pancakes are pretty popular, too, a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. Using a kitchen tool known as a "pancake hopper," a device which eliminates messy pouring and dripping, Viki flips 50 pancakes at a pop. "The kids love to peek into the kitchen and watch," she grinned. "I serve them right off the grill. On hike days we give them as many as they can pack down. They need those carbs."

Even though everything possible has been done the day before, the cook is still in the kitchen every morning by 6 a.m., preparing for an 8 a.m. breakfast. As head cook, her goal is to keep the meals from becoming mundane. "Monday meatloaf, Tuesday tacos," she rolls her eyes, "I couldn't stand it. None of my meals are exactly the same. Everyone appreciates variety. If I had the same menu they'd be asking, is that all she knows how to cook? I make it different year to year, week to week."

That constant search for better food does occasionally meet with a glitch. Viki recalls the "neon green" curry chicken that tasted delicious but practically glowed in the dark. "I didn't get the color right," she shrugged. "The adults braved it, but the kids wouldn't touch; it they ate only the rice. There's nothing more painful than serving something that comes back. I have to work on that one."

Meals at the camp are served family-style, and this cook knows what kids like. Huge bread baskets accompany broad platters of lasagna, and "salad is served with Ranch dressing and croutons," she says, "with everything cut into big chunks so they can pick the things out they don't like otherwise they wouldn't touch it. The number one source of complaints at camp can be the food. So you need to use gimmicks with
kids."

Like dessert. This head cook has banned the huge stainless steel bowls of pudding, once a staple dessert for the masses. In their place, "dirt cups," those sweet concoctions of chocolate pudding, Oreo crumbs and gummy worms, are the order of the day.

She serves a variety of desserts, in their own cups, atop a doily. "We dont serve glop. Glop is bad. Kids don't like it. Food has to have an appealing look." Eating is half the fun at Camp Ta Ta Pochon. On Thursday nights there are formal dinners of roast beef or roast turkey. On those evenings the tables are turned, so to speak, with the counselors waiting on the campers, answering to all reasonable whims. The last breakfast of the week is breakfast in bed. "The kids love it," Viki says.

Viki's cuisine not only tastes good, the camp menu is approved by a nutritionist and a licensed dietician. "Every summer I try something new," she said. I really take pride in that. One summer it was the doilies under the dessert cups. Another summer it was soup in bread bowls. The year we started making chili from scratch it was an instant hit."

Camp Ta Ta Pochon has been on the forest since 1922. It's name means "Place of Everlasting Friendship." The camp is accredited by the American Camping Association. There are 12 camper cabins which sleep 144 guests in all. The camp has the biggest pool in the area as well as a ropes challenge course, arts and crafts, archery, riflery, hiking, a climbing wall, keeping campers involved and active.

Away from the kitchen you'll find Viki around the campfire entertaining the troops. She likes to tell some interesting tales around the campfire. Her rendition of "Cillendrella," a creative take on "Cinderella," was good enough to land her a spot on the long- running "Gong Show." These days the fractured fairy tale keeps the campers in stitches. They also like to hear the story of "Beeping Sleuty."

The campers at Ta Ta Pochon come from all age groups, all walks of life, Viki says. She adds that one of the saddest things she sees are the kids who stuff their pockets with food when they leave the dining hall. "It usually takes them three or four days," she says, "before they realize that here, at least for a week, theyll get enough to eat."

"I remember a group of rival gang members that came here, 20 of them from Orange County, picked up off the streets. They were huge eaters. I wasn't sure what to expect that week. "But they were very respectful toward me. They were extremely appreciative of the food and acknowledged the effort involved in providing it. Some of them even hugged me. I was like the camp mom."