I’ve been having a blast creating posts for my fantasy-food blog From Paradise With Love and Rum. Please check it out and spread it around (pretty please) I need more subscribers. The blog centers on the sailing journals of a fictional R.B. (Rum Brother) McCarthy as he travels cooking and loving his way across a 1960’s South Pacific. It is presented by his grandson who is learning to cook by recreating the rum based recipes he posts.
Recently one of my subscribers asked what inspired me to post his “new favorite dish and story” called Joan Was Quizzical. I found it funny that he chose one of the few posts that didn’t feature a South Pacific fantasy and was written in a very nondescript time and place with only a loosely implied ending. I feel the other posts are better fantasy inducers, but I have to agree with him about the dish. I make it often. Check it out here:
I answered by saying that writing these posts and imagining myself back then leads to frequent nostalgic moods. I think sometimes those mental exercises summon my Muse. She comes and whispers in my ear then lets me believe it was all my creation.
The recipe is one of my favorites partially because it involves grilling and that always makes me think back to my Father and countless other men of his time across the country standing there next to a round black BBQ with drink in hand, coals glowing, and the aroma of sizzling food wafting up.
My trivia ladened brain remembered that the first mass produced BBQ grills, like the one I use now, were made by Webber. The company originally manufactured buoys for the coast guard and NY Yacht club. In a fit of creativity (or his Muse?)the owners son gathered various buoy parts and created a portable outdoor grill he nick-named “Sputnik” because of it’s appearance. So now I had a double connection.
Space Nerd me remembered being entranced standing in the backyard with my Dad while he finished grilling dinner and him pointing out Sputnik as it raced overhead. Webber making buoys touched on my love of sailing AND grilling.
That’s when the playlist coming through my headphones hit on Buffalo Springfield – Sit Down I Think I Love You . The tune took me back to high school and a prom photo I had recently come across. The rest is pure fantasy. Credit (or blame) my Muse. But I typed it all myself, so I get some credit, right?
The truth is that the amazing, adventurous, more than lovely young woman in my memory is absolutley that person from the story. She’s proudly leading a wonderfully mature, happy, successful life. I’m proud to have known her. Here’s the story:
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