The best that can be said about the United States’ relationship with its closest allies and its neighbors to the north, with whom America shares the world’s largest unguarded border, might be summed up as such:

We’re in a weird place.

The jambalaya recipe came from an old Boy Scout cookbook. Pour a can of condensed onion soup, beef stock, and tomato sauce, along with two cans of water, into a Dutch oven. Add two cups of rice, smoked sausage, shrimp, diced bell pepper and green onions, plus garlic, herbs and spices. Cover the lid with charcoal briquettes. In 90 minutes, it’s done. Easy, right?

If only those trout would have stopped rising.