An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof Page B

them again until we’ve crossed into Florida in early December, but we frequently meet up in anchorages after that as we hopscotch our way down the state. Over potluck dinners, we share experiences, the friendship grows, and a loose plan develops: Let’s cross together to the Bahamas—our first big ocean passage.

    Low-Country Shrimp and Grits
    Grits (a.k.a. hominy grits) are ground, skinned white corn kernels. They’re a staple of Carolina cooking, found at both high-end restaurants (wild mushroom grits with oyster stew are a first course at Charleston’s renowned Peninsula Grill) and in local luncheonettes (where a standard breakfast includes eggs, sausage patties, biscuits, and grits). We love them plain—with just a lump of butter and perhaps some freshly grated Parmesan—as a comforting, warming, stick-to-your-ribs alternative to potatoes or rice. But we never pass up an opportunity to have them with fresh shrimp piled on top.
    For the shrimp
    2 tablespoons butter or oil
    1 small onion, thinly sliced
    1 clove garlic, minced
    1⁄2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
    1⁄4 pound mushrooms, sliced
    1–11⁄2 pounds shrimp, shelled and deveined
    1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
    2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    Hot sauce
    For the grits
    1 cup milk
    2 cups water
    3⁄4 cup quick-cooking grits
    1⁄4 teaspoon salt
    1⁄2–3⁄4 cup grated cheddar cheese
    1. To make the shrimp, heat butter or oil in a large frying pan. Sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add mushrooms and red pepper and sauté until mushrooms give up their liquid.
    2. Add shrimp and stir fry until just done, about 2–5 minutes, depending on size. (The shrimp should be just opaque inside.) Sprinkle with lemon juice and parsley, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and hot sauce.
    3. In the meantime, cook the grits: Bring milk and water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Slowly add grits and salt, whisking constantly. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until grits are thickened, about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, stir in the cheese and a few dashes of hot sauce, and season to taste.
    4. Spoon shrimp over grits and serve.
    Serves 4
    Variations
    • Fry a few slices of bacon until crisp, crumble, and set aside, then sauté the vegetables in the bacon fat instead of butter or oil. Stir the crumbled bacon into the cooked shrimp.
    • Substitute 1⁄2 green bell pepper for the red bell pepper and add 2–3 chopped fresh or canned tomatoes when you sauté the vegetables. Cook for 5 minutes or so to thicken the sauce before adding the shrimp.

Blown Away in the
Bahamas
    It is unlucky to start a cruise on a Friday, the day Christ was crucified. In the 19th century, the British navy tried to dispel this superstition. The keel of a new ship was laid on a Friday, she was named HMS
Friday
, launched on a Friday, and finally sent to sea on a Friday. Neither the ship nor her crew were ever heard of again.
    ROBERT HENDRICKSON,
THE OCEAN ALMANAC
, 1984
    Given the unpredictability of the sea, perhaps it’s not surprising that mariners have always been a superstitious lot.
The Ocean Almanac
, a fascinating compendium of nautical lore that we keep handy on
Receta
’s bookshelf, lists forty-four things I must or must not do to court good luck and avoid bad. Hand a flag to a sailor between the rungs of a ladder or lose a mop or bucket overboard, and bad luck is sure to follow. Ditto if you invite a priest aboard—but it’s a good idea to have a naked woman (thought to have a calming effect on the sea, which is why so many ships once had bare-breasted figures on their bows); a clothed woman, however, makes the sea angry. At the very top of the
Almanac
’s list of seagoing superstitions is the caution about starting out on a Friday.
    With
Kairos
tied alongside us, we wait eleven nail-biting days in an anchorage at Key Biscayne, near Miami, for decent weather to cross to the Bahamas.
    It’s