When we bought our first sailboat a good friend commented that, for me, it would be "yet another venue for fine food and entertainment."
Unfortunately for the the Captain, that turned out to be true. When I think about heading off sailing for an hour or a week my mind goes to what food and books to bring instead of how I will pit myself against the elements come what may. I am happiest as ship's cat - curled up on deck with a book or happily docked awaiting the sunset with a drink in my hand. As we headed off last Sunday with friends for a daysail I had prepared what I believed would be a lovely summer meal. The Farmers' Market had provided me with Olde Oak cream-stuffed camembert which I planned to serve with a baguette and some sugar-snap peas. I found gooseberries (!) at Schartner's. I had thought that gooseberries were banned in the State of Maine because they hosted white pine rust. I remember my mother-in-law saying that gooseberry bushes were ripped out of farmyards all over the state. Herb Schartner explained that the beautiful mulberry-colored ones he had were a new variety that didn't have the problem so I brought them home and turned them into 3" gooseberry tarts. I quartered the berries and cooked them briefly with some sugar, lemon balm and tapioca. Once cooled this mixture filled the tart crusts and then a circle of crust was placed on top with a sprinkle of sugar. For a hot-weather entree I made a salade nicoise using fresh greens, small boiled new potatoes (chilled), hard-boiled egg quarters and some blanched thin green beans (also chilled). I picked up a slice of fresh tuna from The Lobster Shack on Saturday and "butter-poached" it in white wine, butter, lemon juice and water. I put a round of parchment on top and brought it just to a boil and then turned it down immediately to simmer. When I could see that the center was still pink, I turned off the burner, covered the pan and let the fish cool in the poaching liquid and then packed the fish and the liquid in a covered container and chilled. I also made a batch of lemon-herb muffins. I thought all I would need to do was open the covered bowl of of greens, arrange the potatoes, eggs, beans and some nicoise olives around the edges, flake the tuna on top and toss with a mustardy garlic vinaigrette made with a handful of herbs from the garden and voila! What I didn't count on was the wind. We sailed out of the harbor and tacked awhile down the bay at a pretty good speed with the wind coming straight at us. Somewhat splashy but pleasant.
Our plan was to tuck into the dock at Holbrook Island, explore a bit and
then have lunch on the boat. By the time we got into the passage on the inner side of the island, we were moving at about 6.5 knots. The Captain would have preferred to tie up on the windward side of the dock so we could make a quick getaway but the dock was full on that side.
We docked on the other side (no problem staying at the dock there!) but
getting off would be trickier. I tried to serve up lunch. Forks were really superfluous. All we really needed to do was hold the plates in front of our mouths and let the wind blow the salad in! Tasted great - so did the tarts - but there was much evidence of lunch in the scuppers by the time we finished. All hands (plus a couple of nice folks on the dock) helped us get back underway without too much scraping of paint and we ended our day laughing and eating Bagaduce oysters at Dennett's Wharf. Now if that nice lady just hadn't backed into Margo's car!
