Library Cookbooks Were All We Needed for a Family Voyage
The circumnavigation never happened, but my childhood was a culinary journey anyway
When I was 11, my family began preparing to sail around the world. My dad, a boat builder, decided that we’d build a 32-foot sailboat, starting with a fiberglass hull that my mother dubbed “a big brown bathtub.” The plan included a move from New Haven, Connecticut, to Annapolis, Maryland, where we lived in a tiny apartment while traveling back and forth to the marina where our boat, Karis — a Greek word for “grace” — was slowly undergoing the transformation from bathtub to floating home.
It was a spectacularly slow process — my parents both worked full-time, so the work on Karis could only take place on weekends and other stolen hours — and devoured every spare penny, leaving little money for leisure activities, like going to the movies or out for pizza. But what I discovered as a boat builder’s daughter was that extreme weather, from face-melting heat to eyelash-freezing cold, meant that we got a day off from painting, sanding, and hammering. Those precious days were spent at two of my favorite places: the library and the grocery store.
But what I discovered as a boat builder’s daughter was that extreme weather, from…
