Barry came back to the boat recently and found me laughing my head off like a lunatic. Because we’ve been doing fiberglass work in the main cabin, we’ve moved out of the galley and are cooking on a 2-burner Coleman stove on a picnic table under the boat.

But I can’t let the Coleman stove stifle my creative cooking instincts. And I’ve been meaning to make cookies for my friends here in the boatyard for a while. Finally, this past Sunday evening, I made a batch of No-bake Oatmeal Cookies.

One of the rules I break all the time is this one: Never ever make an untried recipe for company. In this case, I was hoping they’d be good enough to give away, but I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t tell anyone ahead of time and get their expectations up.

I carefully followed the recipe, which came from an issue of Practical Sailor. It’s not exactly Cooks’ Illustrated or Gourmet — in all the years I’ve read the magazine, this was the first time they’d actually printed a recipe. There are a lot of sailors out there with stoves and no ovens, so no-bake cookies are important!

Anyway, the reason Barry found me collapsed in laughter was the result of my attempt at no-bake cookies. The result was suspiciously like peanut butter-chocolate fudge with oatmeal in it, not a cookie-like consistency at all. And when I tried to cut them, they crumbled horribly. So I came up with a new name for them, a contraction of “fudge” and “cookie”: Fuckie.

As Barry came around the boat, wondering what was so funny, I knew I had to offer him one. “Honey,” I gasped, “Would you like a … fuckie?”

“A WHAT?” he asked. Between chuckles, I managed to explain the name. I tried to hand him one, but half of it dropped off before he could eat it. They truly were “fuckies.”

Nonetheless, they tasted OK, and folks who are working on boats need all the treats they can get. So I passed them out, and they went over remarkably well. One reason might be this: I chickened out and changed the name. I mean, most people won’t accept a fuckie from someone they hardly know.

Fookie, anyone?

Sometimes, when I’m reading, there’s a description of how to make something that sounds delicious, even though it’s not precisely a recipe. Like the Fondue recipe from occupied France, this one comes from a World War II memoir. In this case, it’s the second book of Roald Dahl’s autobiography, Going Solo. I highly recommend this a quick read, and a book that’s hard to put down. Dahl is the author responsible for such childhood classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach.

Dahl was living near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and working for Shell when war was declared. As one of the few Englishmen around, he was expected to lead a platoon of local black soldiers and round up any Germans trying to leave the country. Given his lack of military training, even he thought this was ludicrous — the Sergeant and the troops were very well trained, and he was embarrassed to be catapulted into a leadership role over them, solely based on his skin color and nationality.

On top of this, when they set up the blockade, he hadn’t thought to bring any food (he was used to having those things taken care of by his servant, a funny and capable man named Mdisho). The 23-year-old Dahl rather humbly asked the Sergeant he was commanding for some of the evening meal that was prepared for the soldiers.

“Then the Sergeant made a fire out of sticks and began cooking supper for his men. He was making rice in an enormous pot, and while the rice was boiling, he took from the truck a great stem of bananas and started snapping them off the stem one by one and peeling the and slicing them up and dropping the slices into the pot of rice. When the food was ready, each askari produced his own tin plate and spoon and the Sergeant dished out large portions with a ladle. Up to then I hadn’t thought about my own food and I certainly had not brought anything with me. Watching the men eat made me hungry. ‘Do you think I could have a little of that, please?’ I said to the Sergeant.

‘Yes, bwana,’ he said. ‘Have you got a plate?’

‘No,’ I said. So he found me a tin plate and a spoon and gave me a huge helping. It was absolutely delicious. The rice was unhusked and brown and the grains did not stick together. The slices of banana were hot and sweet and in some way they oiled the rice, as butter would. It was the best rice dish I had ever tasted and I ate it all and felt good and forgot about the Germans.”

I haven’t tried making this yet, but it sounds delicious to me, too. I think I’ll make a pot of pressure-cooker brown rice, toss in some sliced bananas, and then put the lid back on to steam for a few minutes. It’s even simpler (and more healthy) than a version I published with white rice and coconut cream, and somehow it reminds me of Cindy’s poached banana dessert. Or my favorite Ecuadorian tomato soup with bananas.

The moral of the story is, when you cook with bananas, you don’t need a whole lot of other ingredients. Just a tin plate, a spoon, and good manners.

Have you ever looked carefully at the condiment shelf in your fridge? I bet you can identify items that are years, maybe decades old. And then there are things we wouldn’t know how to keep if we didn’t have a refrigerator and freezer. For example, mayonnaise, or butter, or fresh ginger.

