My younger daughter, a sophomore in college, is spending the last days of her Spring Break with me in Northern California. While in route from her friend’s home in Reno, she starts texting me with requests: vanilla flavored coffee creamer, a favorite beverage, and calzone for dinner.
I first encountered calzone while on a charted sailboat in the Puget Sound. Long before either daughter’s arrival into this world, their father and I had booked a vacation with our best friends that involved a sailing ship, a crew, and the San Juan Islands. Also beer. The crew was a husband and wife team that was an extraordinary combination of opposites. He loved the ocean and the sailing. She loved the farm and animal tending. They took turns living in each other’s world. In the warm season they offered themselves and their boat out as a charter. In the rainy Pacific Northwest winters, they tended the farm. He piloted the boat and she pulled the most extraordinary meals out of kitchen that was two feet by two feet at best. This was 1982 and she used the Moosewood Cookbook.
One of the first things I did when I got back to shore was to find a copy of that cookbook.