Cooking = Chasing Food

Pacific Crossing, Day 25: It's another postcard day, but the wind's been too light to maintain all but the barest steerageway, which requires hand-steering and loads of concentration, which after hours and hours of that and listening to the sails slatting (imagine the sound of two people having a towel fight right over your head), could, if one is not careful, leave one feeling mildly homicidal. So, we fiddled and diddled with sail combinations and are now making about two knots under poled-out drifter and mainsail, wing and wing. At that rate we'll make it to the Marquesas in, oh, never mind. There is the beginning of an endless-voyage-feeling creeping in. Is it the lack of progress we're responding to when the tossed avocado peel stays nearby as if swimming after us? If we're moving well (and not too wildly), we're happy. If not, we're not. Makes perfect sense out here.

Speaking of avocado peels, I found 4 perfect, not-too-ripe avocados in the bottom of the fridge--oh joy! I decided to make Offshore Tortilla Soup; here is the recipe:

1. Think about where all the ingredients are, but don't get any of them out yet.
2. Note which ingredients are round and thus likely to roll. Build a "nest" in a corner of the galley, and get out the onion, tomatoes, avocado, and garlic.
3. Go get the onion off the cabin sole after an especially hard roll. (Onions can really bounce.)
4. After strapping yourself into the galley belt so you can use both hands, slide the carving board and knife from their slots. Slice and chase the onion, garlic and tomatoes but not the avocado, plucking them from the sink and re-rinsing as needed.
5. Saute all chopped and chased vegetables in oil using a steep-sided pan clamped on a gimballed stove. Go get the avocado off the cabin sole where it rolled.
6. Open a can of tomato sauce. Wipe up the half that spilled and dump the rest into the pot. Dump in a can of Mexican "Chata/Chilorio" seasoned meat (delicious) and about 2 tablespoons or maybe one, or four, depending on accuracy, of your last envelope of taco seasoning. Add 2 cups, or whatever lands in the pot, of water, stir and simmer, remembering to keep body parts away from the wildly swinging stove.
7. Peel, slice and chase bits of avocado into the soup. The 5-second rule applies to pieces that miss the pot. Slice and chase a small Mexican lime, squeeze it into the soup, and throw the peels out the galley porthole.
8. Climb up onto the V-berth to retrieve the last bag of tortilla chips, flopping onto the last of the chayote squash when the boat rolls.
9. Slice some Mexican cheese into SQUARE pieces, break up the tortilla chips, add all to the soup, heat briefly, and serve. Oh yeah, and bake brownies to celebrate crossing the Equator!

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