For years, I’ve been reading about cruising sailors who live without refrigeration. Boat refrigeration is expensive to install and painful to maintain, and it’s the item that uses the most electricity, a scant resource. So I’ve always assumed that we would just learn to live without it.

But living on a boat at anchor and living on a boat on jackstands are two different things. We don’t have nice cool water around our boat, and without masts and booms, we don’t even have any shade. It is hot, hot, hot.

But we have a vehicle, and there are plenty of places to buy ice nearby. Block ice, which keeps longer than cubes, is a little harder to find, but we found the places that carry it. Beaufort Ice, the wholesaler, will sell it to us if we happen to be in town during regular business hours. Once, at the end of the day, they gave us a free block, because we didn’t have exact change. They distribute their blocks to other places, like Captain Kenny’s BP station and the strange and dark mini-mart we call “Skankland,” but of course it costs more.

So we started buying a block of ice for our icebox every day. Sometimes we would go two days, and then buy two blocks. But it’s a hassle. Our friends were using block ice, too, until they got their fridge working. Now, when they see us hauling ice back from the gas station, they just smile contentedly. “You should buy a little refrigerator,” said Gigi. “I saw them for $64 at Kmart, I think, or Wal-Mart.”

She was right. We were spending over $70 per month just for the ice, not counting the gas and the time. I went to Kmart and plunked down the credit card. Returning home, Barry put the new fridge over his shoulder and carried it up to the cockpit. “It sure is light,” we both commented.

Then we plugged it in, and I read the little manual. Wait, what’s this? It’s a thermoelectric model with no refrigerant. It says it can lower the temperature up to 20 degrees from ambient. That won’t work when it’s 95 degrees — who wants a 75-degree refrigerator?

I went back to Kmart and carried the fridge to the customer service desk — I didn’t even need a cart to return it. I should have known that a 22-pound fridge wouldn’t work.

So on to Wal-Mart, where we bought one that weighs 55 pounds. We had to use a block and tackle to get this one up to the cockpit. But it has a real compressor, and a tiny freezer compartment where we can make ice cubes, and although it’s only 1.7 cubic feet, that’s enough room for our milk and cheese and lunchmeat and a few vegetables.

We’ll have to sell the fridge when we launch the boat, and then we’ll figure out how to live without refrigeration on the water. But in the mean time, we’re in cool heaven. And instead of carrying ice up the ladder, we get to carry something better: Ice cream!

Have you ever wondered how to cook a turkey on a charcoal grill? When it’s time to cook a turkey, it’s usually a holiday, and the kitchen is a madhouse. There are pies and casseroles and rolls to be baked, and the oven is never big enough for everything. Cooking the turkey outside is a simple solution — especially since there is often a grill cook or two around the house with nothing to do.

For years, the culinary highlight of our annual White Elephant party was a grilled turkey, which served dozens of hungry guests with minimal work. As I once wrote on Adventures with Meps ‘n’ Barry:

Barry discovered how easy it was to throw a turkey on the barbecue grill, so that became the central menu item. He’d take it off the grill as the party was getting in full swing and plop it on a platter in the middle of the table, next to a carving fork and knife. Then he’d walk away.

The guests would stand around, looking puzzled. “Who’s going to carve the turkey?” they’d ask. Finally, someone who couldn’t stand to wait any longer would just pick up the knife and start carving away. And Barry and I would give each other a high-five, since we knew how to cook a turkey, but didn’t want to admit that carving it was beyond us.

This past Christmas, Barry’s mother prepared a turkey on her grill, and we documented the process with the camera. It’s so easy, it’s worth buying a turkey any time of the year!

What you’ll need:

A large kettle-style barbecue grill (such as a Weber)
A large bag of charcoal - regular briquettes, not Matchlight
Lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal starter with newspaper
A rectangular pan (disposable foil pans work, but may leak) to put under the turkey
Optional: Hardware cloth to hold briquettes
Optional: Turkey lifter
Optional: Lid spacers — metal rods or 2×4’s wrapped in foil

1. Before buying your turkey, measure the height of your grill lid from the grate that holds the turkey. If your turkey isn’t small enough to fit under the lid, you can use spacers to gain an extra inch or two. The spacers are illustrated in step #9. (The turkey may take a little longer to cook, but the results will be fine.)
2. Light your charcoal, using either lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal lighter with newspaper.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the turkey. Remove any giblets, wash the turkey, and tie up the wings and legs with wire or string. Rub the outside of the turkey with butter or olive oil. Important: This cooking method does not work with a turkey that’s stuffed. If you want stuffing, you’ll have to roast it in a separate pan in the oven.
   
