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 real cruising cookbook...

To be honest, I'm not a real fan of what passes for cruising cookbooks. Maybe it's that I like food and the open-two-cans-and-heat school of cuisine just does not suit my taste buds. The other sort tends to be over-complicated but never seems to actually address the real differences that make cooking/provisioning on a boat while cruising... different.

So, my usual advice for folks setting off cruising is to get the "Joy of Cooking" because it has everything you need to know and the recipes taste better.

Well, maybe that's about to change...

Rod & Lu Heikell have a cookbook!

You may already know Rod from his many excellent pilots and guides to the Med and further afield or his excellent websites on cruising Mediterraneo and Tell-Tales (both awe inspiring collections of needful information for cruisers).

Rod and Lu know what it's like to provision in places where the stuff on the shelves is different, foreign, and nothing like what you're accustomed to at home... If for no other reason, this makes it a lot more interesting and helpful than the old Caribbean inspired cruising cookbook recipes where, while the shelves may often be depleted, the stuff you find is pretty much the same as in Miami.

Rod and Lu also like food... Having been a long time reader of Tell-Tales I'll admit I've cribbed quite a few recipes from their Gourmets and Gourmands pages and everything works, makes sense on a boat, and tastes good.

Need I say more?

It's what's for dinner!

Just what we needed!

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...

Since the subject of pressure cooking came up...

Since we're on the subject of pressure cookers...

I was actually serious about wanting another pressure cooker. I'd love a small one that would fit in my sea swing which would be a huge help from time to time. That said, an on-board still would be no bad thing either!

The thing about pressure cookers is that a lot of folks either believe the hype that they are bombs just waiting to go off or, even worse, they have eaten horrible meals thrown together in a pressure cooker and they think that everything à la pression is going to taste yucky.

Folks, it does not have to be like that... and we never do "yucky" at Island Gourmand as we are a certified "yucky " and "Barry Manilow" free zone!

One of the problems is that most cookbooks of the pressure cooker variety are, shall we say, really awful, but that does not quite convey the gravity of the awfulness that is most pressure cooking cookbooks...

The first issue I have with said really awful cookbooks is the fact that they tend to make complicated recipes which is sort of exactly NOT what pressure cooking is all about. If you find a pressure cooker recipe that reads like rocket science, remember the famous words of Robby the Robot...

"Danger, Danger Will Robinson..."

...and avoid it like the plague! Another danger sign for pressure cooking recipes is the use of canned anything (though I make an exception to that rule with tomatoes and tomato paste).

A couple of excellent, simple, safe, and boat friendly (for the most part) cookbooks you may want to check out would be "Pressure Perfect" and "Cooking Under Pressure" by Lorna Sass. Either would be a great place to get your pressure on...

A great Galley blog...

The Boat Galley is just the sort of galley oriented websites that we need more of... Written by Carolyn Shearlock, its simple and sensible vibe goes a long way towards making it a great resource which only looks like it will get better and better..

In the something to look forward to department there is also mention a a cookbook on the way (so-authored with  Jan Irons) that I for one am really looking forward to...

Check it out!

Four frying pans indeed...

LobsterSquad makes a VERY good point!

The basic bookshelf... cooking on boats

On the whole. I'm not a big fan of nautical/cruising cook books as they always seem to leave me with a serious lack of appetite and something akin to wonderment that people actually eat some stuff... Does the word "dire" resonate?

Maybe it's that I like cooking, and as such the labor saving (if any) sort of recipe that opens a can of this to add to a can of that and top with a can of sauce just does not make me all warm and fuzzy. Which is not to say that I think cooking on boats needs to be complicated or labor intensive, simple is a good thing, but it really does have to taste like something you want to eat!

A book of some interest you might want to check out is "The Care and Feeding of the Offshore Crew"  (or the updated version "The Care and Feeding of the Sailing Crew") by Lin and Larry Pardey which while not overly exciting to the taste buds it does give  a lot of needful information about such things as cooking on passage, provisioning and storing food and other such needful stuff. So much so I'd recommend this book to anyone considering going cruising as the first book to read on the food front.

