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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 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.
The morning began by parking ourselves in orange vinyl armchairs at the library, where we’d explore the streets of Shanghai in the latest issue of National Geographic, soak up memoirs set in the sunny olive groves of Corfu, and turn the oversized pages of heavy coffee table books that allowed us to imagine the scent of lavender in Monet’s garden at Giverny.
By early afternoon, we’d scour the shelves to load up on cookbooks to bring home, ready to immerse ourselves in the flavors of the places we’d read about — the next week’s dinner table might feature fresh peaches cooked in red wine…