4. Once all the briquettes have a layer of gray ash on them, they’re ready to use. Using tongs, divide the briquettes into two piles, one on each side of the grill, with the rectangular pan in the middle. There should be about 25-30 briquettes on each side. The goal is to cook the turkey with indirect heat and catch the drippings in the pan. One way to make this a little easier is to create “baskets” out of hardware cloth to hold the briquettes on the sides.
   
   
   
5. Put a little water into the drippings pan.
6. Place the grill on top of the charcoal and drippings pan.
   
7. If you have a turkey lifter, put it on top of the grill.
   
8. Put the turkey on the grill, centered over the foil pan. (in the photo below, the turkey was not perfectly centered, and the left wing was slightly scorched)
   
9. Put the lid over the turkey and set a timer for one hour.
10. Optional: The spacers shown below are only needed if the lid does not fit over the turkey. In a pinch, when we discovered the turkey was too tall at the last minute, we used 2×4’s wrapped in foil, one on either side of the grill. But if you know ahead of time that your turkey is too tall, metal rods like these are an elegant solution.
    
    
11. When an hour has passed, open the grill and add 8 or 9 fresh charcoal briquettes to the burnt-down briquettes on each side. There’s no need for lighter fluid. It’s easiest to do this if you remove the turkey to a baking sheet. When you put the turkey back, check to make sure it’s centered. You may also want to add a little water to the drippings pan.
    
12. Repeat step #9 every hour until the turkey is done. The total time should be about 12 minutes per pound. Use a meat thermometer to be absolutely certain that it’s done.
    
13. If you want to make gravy from the drippings, use a baster to remove the drippings about a half hour before the turkey is done.
14. Remove the turkey to a platter. Let it sit for 15 minutes on the counter before carving. If you put it on the table at a party, it will usually take about 15 minutes of discussion before one of the guests grabs the carving knife.

I took a very special photograph today, a plate of tiny poached pears stuffed with cream cheese. Why is the photo special? It represents the last four pears. What a relief!

Barry’s parents have several pear trees that produce delicious pears every fall. Unfortunately, they produce too many of them, and they ripen all at once.

Two years ago, we took as many as we could eat and gave pounds of them away to friends. We made batch after batch of pear sauce. Then I found a juicer at the thrift store. We began to juice many pears each day, tossing in a small lime or lemon wedge, peel and all, to give the juice some additional “zing.” This went on for days, until one day, the thrift store juicer whined and gasped and croaked. It was worth the $3 I’d paid for it, and had almost gotten us through the season.

Last year, we took another huge batch, but we didn’t give as many away. Instead, we borrowed a food dryer, dipping the cored pear quarters into Fruit Fresh and then drying them for hours. The work was interminable and the results tiny. We ended up with about a gallon of little pieces of dried pear skin. Not worth the effort, even if they were chewy and sweet.

This year, we found a blender at the thrift store and discovered pear smoothies. We used at least four pears a day, and the motor on the sturdy blender was up to the task. I stopped in to visit a friend at breakfast-time last week. “I have a treat for you,” she said, “we made pear smoothies this morning.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Not only had I already had a pear smoothie that day, but after two months of them, a pear smoothie was no longer a treat!

Barry and I also took pear crisp or pear cobbler to every potluck, giving us a chance to refine the recipe. Each batch called for three pears, but we doubled the topping and sometimes used as many as ten pears. We made salads that used the pears, along with home-grown apples and cucumbers. Barry made sparkling pear cupcakes, halving the recipe but accidentally leaving the same number of pears as a full recipe. No surprise, they were very moist! Finally, this morning, I was down to the last eight, the tiniest ones. They were too cute to put in the blender.

So I carefully peeled them and cut the cores out, then poached them and stuffed them with cream cheese. As I handled the delicate things, they felt like old friends. But after I ate them, I could only feel relief. They’re gone, and now I finally get to eat something else!

I recently wrote about my favorite kitchen gadgets, the small ones (see A few of my favorite things, part one). The following short list has my favorite big things, the ones that don’t fit into a drawer. One reason they’re favorites is because they all come with great stories. Some have multiple uses. For instance, the salad spinner can also be used to make art or dry your socks. And my husband is incredibly versatile.

