Melissa Clark's Cookbook Has Suffered The Same Fate As Turkey And The Wolf's
Most people probably haven't spent too much time thinking about how the things they consume actually travel from one place to another. If products are made locally they're most likely trucked over, but if they are made overseas, chances are they would have reached American shores in one of the more than 90,000 ships plying different sea routes across the globe. Even more mind-boggling is the number of containers that it takes to move things from where they are made to where we want them – Cargo Partners estimates there are between 25 to 40 million containers on ships that are used to transport those items as safely as possible.
Unfortunately, if there is anything we might have learnt in the last two years, is that if things can go wrong, they do, which is exactly what happened to The New York Times' Melissa Clark's latest tome, "Dinner in One". Clark took to Instagram to say that, rather than schooling home cooks on how to make her recipes, her latest cookbook would be schooling sea creatures instead. She writes: "In keeping with the zeitgeist of 2022, I regret to inform you all that my new cookbook, Dinner in One, may have sunk to the bottom of the ocean."
Melissa Clark lost her new book in a shipping accident
Turns out, Melissa Clark's latest book, "Dinner in One", was in one of the containers making its way to the U.S. on the cargo ship the Madrid Bridge. According to The Lodestar, the ship had (for an undisclosed reason) chosen to slow down its journey when it got to a point in the mid-Atlantic, just south of the Azores archipelago. But things took an unexpected turn on January 7, when "a large swell, along with 22-knot winds" succeeded in tipping the boat to one side, causing 65 containers to be delivered to Davy Jones' locker. Not all of the Madrid Bridge's contents were lost — another 89 containers were damaged, but managed to stay onboard. Still, the incident was significant enough for The Lodestar to call it "the first overboard box incident of 2022" — first because it apparently happens a lot (via Cargo-Partner).
Clark wrote on Instagram: "I like to think that if the books are at the bottom of the ocean, they're teaching whole schools of fish some very tasty recipes. Poseidon and his nereids are dining in style."
Clark's cookbook isn't the only one that's keeping Poseidon and his kingdom occupied. New Orleans chef Mason Hereford's new cookbook, "Turkey and the Wolf," was also onboard and is now resting at the bottom of the sea. As a result, the release of Clark's new book has been delayed to September 6, while Hereford's has been rescheduled for June 21.