BY MELISSA FISHER (MELISSA FISHER PUBLISHER, 2002; 94 PAGES; $14.95)
REVIEWED BY KAREN LARSON
Good Old Boat writer Melissa Fisher (Rudder Renewal, May 2001) has just developed a cruising cookbook of immense value to anyone planning to go simply. Called Cruising and Living Without Refrigeration: A Collection of Recipes and Storage Ideas, this book helps take the mystery out of cruising without ice.
It’s one thing to cruise, as Jerry and I do, without ice for a couple of weeks at a time on chilly Lake Superior where the hull temperature remains at 50 degrees. It’s another thing entirely to cruise the Baja and beyond without ice. The risk of spoilage has got to rise exponentially.
Therefore, my hat’s off to Melissa who did it the hard way and tells others what she’s learned about cooking, storing, provisioning, and most of all staying healthy while challenged by wilderness cruising in a tropical setting.
Melissa’s book is of the simple self-published variety. She acknowledges this, saying, “I am running a small-time operation, but I figured if I waited for someone else to publish this for me I would miss out on the West Coast exodus to Mexico. That’s why, at this time only one photo is included along with the colorful ‘stamp art’ I created out of erasers.”
But my kitchen cabinet is full of simply produced cookbooks which were put out by a variety of individuals and organizations as fundraisers. Melissa’s book may or may not raise funds for her cruising kitty. That remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, my copy of this book goes not onto the kitchen shelf, but rather to Mystic’s galley . . . where it will be well appreciated.