Cast iron skillet with a lid. I inherited two cast-iron skillets from my mother, who’d gotten them from her mother. At the time, Mom had gotten some arthritis in her wrist, so she was happy to pass them along to someone who could actually lift them. I loved them like they were my children — I never washed them with soap, and I always seasoned them with vegetable oil after each washing. Then, several years later, catastrophe! My mother discovered a recipe for blackened fish and demanded the return of one of her cast-iron skillets. It took us months to get a new skillet as well-seasoned as the original, 75-year-old pan.

But it was worth it. We use our cast-iron skillets for everything, and they can easily go from the stove to the oven for dishes like upside-down cake or chillaquillas. Properly seasoned, they’re just as non-stick as Teflon or Silverstone, and a lot safer.

Cuisinart food processor. Christmas, 1990. My fiance was flying from Virginia to Ohio to spend the holiday with me, but he nearly missed his flight because of my present. He had decided to get me a food processor, and after reading Consumer Reports, determined that nothing less than a real Cuisinart would do. The problem was that he blithely planned to walk to the airport, a distance of about two miles. He picked up his suitcase in one hand and the shopping bag with the Cuisinart in the other. A half block into the walk, he shifted hands. And shifted back. And forth. And back. And forth.

With packaging and attachments, that Cuisinart weighed almost 25 pounds. And so he struggled all the way to the airport. When I picked him up on the other end, his hands were still sore, and until Christmas morning, I had no idea why.

That Cuisinart is still going strong at 17. It slices, it grates, it juliennes, it chops. It makes perfect pie crust and apple-cranberry relish to die for. And every time I use it, I think about how much I adore the man who gave it to me.

Second-generation pressure cooker. There are two kinds of cooks in the world: Those who use a pressure cooker, and those who don’t. I can’t imagine life without a pressure cooker, because I love whole grains, dried beans, and long-cooking vegetables like artichokes and beets. I know you can simmer those things on the stove for hours; one of my old black bean recipes specifically mentions simmering for 4 hours. But after having a pressure cooker for 12 years, there isn’t anything I cook on the stove that takes longer than 45 minutes — and the burner is only “on” for the first half of that.

If a true pressure-cooker fanatic is someone with two cookers, I’m a fanatic.

The term “second-generation” refers to the fact that today’s pressure cookers have a spring-loaded valve and additional fail-safes to prevent pea-soup-on-the-ceiling explosions that made the original 1950s pressure cookers infamous.

Countertop salad spinner. For most people, the word “countertop” seems unnecessary, because what other kind of salad spinner is there? For me, the other kind is the big one, the one down in the laundry room.Until 1980, my mother washed her lettuce, always iceberg, and put it on the counter on a towel to dry. Salad spinners had been invented, but were not yet common. Then she read an amazing article in the New York Times that suggested putting the lettuce in a pillowcase, tying the top shut, and putting it in the washing machine on “spin” cycle. In a top-loading washer, when you get the knob in just the right position, it simply spins without spraying any water into the tub, and the centrifugal force is the same as any salad spinner.

The problem was, as the family teenager, the job was delegated to me. It was novel at first, but eventually I became bored with it, because I had to descend to the dreary basement laundry corner and stay there until the spin cycle, which always seemed a lot longer than necessary for a head of lettuce, was complete.

Today, although I have my own washer and my own dreary basement laundry room, I also have a cute little salad spinner from the thrift store. I don’t think I’ve ever used it to dry iceberg lettuce, but I’ve done many batches of romaine, Bibb, red leaf, spinach, and all manner of gourmet greens that weren’t available to my mother. I’ve also postulated that if a washer can be used as a salad spinner, then a salad spinner could be used to dry clothing. As a cruising sailor who believes that every item needs to have multiple uses, I wouldn’t be averse to spinning a few pairs of underwear or socks in it.

Barry, my sous-chef. There isn’t anyone I’d rather play in the kitchen with. He is more religious than I about seasoning the cast-iron skillets (he never really forgave my mother), and more likely to use the larger pressure cooker to create a batch of homemade chili so huge we’ll be eating it for weeks. He also shares “in” jokes with me, like the “shoot” attachment that came with the Cuisinart. They called it a chute attachment, but that had to be a misspelling. Its role in life seemed to be “shooting” food all the way across the kitchen instead of putting it into the bowl.

While the salad spinner could be used to dry socks, he’s so versatile — and kind — that he will also wash the darn things for me.

Anyone who cooks will have a few favorite gadgets in their kitchen. When you open that jumbled, messy kitchen drawer, your favorites are the ones on top. If not, they’re the ones sitting on the counter, or more likely, in the sink or dishwasher.

I’ve downsized from a full-sized house and kitchen to the bare necessities, just enough to fit in a tiny boat galley. These bare necessities have traveled across the country in my Honda Civic, sailed the Intracoastal Waterway, and been used for camping in Newfoundland. They were unpacked into a camping trailer in Washington, packed up again, and moved to an apartment with 1 square foot of counter space. At this point, if I don’t need it, it’s gone — I don’t have room for it!

This is a list of those little indispensables, the items in my kitchen that are always in the to-be-washed or just-washed pile of dishes. If you’re looking for a gift for a friend who cooks, you might just find a few ideas below.

1. Microplane grater. I can’t live without it, because the foods you can prepare with one are the ones that give recipes their WOW factor. For example, fluffy mounds of parmesan and romano cheese. Fresh-grated ginger. Finely-grated chocolate. And something I didn’t even know about until I had my Microplane: Whole nutmeg. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back to the ground stuff. When you’re wrapping up the Microplane as a gift, include a bar of nice dark chocolate and a nutmeg, so the recipient can try it out and immediately experience the WOW factor.
2. Stainless steel graduated measuring cups. I use them constantly as scoops — not just for flour and sugar, but to serve things like yogurt, nuts, and stew. It’s great so know exactly how much you’re serving to each person. And if you’re serving rice or whole grains, you can spray a 1- or 1/2-cup measure with a little oil spray, scoop out a serving, and then place a perfectly-shaped mound on each plate.
3. Big beefy garlic press and rubber garlic peeler. When we first downsized, I got rid of my small, inefficient garlic press. I thought I’d just use a knife — smash each clove with the flat of the knife, peel it, and chop it. But it took me so long to prep fresh garlic, I got lazy and started using garlic less and less. The new tools have remedied that. I can be halfway through a dish and suddenly decide to add garlic. I grab the garlic cloves, roll them in the little rubber tube, and out they come, sans papery peel. Then I pop them into the garlic press and press or slice them directly into the pot.
4. Cheap stainless scissors. It’s amazing what you can use scissors for in the kitchen — they don’t even have to be sharp. You can use them to cut a pizza or quesadillas. Snip some dried fruit into little bits, or snip fresh herbs into a pot on the stove. One of my favorite uses for scissors is to cut wet, sloppy things that come in cans, like whole canned tomatoes or roasted peppers. Leave a pair of cheap scissors on the counter for a few days, and see what else you think of.
5. Silicone baking mat. No longer do I hesitate to bake something, thinking the cleanup is not worth the effort. With one of these mats, cleaning up after roasting nuts or baking cookies, fish, or chicken is a breeze. I don’t know how I lived without one (well, I didn’t always have an oven, so that might explain it).
6. Stainless steel cocktail shaker. Even if you don’t drink cocktails, a stainless cocktail shaker is a beautiful thing, and it’s handy for blending all kinds of things. You can use a large one to shake up a batch of instant pudding, blend milk and flour for a white sauce, beat eggs, or making a smoothie without a blender.

Next week, in A few of my favorite things, part two, I’ll list some of the larger indispensables, the ones that take up a lot of room in my tiny kitchen. Things like the second-generation pressure cooker, cast-iron skillet, and most important of all: Barry, my sous-chef!

It’s asparagus season again, time to dust off one asparagus anecdote, one story, and one great tip.

Most of the people I know love fresh asparagus. It’s considered one of the gourmet vegetables, right up there with hearts of palm and artichoke hearts. Even now that it’s become fairly commonplace, the thought of the tender green shoots still provokes “ooooohs” from diners.

Back in the 1980’s, our friends Pat and Larry bought a farm in central Ohio. Their acreage included woods and fields, room for their dogs and cats to roam, space for an enormous barn and a pond. It also had a patch of robust and hearty asparagus, something their city-dwelling friends could only dream of.

Pat and Larry both had a wicked sense of humor and loved to tease people. When the asparagus came up in conversation, they would admit neither of them liked it. They might even go so far as to make retching noises to prove the point. And then, the wide-eyed listener, thinking of asparagus as something akin to green gold, would ask, hopefully, “What do you do with it?” “It makes great mulch,” they’d answer, just to see the shocked and dismayed reaction. In truth, Pat would puree it in soup, or else give it to friends.

