A Trip to the Beach by Melinda Blanchard Page B

one afternoon to give Betsy and Gary an update. I longed for our weekly dinners together in Vermont and thought a letter might help assuage my homesickness.
    Greetings from paradise,
    Thanks for the water balloons. I’m using them for a dessert we dubbed “cracked coconut.” I make a mold by rolling the bottom half of the balloon around in melted chocolate, cover it with toasted coconut, and let it harden. Then I pop the balloon and the remaining chocolate shell looks exactly like half a coconut. I fill it with coconut ice cream and surround it with Kahlúa custard sauce and another shell is propped on top, so it looks like it was just cracked open. Lots of work—sometimes I think
I’ve
cracked—but the end result is so much fun I couldn’t pass it up.
    Today I’m trying to thicken some corn chowder without using cream. I think I’ll try pureeing some of the corn and see if it’s the right consistency. Last night we grilled local lobsters with olive oil and Cajun spices—also, grilled pineapple slices sprinkled with cinnamon. Wish you could have joined us!
    My biggest problem is getting ingredients. Luckily, the French side of St. Martin has some wonderful gourmet shops, but I have trouble translating words like
sesame
and
beets
into French. I’m in pretty good shape now, but if you could send some Chinese dumpling wrappers, that would be great. Don’t forget to include a receipt for customs. Otherwise I’ll never get them out of the warehouse.
    Don’t forget about us down here—keep in touch!
    Love,
    Mel
    Bob, Jesse, and I tasted for weeks. We brushed grilled bananas with Myers’s rum, compared the virtues of regular chicken to free-range, and one night, we sampled fourteen flavors of ice cream and sorbet. We had regular discussions about how many spicy dishes we should serve, and whether or not pasta was too mundane.
    Rum Punch
    We tasted rum punches around the island and worked together to create the perfect mixture. Some, we agreed, were too sweet and bright red with grenadine. Others didn’t have the fresh taste we were looking for. Guava juice, we discovered, was the missing ingredient from most we tried, and freshly squeezed orange juice was a must. Still, our final recipe was simple.
    Combine equal amounts of pineapple juice, guava juice, freshly squeezed orange juice, and Mt. Gay rum. Add just a dash of grenadine and another of Angostura bitters. Pour over ice and top with a sprinkle of nutmeg.
    The menu evolved into a collection of foods we fancied, impossible to categorize—no simple label would describe our cuisine. This, in the weeks to come, became a sore point. “What kind of food will you serve? French? Italian?” everyone asked. I had no choice but to list everything on the menu.
    Working at a table on our porch, I created a complete ingredient list of produce, meat, fish, and dairy, detailing one recipe at a time. The number of items needed was formidable. Shading my eyes from the blinding sun, I watched a barefoot man walking by carrying a machete and eating a banana. If his pace were any slower, he would have been standing still. No hurry. No stress.
That man couldn’t care less about portobello mushrooms and goat cheese,
I thought. Beyond him, I heard the sound of dominos slapping down on the table at the gas station. Had I been on vacation, it might be a charming neighborhood scene. Instead, it sent a wave of terror right through me.
Look where we are, for God’s sake! How on earth are we going to get what we need to run this restaurant? I can’t continue running to St. Martin and paying gourmet shop prices.
Shaking my head, I went back inside, plopped down on the couch, and called Bob.
    â€œHi. We’re sanding the floor in the bar. How’s it going there?”
    I could tell he wanted to get back to the bar floor, but I needed to talk. “Bob, I’m afraid we might be in trouble. I can’t