Recipes

Recipes for food that can be served at book club meetings for The Riddle of the Sands

.... I went home in a cab, omitted dressing for dinner (an epoch in itself), ordered a chop up from the basement kitchen, and spent the rest of the evening packing and writing, with the methodical gloom of a man setting his affairs in order for the last time.

Hunger and 'Tea's made!' from below brought me down to the cabin, where I found breakfast laid out on the table over the center-board case, with Davies earnestly presiding, rather flushed as to the face, and sooty as to the fingers.  There was a slight shortage of plate and crockery, but I praised the bacon and could do so truthfully, for its crisp and steaming shavings would have put to shame the efforts of my London cook.

I noticed too, that Davies spoke with zest, sinister to me, of the delights of white bread and fresh milk, which he seemed to consider unusual luxuries, though suitable to an inaugural banquet in honor of a fastidious stranger.

'You'll find a tongue,' said the voice of doom, 'in the starboard sofa-locker; beer under the floor in the bilge ....

Yachting in this singular style was hungry work, I found.  Steak tastes none the wore for having been wrapped in newspaper, and the slight traces of the day's news disappear with frying in onions and potato chips.

'Three feet and the current with us.  Well over it,' he said.  'I'll paddle on while you rest and feed.'

...  I took his word for it, and munched at tongue and biscuits.