Barry and I are not asparagus-averse. We are definitely in the “green gold” category, and we both remember the time we hit the asparagus “mother lode.”

It was a long-distance bicycle trip across Michigan in early June. We happened one weekend upon the town of Shelby, where an asparagus festival was in progress. Everything in Shelby was tall and green, even the Asparagus Queen.

We wandered through town, looking at the asparagus displays, asparagus crafts, and booths selling pickled asparagus. It wasn’t crowded, and our loaded bikes drew as much attention as any of the displays.

We were still fairly new to bicycle touring, and riding many miles each day meant we were always hungry. So we finally got tired of being gawked at and stepped into a dimly-lit pub and restaurant with a special menu for the festival. When the waitress came to take our order, we went all out: Beer-battered asparagus, asparagus-cheese soup, and asparagus lasagna. The waitress was shaking her head as she went to the kitchen. Thank goodness they didn’t have asparagus ice cream, or we would have ordered that, too.

Instead, we picked up a couple more pounds of asparagus from a farmer’s stand and steamed it later, for dinner. We peed green for days…

As we headed north out of Shelby, we rode through vast fields of asparagus. It was being harvested by farm workers, who sat in rows on a low trailer towed behind a tractor. It was kind of kinky: They literally picked the asparagus right between their legs.

Which brings to mind the following asparagus tip from our funniest friend, Minnesota Charles Mickelson.

If you’re at a dinner party that’s become dull, and the conversation lags, don’t despair. Just pick up the asparagus spear lying on your plate, no, not with your fork! Use your fingers. Now, this is the important part. Pretend that you are not holding a drooping, flaccid spear of asparagus, and proceed to tell an unrelated funny story. Be sure not to look at your asparagus spear, just hold it vertically in your fingertips. Every once in a while, punctuate your speech with a lively wave of the green wand.

Everyone will be watching the asparagus spear, practically holding their breath. They’ll be wondering, what are you doing with that asparagus spear? Are you going to eat it? What does it have to do with the story?

Eventually, someone will get the giggles, which are contagious. You can enhance the spread of laughter by pointing the asparagus at the giggling party and asking why they are giggling. Presto! You will have converted a dull dinner party into a lively, memorable event. All thanks to your friend, Mr. Asparagus Spear.

The Foodie’s favorite asparagus recipes:

Roasted asparagus: Toss asparagus on a cookie sheet with a little olive oil. Roast at 400 F for 10 minutes.
Chicken and asparagus in red sauce
Parmesan-crusted asparagus
Rhubarb and asparagus with mushrooms
Wilted asparagus and apple salad
New! Warm asparagus and apple salad with rhubarb and hazelnuts

As one of the earliest adopters of a bread machine, back in 1990, I never experienced the kind of phobia Tara writes about. My only bread machine-based fear was based on a real experience: While making a loaf of pumpernickel, my DAK bread machine, the kind that looked like R2D2, literally walked off the counter. The loud crash was followed by the sound of pathetic whining, as it lay bent, but not broken, on the floor. After that, I only used it on the floor, where it couldn’t fall further.

Foodie Gazette bread machine recipes

Guest Columnist: Tara L. Narcross

June 23: The Beginning

It began, quite innocently, at a yard sale. There it was, a practically-new bread machine. I remembered all the wonderful things my friend Patty had told me in the past about her bread machine — it’s so easy to use, we love it, the smell of baking bread is divine, and so forth. And this one was only $10. As I looked at it, I had visions of loaves of warm bread; I could almost smell the incomparable aroma of freshly baked bread coming from my very own kitchen.

True, the machine had neither box nor instructions; however, Patty had once promised me her help if I ever did decide to get a bread machine of my own. So it came home with me and occupied a chair in the living room for the first two weeks. During that time I alternated between excited anticipation and despair that what was supposed to be so simple would not prove to be within my grasp.

June 26

Patty found the instruction manual for the machine on the company’s web site. I’ve printed it and it’s sitting next to me on my desk. While I’m excited about the whole prospect of baking my own bread, my nerve is a little shaky, and I still haven’t actually started reading the manual. Patty continues to promise that I’ll love it — the machine, that is, not the manual.

It can’t be that bad, right? After all, both of my grandmothers baked bread all the time, and they didn’t have a machine to help them do it. For a very long time, they also didn’t have refrigerators, electric stoves, or running water, either. So I should be way ahead of the game.

July 9

The bread machine has been moved from the living room chair onto the spot that has been cleared on the kitchen table. I still haven’t cracked that manual, though. I did, however, carry it to and from work for three days, in hopes of reading it while eating lunch.

