GRIFTER’S TALES
WORKING BOATS · FOOD · STORIES
By Colin Lee MacLeod
The beginnings of a cookbook are already happening three meals a day.
Start with the meals we actually make
As the deckhand-cook aboard the Aqua Service, I make breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That gives me a place to begin The Pirate’s Cookbook: actual meals, made during actual working days.
The idea is to keep the circumstances with the recipe. What did we cook? What ingredients did we have? What needs recording so the meal can be made again? A photograph is a start, but it cannot carry all those details by itself.
Build it one galley day at a time
This is the beginning of the project, not an announcement that a finished cookbook is on the shelf. The useful next step is to record the meals properly as they happen.
I want the food and the boat life to belong together. There is a story in feeding people who have a job to do, and there are practical details worth keeping. We can build the collection from those ordinary days.
Grifter’s Takeaway
Record a real meal while the details are fresh. A cookbook can grow from work you are already doing.
