An Embarrassment of Mangoes - A Caribbean Interlude

Zusatztext “Finely crafted…portraits that prompt us to see and to yearn: what travel writing is all about.”-- Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor Ann Vanderhoof is an award-winning writer and magazine and book editor whose work has appeared in publications in the U.S. and Canada. She lives with her husband, Steve Manley, in Toronto, with their sailboat Receta currently berthed nearby on Lake Ontario. Klappentext Under the Tuscan Sun meets the wide-open sea . . . An Embarrassment of Mangoes is a delicious chronicle of leaving the type-A lifestyle behind -- and discovering the seductive secrets of life in the Caribbean. Who hasn't fantasized about chucking the job! saying goodbye to the rat race! and escaping to some exotic destination in search of sun! sand! and a different way of life? Canadians Ann Vanderhoof and her husband! Steve did just that. In the mid 1990s! they were driven! forty-something professionals who were desperate for a break from their deadline-dominated! career-defined lives. So they quit their jobs! rented out their house! moved onto a 42-foot sailboat called Receta ("recipe!” in Spanish)! and set sail for the Caribbean on a two-year voyage of culinary and cultural discovery. In lavish detail that will have you packing your swimsuit and dashing for the airport! Vanderhoof describes the sun-drenched landscapes! enchanting characters and mouthwatering tastes that season their new lifestyle. Come along for the ride and be seduced by Caribbean rhythms as she and Steve sip rum with their island neighbors! hike lush rain forests! pull their supper out of the sea! and adapt to life on "island time.” Exchanging business clothes for bare feet! they drop anchor in 16 countries -- 47 individual islands -- where they explore secluded beaches and shop lively local markets. Along the way! Ann records the delectable dishes they encounter -- from cracked conch in the Bahamas to curried lobster in Grenada! from Dominican papaya salsa to classic West Indian rum punch -- and incorporates these enticing recipes into the text so that readers can participate in the adventure. Almost as good as making the journey itself! An Embarrassment of Mangoes is an intimate account that conjures all the irresistible beauty and bounty from the Bahamas to Trinidad -- and just may compel you to make a rash decision that will land you in paradise. The Five-Year Plan Your courage is like a kite. Big wind raises it higher. Fortune Cookie, Toronto, Canada; November 1996 Relinquishing fears now allows you to succeed. Fortune Cookie, Port of Spain, Trinidad; November 1998 Perhaps the hardest thing, we realized in hindsight, was making the decision to go. It had started as idle, dreamy chat in the bleak days of January and February, the time of year I detest in Toronto, when all the color is sucked out of the city, and even the snow looks gray and tired. As I do. I left for work in the dark and returned home in the dark. On the rare days the sun bothered to show itself, it was a pale lemon pretender, offering little warmth and barely brightening the gunmetal surface of Lake Ontario. When I cooked dinner in the evening, Steve would catch me warming my hands over the stove, and, later, huddling over the heating vent in our bedroom while I read. It's a very sad sight, he would say. I looked like the little match girl rather than a successful magazine editor. I didn't care. I longed to be too hot. Steve -- three years younger than me, all hard angles and sharp edges on the outside, a romantic softie within -- was my partner in work as well as life. A small-town Ontario boy, he'd relocated to the city to go to art college in the seventies and never left. For the past few years, we'd been working for the same magazine, and it was hard to tell most days where business ended and private lif...

Product details

• Authors: Ann Vanderhoof
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.02.2005
• EAN: 9780767914277
• ISBN: 978-0-7679-1427-7
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 18 mm
• Subject: Travel > Travelogues, traveller's tales > World, Arctic, Antarctic