a book I must get and a couple I already have...

I'm not a huge fan of the add a can of this to a can of that school of cookbook writing... Fact of the matter is to put it bluntly I hate them.

Of course, most cookbooks of the cruising on a sailboat ilk are by and large full of add a can of this to a can of that recipes. Kind of bummer that.

It does not have to be that way...

One of the food blogs I read on a daily basis is Nourished Kitchen whose stated purpose is to revive traditional foods (which in my mind translates in real food).

I've never read a bad recipe on the blog which from me is say a lot. So it's not a real big surprise that I'm excited about the current cookbook "the Nourished Kitchen" by Jennifer McGruther...

More importanly all of the recipes in the book are actually a lot more boat and cruiser friendly than you'd expect. Fact is cooking with real ingredients is a lot easier than yopu've been told by folks who have a vested interest in selling you value added/overly processed products with highly inflated prices.

So yeah, "the Nourished Kitchen" is going to be a permanent fixture on my galley shelf.

Another new cookbook I recently bought is "The Homesick Texan's Family Table" by Lisa Fain and it is even better than her previous book
"The Homesick Texan's Cookbook" which is actually a a pretty impressive feat considering how good the first one is.

Not only a lot of good recipes but all are very boat friendly, simple, affordable, and very, very tasty.

Three books dealing with real food and not a single add a can of this to a can of that with an envelope of onion soup mix recipe anywhere...

A new book on my Kindle...

I just bought the new edition of "The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew" and I'm looking forward to seeing how Lin & Larry have updated it and brought it into the current century.

As it happens, I'm not a big fan of cruising cookbook genre... They never seem to have food that does not look like the recipes were cribbed off the back of a Velveeta cheese like product box, Good Housekeeping, or a Campbell's soup can.

Which is not to say that some of those recipes are not actually tasty but they are way too product centric to make a lot of sense on a voyaging boat...

I won't bother to go into the fact that such recipes are silly expensive as well but, I expect, you know how I feel on that subject.

Which is why you won't find cruising cookbooks on my shelves except for a couple of exceptions to the rule and "The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew" is one of those exceptions.

A good book...

Living on a boat, it is easy to get a sense of the fish you put on your table and not so long ago the same could be said for commercial fishermen...

Not so much these days though... Most fishing decisions in the commercial sector are made in board rooms and is the thing of short term profits and balance sheets.

Bummer...

There is a small country where the fishermen fished sustainably and made a life for themselves. Well, until the waters of that country became a place for other more wealthy nations to deposit their toxic wastes while other nations' fishing vessels in factory ships stole what catch remained...

Welcome to Somalia in 2011! A country where people earn a couple of dollars a day if they have work and if they don't are simply out of luck. The fish are no longer there or stolen by industrial fishing concerns where short term profit is the only law. Hardly surprising that some of those local fishermen are angry and just might consider a different line of work... The real story is always a lot more complicated than you might think.

Big business fishing has never been about sustainability or caring about the environment and it never will be... But, it does not have to be that way.

All over the world there are still fishermen and women fishing in a way that is sustainable and a very good primer on the subject is "Fish Tales: Stories & Recipes from Sustainable Fisheries Around the World" by Bart van Olphen and Tom Kime. Whether you get it as a cookbook with a back story or a study of sustainable fishing with some recipes, it most certainly belongs on your bookshelf...

I want this book...

The other day I was looking for a recipe to make some seitan and proceeded to do a search and came across just the thing and a great blog in the process.

Face it, how can you resist a food blog with a name like Post Punk Kitchen?

Even better, not only did they have the seitan recipe I was looking for but a bunch of other recipes featuring seitan that just called out "Try me..."

Some of you may already know Isa Chandra Moskowitz from her cookbooks like "Vegan With a Vengeance" (another great title) but for me she is something of a new discovery and one I plan to follow in the future...

Trying to get TVP to pull its own weight...

Back when I was in college I spent a lot of time in vegetarian eateries and one in particular was really exceptional in that you never even noticed they did not serve meat...

Part of their success was that they really knew how to cook and were masterful in the way they adapted the sort of things people actually eat into a menu that people wanted to eat. So how did they do it?

My guess is that they, like all good kitchens, realized that a meal or dish is always multi-faceted and paid a lot of attention to the big three... flavor, texture, and presentation. Cooking vegetarian dishes that taste good is no big issue as vegetables on the whole simply taste good. Presentation is also pretty easy with a little thought and flair. On the other hand, texture for me is the more difficult aspect of vegetarian cooking... And in this area they really excelled using tofu and TVP in ways that really brought dishes together and worked.

Most vegetarian dishes are somewhat challenged on the texture front and most cooks compensate by doing dishes that are not big on textures... soups, for instance. Adding tofu or TVP can add texture but often don't bring along their fair share of taste to the process and, more often than not, I prefer that they don't even bother...

