cookin the pot

  Take a Shingle Take a shingle (swally, grog, bung yer eye). To have a drink (hot toddie, garden beer,screech, st peter's hooch, spruce beer or even foxy rum). This could be an elevener (fourer, evenin, mornin) of swish (home made barrel liquor) from a jorum(jug) at a shebeen or jig house. If you were to joog yer callibogus (spruce beer, molasses and rum)you would be on a jag( tear, piss up, gettin on the sauce) yelling out `long may ya big jib draw` as you become full to the horn, because you lost the bottle, on a devil's racket!

  Bay of Fires On Joo Chait road In Geylang, Scanlan steam boated his days away, claypotted many nights all in trying to become a better cook. This was his first stop on a trip around the world of sorts, stepping outside his familiar cooking environment. Head down, often yelled at for not speaking, what could he say. He did not speak any of the languages and was still surprised that he got hired, for cash as a dishpig. All he wanted was to absorb, take in this day to day grunt work that would make him a better cook. He hoped, as this was why he left the safety of cheffing in Canada. His job here became a mixture of washing dishes, claypotting and steamboating, as he liked to call these two popular ways of cooking. On a day off, wandering around the old colonial buildings of this part of Singapore, he came across a small shop, pumping out a salty fragrance that had pulled him inside. Above the counter a sign in English said “Otah”, all the others were he ...

  FRYING PANS Standing at the stove. The kitchen is lit up, brightness shows my lack of cleaning as dust and dirt highlight the windows as the sun creeps over the south side hills. I'm staring down at the frying pan, a small 7 inch, very blackened pan. I thought `where did you come from`? There are so many, stacked like pancakes or cookbooks. In each pan are stories and recipes, lost only to be imagined as I take a different one out each day. Maybe a dented saute pan that knew of the brilliance of a young cook, starting out. Or, the battered cast iron, the bottomed heat ringed, maybe burnt out like the cook who perhaps, went on to be a well known chef or like most toiled for years at a low end station never to move up as life got in the way. Pans burnished with heat, pitted beyond repair hiding that favourite recipe, that best shift. Each one waiting for a turn at steamed mussels, or a strip steak seared hard and quick. Each pan, a crusted or dented journey...

  Peter E, Number 2 Pete thought of the boucan on those breezy warm islands south, the smell pulled you to the firepit, poulet grille charred in coals and rum by the barrel, you ate ,drank, and lazed the day away, yet here he was cold, tossing about in a bunk off the coast of Newfoundland heading back to that harbour of grace. He should have listened to Pikey and sailed the Happy Adventure back south. For now all he could do was dream of the warm swelter, the food, the tars and wonder if some day he would find it again. He turns over with the swell, and dreams of a lost love, of Shiela.      

Peter E Pete staggers to the hammock. Another trying day with ungrateful tars and scallywags. Two small sloops bound from Jamaica and all the rum ya could swally was all she wrote. Rum punched, one and all they blather on about not enough coin jingling the trouser as the pillage turned glum. He remembers the days in old Main Brook , a welcome sight after weeks at sea and the hearty and hale at Fred's Lounge, a place before it's time. Plunder a plenty back then but the scarce times came fast as kings and queens fell, and no privateer knew who to trust. At anchor in Spirity Cove, he sensed his days were numbered as the leader of his loyal but frustrated crew. Maybe time would soon come to take Con up on his offer to buy that small inn in St John's, become a publican. A few more raids, enough pirated bounty to ease into a landlubber's life. The slow trough shifted his hammock a...

  I could see Robert pacing on the dock as we were beginning to tie up. Long sail across the Atlantic and he was there waiting with the stores(food supplies) that we had put together over the previous months for the upcoming northern trips. I waved and worked my way down the decks to get ready to get down the gangway. We had a lot of work ahead for the full day. I finally got down the salt crusted gangway and we began unloading the pallets from the truck. I asked if this was it and he said no two more on the way. I began going through the pallets deciding what would go into the forward hold for longer storage and what went aft for the galley fridges and freezers. As I began to direct the Russian crew up on deck I began to notice I was running from stern to forward, back and forth as none of them spoke or understood any English and my dock side movements were a sort of choreography, a food stores dance. Getting the right supplies in the right place.  Robert was helping...