Dive and Discover : Expedition 5 : Interviews

Galápagos Islands
Expedition 5:
Aug 23-Sep 24, 2001

Interviews: Senior Cook Ed Miller

miller1 Senior Cook Ed Miller starts cooking at five in the morning and doesn’t stop until 1800 hours (that’s 6pm).

Question:
When did you first start cooking?


	Submarine sandwiches are a big hit with everyone on board Revelle.

Ed:
I started cooking when I was 5 years old. I’m the youngest of seven kids and one morning I decided to make breakfast for the whole family. I got two dozen eggs, a pound of butter and a big skillet. In those days we had furnace ducts on the floor to heat the house and that’s what I used to try and cook on rather than the stove. My mother thought I was pounding tacks in the floor. I got the butter melted and a dozen-and-a-half eggs cracked when she caught me. At that point she said ‘If you’re going to cook, you’re going to learn how to do it the right way.’ I got all the basics from her and my aunts.

Question:
What kind of music do you listen to while you’re working?

Ed:
I like Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky - all the big boys. I listen to Tina Turner when I need some extra energy.

Question:
How much are we eating?

Ed:
Meat wise, we’ll go through 2,500 pounds easy on this trip. I usually load a ship six months at a whack with 8,000 pounds of meat. We have about 200 pounds of potatoes and 100 pounds of pasta. I brought 500 pounds of coffee. We go through about six gallons of milk every three-and-a-half days, two gallons a day of ice tea and a gallon of orange juice a day. Cereal, we don’t have enough. You’re eating that like crazy, about three boxes a day: Cheerios, Raison Bran, Grape Nuts, Frosted Mini Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Just Right and Granola. We get produce whenever we have the chance. I’ll usually get a 30-day supply in varying degrees of ripeness. You want to know where the best tomatoes are in the world? Chile - they're the best I’ve eaten, since I was a kid growing them in my own backyard. We have about 60 to 70 pounds of tomatoes on board, and we'll have salad right up to the end of the trip.


	For special occasions Ed whips up a chocolate cake.

Question:
How did you start working as a cook professionally?

Ed:
I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 13. I started out as a bus boy and then they promoted me to dishwasher. Then I went to the Big Boy Restaurant, where I cooked on the Big Boy grill. I had a mass of scars down my arm from all the greasy burgers. I didn’t cook for eight-and a-half years while I was in the Navy. When I got out of the service I worked for a chain called Church’s Fried Chicken. I went to their school in Atlanta, Ga., and then, after I finished school, I started teaching. I moved to Florida and opened up 50 stores. Then transferred to Michigan where I opened 130 stores and then quit. I started working at the big hotels and in 1990 took over a restaurant that was making less then $100,000 a year. Within three years I had built it up to $3.5 million. Between all this I went to college for two years at Cornell and then studied at Michigan State University in hotel and restaurant administration.


Ed takes a short break before getting ready for the next meal.

Question:
How did you find your way to Scripps?

Ed:
I sold the restaurant and moved to San Diego where I worked on private yachts. That’s when I first saw Scripps’ research vessel Flip, the one that turns upside down when it’s out at sea. They had brought it in to the shipyard. I took one look at it, found out it was a research vessel, and said ‘I want to work on that, just one time, go out and do one trip.’ A year later I called the University of California at San Diego and they put me in touch with Scripps. I’ve been with them more than two years now. It seems like a lifetime. My first boat was the Flip, so watch out for what you wish for. I did two trips on it, two miles off the coast of Los Angeles, sitting there for a month, looking at the lights of the cars going by and you can’t go to shore. Since then I’ve done all the Scripps boats except for the Robert Gordon Sproul.

Question:
Do you cook when you’re at home?

Ed:
Only for my friends and family sometimes. I have three daughters and five grandchildren. They’ll eat anything I throw at them. I have a wonderful ex-wife, who’s my best friend. She’s a dietician. When our kids were growing up they wanted nothing to do with the kitchen. Now they’re learning from me long-distance by email how to cook.

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