A Trip to the Beach by Melinda Blanchard

speed, handing Bob a piece of wood.
    As Bob continued to stare blankly, Rocky slowed down a little. “Busit hoff he long too.”
    Clinton translated. “Bust it in half, he want it shorter.”
    Shabby chimed in. “He wants you to cut that piece of wood for him. It’s too long.”
    The days were hard and hot, and we couldn’t bear the thought of cooking dinner. We became regulars at a local barbecue place half a mile up the road. Bernice was the proprietor of this low-budget, backyard operation made up of a homemade grill like the one we’d cooked our lunch on in Barbados years ago, a fryer, three plastic tables, and an Igloo cooler filled with ice-covered drinks. Extension cords stretched overhead to several bare lightbulbs that dangled from the fronds of a palm tree swinging in the breeze.
    When we arrived, the grill would be heaped with ribs and chicken legs, and the island staple, rice and peas, was always simmering in a slow cooker on a nearby plywood table. Bernice, in her oversized Calvin Klein T-shirt, wielded a cleaver in one hand and a family-sized bottle of Kraft barbecue sauce in the other. There was no need to advertise here: a big speed bump in the main road in front of Bernice’s house did the job. Each passing car—after much tooting and waving—slowed to a crawl to clear the bump, getting a whiff of the smoky barbecue aroma. Madison Avenue couldn’t have created a better marketing campaign.
    I loved gardening and helping with the construction. The menu was beginning to scare me, however—especially when I pictured the fashionable and unforgiving crowd that might be waiting to test my culinary skills. I was familiar with their expectations, having eavesdropped on nearby tables in the Malliouhana dining room. Firmly believing that the entire kitchen staff was at their personal disposal, diners would ask, “Would the chef mind terribly preparing something special for my wife tonight? Tell him it’s for Mrs. Lawrence. She has a craving for veal piccata; make sure he pounds it extra thin, though. Be a dear and see what he can do.”
    I knew it was time to stop playing in the dirt and turn my attention to food. Comfortably settled on the couch in our living room, I surrounded myself with dozens of my favorite cookbooks, restaurant menus amassed over the years, and piles of
Bon Appetit
and
Gourmet
magazines. Four blank pads of paper were neatly lined up on the coffee table—one each for appetizers, salads, main courses, and desserts.
    I poured through hundreds of recipes, sorting, studying, evaluating, and choosing those worthy of a trial run. I rejected any dishes with heavy sauces and time-intensive reductions, while those with fresh salsas and flavorful herbs and spices went on my test list. Desserts required sublists for baked, frozen, fruit, and chocolate.
    Fascinating articles about food trends distracted me, though I don’t think of myself as trendy. Food, however, is an
entirely
different story. I will go to great lengths to taste something new.
Extreme
lengths. When the day came to send Jesse off to college, we could have bought him a plane ticket from Vermont to Walla Walla, Washington. Instead, the three of us drove over three thousand miles on back roads. You miss everything at 70 mph, and fast food along the interstates was of no interest to us. Following tiny gray lines on the map, we meandered across the country for almost a month tasting the regional foods of America. We arrived at Jesse’s dorm five pounds heavier, having sampled our way from New England to the Pacific Northwest. We can tell you where to get melt-in-your-mouth biscuits with fresh peach preserves in Memphis, the finest barbecue in San Antonio, the crustiest sourdough in San Francisco, and a wondrous cedar-smoked salmon in Seattle.
    Food is an obsession, perhaps even an addiction, that started in seventh grade when I would rush home to watch Julia Child prepare