I know that part of the hesitation is rooted in my previous attempt (the first and, to date, the only) at baking yeast bread. It was something called “Bubble Bread”, and was supposed to be so easy that if you had opposable thumbs and could follow a recipe, the bread would turn out perfectly. Hah.

Even though I had never baked bread before, I just knew something was not quite right as I put it in the oven. Call it a premonition. When I took out the finished product, I was fairly sure that the pan was actually heavier than when I put it in.

So it (whatever it was) began to cool on the rack, and was still warm when my (first) husband, his father and his uncle came in from work.

“Homemade bread! Great!”

The husband had a little bit of it and refused to eat even a full slice, vehemently proclaiming it to be completely inedible. (I’d had a bit of it by then and was in full agreement, but he didn’t really have to be that way about it, you know.)

The father-in-law ate a full slice and then gosh, he wasn’t really hungry, thank you very much. (He’d just come in from a full day of roofing and he wasn’t hungry? However, I appreciated the polite lie at that point.)

The uncle, on the other hand, said it was fantastic; he ate a little over half the loaf. Of course, he was stoned at the time …

Unwilling to subject myself to another attempt right then, I turned my attention to cooking other things and figured that I was not meant to bake the wonderful loaves that my grandmothers (and countless others) turned out with such apparent ease. Now, a little more than 20 years later, I am finally willing to give it another try. After all, by this time I am more mature and more skilled at cooking in general. Also, I know that my husband, Derek, will not respond in the same way as did the previous husband.

July 11

Today Patty brought over a grocery bag in which she had compiled a bread-making beginner’s kit for me, with whole-wheat flour, buckwheat flour, soy flour, yeast and a plastic container with a sourdough starter in it. We patted the bread machine and admired its unsullied almost-newness.

Once again, I wonder what has possessed me to enter into this overly emotional commitment with a machine instead of just continuing to get my bread from the bakery section of the grocery, like the sensible woman that I normally am.

And why do I, a professional, reasonably intelligent, grown woman with a Ph.D., find myself intimidated by what looks to be a fairly simple machine? I love computers and I’m reasonably clever with electronic gadgets, if you will please overlook the fact that I haven’t the least idea which buttons on the remote to press to make the DVD player work. The bread machine has only a half dozen buttons on it, so it should be less frightening than the remote, despite the difference in size. However, logic doesn’t seem to play into this. It’s entirely emotional.

I wonder if there’s a word for a phobia about the possibility of embarrassing oneself in front of a bread machine?

July 14

It’s Bastille Day. Does this mean my first attempt should be French bread? No, no, no. Start simple. And tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow will be The Day. Really.

July 15

Today. I’ve committed myself to it. No getting out of it now. I’ve read the instructions. I have the ingredients. I’ve tidied up the kitchen, so I’m ready to start.

Whole-wheat bread looks fairly simple. Let’s see … whole-wheat flour—check. Water—check. Yeast—check. Brown sugar … oops. No brown sugar.
Well, let’s look at the recipe for white bread, then. Flour, water, yeast—check, check and check. Dry mlk … dry milk?

What is dry milk? Is it the same as powdered milk? I have some nice dry wine, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be a useful substitute.

By this point I’m so committed that I must continue with making bread of some kind. I am also rattled enough that I completely forget the resources at hand, including various cookbooks and, of course, Google.

So it’s back to the wheat bread. We’ll substitute white sugar for brown. It’s a small enough quantity that it shouldn’t make too much of a difference … I hope.

After that, it’s almost painfully simple. Put the ingredients into the machine in the order listed, press the buttons as indicated in the recipe and leave the machine to its job. Fortunately, there’s a window in the top of the machine that allows one to peek at the work in progress. And when it’s done, there should be a squarish loaf of bread. Edible bread. With luck, even good bread.

And it was good bread! Very good bread, if I do say so myself. And like the mature woman I am, after making Derek come look at the loaf, and then taste it, I called my mother and my best friend to share my glee with them.

Dinner that night was bread, soup, bread, salad and bread. And a big helping of satisfaction.

July 22

I’ve now made three successful loaves of whole-wheat bread. I’ve conquered my fear of breadmaking. From here I can branch out into other types of bread whenever I wish; I have a whole book full of recipes.

Moving past that old fear was a very liberating experience, but I didn’t do it alone. Patty, Derek, my mother, the friends who patiently listened to my raptures over that first loaf and, of course, the neighbors with the yard sale all played a part in helping me realize this dream. Who knew it would take a village to raise a loaf of bread?

I just read an article in Global Rhythm (May ‘07) about German lebkuchen, a kind of spice cake dating back to the 18th century. According to the article, one company keeps their recipes in a safe and changes the combination daily. Those are pretty precious recipes.

As any of my readers can see, I’m not a fan of keeping recipes secret. This past weekend, I participated in a foodie event, hoping to get some new recipes. Just my luck — the one I want is a secret recipe.

The event was the 21st annual Puget Sound Cruising Club Circumlocution of Bainbridge Island. It’s a very unusual sailboat race, with three awards.

Not first, second, and third. As a matter of fact, no award goes to first place. Nobody even pays attention to the boat that crosses the finish line first, except to avoid hitting them in the rush to take second place.

That’s because the boat that crosses the line second is considered the winner and gets their name on a brass plaque. The only reason anyone bothers to cross first is because they’re ineligible if they won in the past few years.

[Photo: Osprey and Panta Rhei didn’t win, although Osprey crossed the finish line first.]

The joke is based on the fact that in 1851, watching the America’s Cup, Queen Victoria once asked, “Who was second?” The famous answer was, “There is no second, Your Majesty.”

Another award is given for perseverance, which is a story in itself. You have to suffer greatly to get that award, like leaving the dock at 8 am and arriving 13 hours later after all the food is gone.

And the food is the real reason to participate. Because the most important award is the one for Best Horror d’Hoover, which is how some people pronounce “hors d’oeuvre.” Most of us just say, “appetizer.”

Every year, after the sailing race, we create a giant raft-up. That’s where a few boats drop anchors, and then the rest of the boats tie onto them, making a floating party. We all rush to our respective galleys and try to out-do each other creating the most amazing Horror d’Hoover.

Like the race, there’s no handicap system. Some galleys have microwaves, convection ovens, freezers, refrigerators, and blenders. Others have a sink and a stove. Some don’t even have the stove.

This year, at 1700 hours, the eating commenced aboard Ponderosa, a large Valiant near the center of the raft. Carefully balancing their offerings — one hand for the ship and one for your horror — crew came from all the other boats and laid them on the deck, and we sampled each one.

There were beautiful dishes that tasted plain and plain dishes that tasted beautiful. There were hot dips and cold dips, meaty offerings and vegetarian ones. There was a lot of shrimp, in dips and spreads and balls. There was a gorgeous smoked-salmon pizza with capers, some of which rolled merrily off my plate, onto the deck, and plopped into the water. I hope fish like capers.

We circled the deck as though we were playing musical chairs, tasting as we went. Some folks went around three or four times, narrowing down the field of favorites. At the end, we each cast a vote for one favorite appetizer.

[Photos: Barbara brought Claudia’s Cheese and Peppers (left), Karen made both Lox Pizza (right) and a Cucumber Dish that I didn’t get to photograph.]

The grand winner (drumroll, please) was Nora, who had prepared sweet-and-sour meatballs. Nora says she never wins anything, but now I don’t believe her. She was on the boat that took second, too.

The frustrating thing about the meatballs was, she refused to give out the recipe. I was right there, on the boat, when she pulled the Rubbermaid container with the magic winning meatballs out of the icebox. I was right there when she reheated and taste-tested them, adding a pinch more chili powder to balance the sweetness. At the time, she made excuses for her “lame recipe,” saying, “This is going to be our dinner, so I wanted to make sure there was something with ’substenance’ to it.”

But when I ask what else was in there, Nora just clams up, and shrugs. The meatballs and the sauce are a family secret, kept locked in a safe. She’ll pass them down to her children someday, so they can take awards at Horrors d’Hoovers contests.

Sadly, I didn’t even take a picture of the award-winning meatballs. But I did get a great photo of the Commodore and the proud winning chef, the one with the secret recipe.

So now I have to put out a request to my readers: Does anyone have a killer sweet-and-sour meatball recipe? It may take me a few years, but maybe someday I can replicate Nora’s award-winning meatballs.

And then I’ll take them to the Horror d’Hoover contest, and I’ll finally get my name on the plaque with the crossed forks. In my dreams.

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Check back later, and I’ll see if I can capture some of the other recipes. They were all yummy, even if they didn’t win. Here are some more photos of the beautiful entrees:


My own submission was pretty, but couldn’t hold a candle to the meatballs: Coconut shrimp balls on top of sliced palm hearts, below.