The second book I'd recommend "Cheap Chow" by Kenneth Lo is somewhat difficult to find but well worth the search and for me was something of an enabler that made cooking on boats on a budget go from getting by  to thriving. I should point out that "Cheap Chow" has nothing to do with boats but has everything to do with boats if you know what I mean. Fact is if I were to limit myself to one single cookbook aboard "So It Goes" "Cheap Chow" would be it.

You also need something like the "Joy of Cooking" or the like which pretty much covers any food and any situation, so that when you find yourself in some strange place and all that is available is something you have never used or know how to cook, you're covered.

"Diet For a Small Planet" or one of it's many sequels or spin offs would also be no bad thing as it deals with the whole meatless thing in a way that both makes sense and tastes good... I'm pretty sure over the next few years most of us are going to be eating a lot less meat and "Diet For a Small Planet" makes it pretty painless and enjoyable.

Lastly, you really need a cookbook that is fun and will stretch your boundaries... Maybe something you have always wanted to try or thought was beyond your abilities because one of the nice things about cruising is that you will have all sorts of time to do the galley thing if you want to...

Perfect for a cruising boat...

One of the things I've learned to be afraid of are cook books aimed at boat-folk which always seem to be of the open-three-cans-and-mix-together school of cooking or books that seem to think you have a commercial kitchen (with a staff), three ovens and a supermarket just down the road...

The things that would make a good cookbook for boat folks are simplicity, not overlong cooking times and (dare I say it) dishes that taste really good. Not exactly rocket science but you'd be surprised at just how many boat cookbook recipes have super complicated and hard to find mile long ingredient lists, too long (let simmer for two hours) cooking times and in the end of the process taste like something you could have put together with three cans  and a dry mix sauce!

Of course, there are no shortage of great cookbooks out there just very few that are geared for cooking on boats! For example one of our favorite blogs Stone Soup just released a new cookbook "Stone Soup Minimalist Home Cooking" and it is everything that one could want in a sailing cookbook. Simple recipes with minimal ingredients, reasonable cooking times and the sort of taste that has people asking for seconds and thirds... The perfect boat cookbook if you will except that they never mention boats!

What is even better is that the cookbook is available in e-book (PDF) form and to make it even better still is... FREE! Now does that rock or what?

Do I have to say more? Go get it!

I need this book!

I don't often get the urge to go out and buy cookbooks but I have been hearing so much good stuff about "The Tex-Mex Grill"  that I don't just have the urge... I need to get it!

I've been a follower of Robb Walsh for some time and he brings so much more than just recipes to the party, a thing a lot of cook book authors should seriously consider as a little history and heart really makes it all come alive.

More soon come after I get my copy...

Great blog and cookbook warning...

One of our favorite blogs Steamy Kitchen just got published!

I love cookbooks... For me they are not about recipes but more a thing of connections and ideas (I mean who needs another recipe for meatloaf?) and Steamy Kitchen has always been one of those places I go for just those ideas and connections...

What more can I say?

Get the book!

Catching rays... Solar ovens

The idea of being able to harness the ample sunshine we have in the tropics and use it for cooking has always made all sorts of sense. Though sadly most of the various solar cooking solutions have been somewhat not quite boat friendly so it is one of those must haves that has crept to the back of the ever present list...

"The Adventures of Sailing Vessel Macha" recently added a solar cooker to their galley arsenal and it got me thinking. More than a good time to dust off my solar cooking links and see what was about these days.

The best place to begin on any solar cooking quest is the Solar Cooking Archive which is a solar cooking hub and if its not there ...well it is not anywhere! You'll find everything from recipes to cookers (and plans for cookers) as well as a country by country supplier linkage... Very cool!

One of the new additions that has BOAT written all over it is the Molly Baker Solar Oven which really does seem to cancel out all of my various issues with the various solar cooking hardware that is out there.

The buzz is that the cookbook that just about everyone really likes is "Solar Cooking for Home and Camp" and as long as I'm getting that what better time to get "The Solar Food Dryer" as the idea of making Tuna and Mahi Mahi Jerky makes all kind of sense on a boat of a limited size...