So here is my personal frustration... Having experienced a kitchen that really could make TVP and tofu work in a way that did not elicit a "why bother" reaction I know it can be done but, truth be told I'm having a lot of trouble working through the process to get my Strogannoff using either tofu or  TVP chunks to work in a way that you'd rather not just have the sauce over noodles... Know what I mean?

I've been hearing a lot of good things about "The TVP Cookbook" and will be giving it a read to see if I can ramp up my use of TVP in the galley and get to a higher culinary plateau...

Which is not to say I'm giving up meat, but TVP does make all kinds of sense in a cruising boat scenario as it is easy to store and costs very little. So you might say I find myself motivated to make it work the way I know it can.

Tofu...

One of the disadvantages of living in the Caribbean is the Tofu available is somewhat lacking... A supplier of Tofu along the lines of Hodo Soy Beanery would be a welcome thing.

I've been looking for a good book on cooking and making real tofu from scratch and have even been looking at a kit...

In the meantime, a recipe for Sesame and black pepper encrusted tofu with oyster mushrooms and wilted spinach I found over on the Hodo Soy website recipe page, looks like just the thing for making second rate tofu come out a bit better!

Would you eat this at home?

While change is most certainly in the cards for most people setting off to go to far flung places on a sailboat, change is not always such a good thing...

We have always been amazed what some people think of as "cruising food" and wonder why folks load up on some foods they would not touch with a barge pole back in their normal world. For instance, when was the last time you had folks over to the house or went out for a big heaping plate of Spam?

Spam, by the way,  is no bad thing and I have spent enough time in Hawaii to be amazed and delighted at what can be done with it, but unless you already have a taste for Spam (or other interesting canned mystery meats) you might want to rethink the canned meat scenario. On the other hand, if you have already laid in a couple of cases you might want to check out "Hawaii's Spam Cookbook" or "Hawaii Cooks with Spam" which may help you survive the experience.

Actually, cans of any sort on a boat can be problematic... It's not that they rust (but they do) or the hassle factor but simply that most canned goods are really big on additives and salt. While a can here or there is no bad thing but a steady diet of canned food is simply not real good for you. and just about every place we have ever sailed fresh vegetables and suchlike have always been available... The idea of being someplace in the Med with awesome markets and a cornucopia of fresh vegetables freshly picked and then sitting down to dinner of Libby's canned brussels sprouts you've had for a couple of years is just not part of my cruising scenario.

The fact is, most of what you eat on land works just fine on a boat  so while you may have to change some aspects of your galley experience you really don't have to swap your favorite dishes for spaghetti O's!

Lobscouse and spotted dog... Yummy!

Everyone on a boat seems to go through a Patrick O'Brien phase and to be honest some of us never get out of it, which is why I got so excited when I came across the book "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels".

Being a boat buff and history fiend, the various novels in the series were easy but even though I am a serious "foodie", period English fare was something of a mystery and more than once I found myself distracted from the story because I was wondering just what they were eating... Now with "Lobcourse and Spotted Dog" I can put that right and I think it is more than time to reread the series from start to finish!

For those interested in more insight to the O'Brien world of Aubrey and Maturin (for those really clueless Master and Commander is out in DVD) there is also a really good book that delves into the world and politics of the period ..."A Sea of Words" which is really a must read to understand the period.

Tiki 4th of July...

The 4th of July for me has always meant beach, surfboards and Tiki drinks...

When I was a kid, the whole Tiki bar thing was quite the rage and seriously hip. In these modern times the whole Tiki fad is looked down on by many as a pinnacle of kitsch but it was a LOT of fun, and I'll go on record as saying we could always use a whole lot more FUN!

Plus let's get real... What better place to have your very own movable Tiki Bar than an ocean-going sail boat?

Of course to do it right you need LOTS of RUM! Lucky for us that down here in the Caribbean you can buy a good rum for less than $4 a liter (and you'd be dumb-as-nails to use anything better for Tiki drinks) various fruit juices and some serious Tiki mugs...

I mean you really do need the Tiki mugs as they strike just the right note and the whole point of the excercise is striking the right note! Of course you can always use coconuts and hollowed out pineapples but for me Tiki mugs are the serious stuff (and who wants to waste good drinking time hollowing out a pineapple?).

Of course you need the recipes because, while most things on boats are not rocket science, mixology of the Tiki variety IS and before you are ready to come up with your own special signature Tiki/Boat drink it is best to spend a bit of time learning from the masters and working on the classics!

"Sipping Safari" is a great place to start but any of the Beachbum Berry books will do...

I would be remiss in not mentioning that for a proper on-board Tiki party that the old T-shirt is something of a faux pas and that at the least a real Aloha shirt is the minmum for Tiki chic (leis however are considered to be something of an over kill)!

Have a happy 4th...