Since returning from our road trip, I've been obsessively reading a book I found in one of those little free library hutches in Courtenay, BC.

Actually, L found it. We were walking her girls back to the car after their piano lessons when they insisted on stopping in the rain to browse. P seized a book about a little-known dinosaur she absolutely needed to bring home. M twirled, already bored. L nudged me, pointing to a blue hardback at the bottom of the stack, "Look, it's a book for you! 'The Care and Feeding of the Offshore Crew.'"

She was teasing, but it is a book for me. It's very much for me.

Subtitled, "An expert tells how to buy, provision, store, and prepare food for extended voyages," it was written in 1978-79 by Lin Pardey, with the help of her husband Larry Pardey, as they sailed from Japan to the west coast of Canada in a 24-foot yacht. "Yacht" ≠ fancy, I now know. Not necessarily. It just means medium-sized sailboat. And the Pardeys are sailing for real, making the 4500-mile trip without the aid of an engine.

There's not a whole lot of suspense. We know they're going to make it. But the format of the book is pleasing. Each chapter covers a single day, how many miles they logged, what the weather was like, what they ate. Lin folds in tips for buying provisions on foreign shores, advice for storing and extending the life of those provisions, and a number of her own recipes.

This one for Mashed Potato Salad (Day 21) struck me as so gross I had to read it out loud to R:

2 cups leftover mashed potatoes (from instant)
1/4 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup chopped green peppers
1/4 cup leftover green peas (optional)
1 tsp. dill weed
2 tsp. MSG
1 tsp. sugar
4 tbs. mayonnaise

Mix well and then let stand for at least 2 hours in a cold place.

You guys. MASHED POTATO SALAD?! There's also a recipe for Rice Salad (Day 8), which calls for leftover white rice, chopped onions, mayo, vinegar, sugar, garlic, MSG, and dill.

Most of the recipes are unappealing. It's 1979 after all, MSG is still considered a condiment, and Lin is mostly working with canned and dehydrated food. (The fresh meat runs out, along with the ice, on Day 7.) Plus onions. Lots of onions, which are high in vitamin C, and are one of the few fresh foods that'll last 40+ days without refrigeration.

Not only is "The Care and Feeding..." relevant to the script I'm writing—I plan to steal a subplot about scurvy—but also it feels relevant to my life. I'm trying to take to heart Lin's advice to overbuy, and have begun rearranging our cupboards to make room for extra foodstuffs. This bit convinced me: