_Ten Favorite Menus, Ten Favorite Anchorages describes ten of Linda Andreotti’s favorite menus – some 40 recipes in all. Her style is clear and instructive so that even the most complex dishes are easily made by the average cook. But what makes this cookbook quite different from many others is its setting: Linda cooks and lives on the 70ft Motor Vessel ‘Poseidon,’ cruising Southern California’s beautiful waters, and her voyages are as much a part of the story as the recipes themselves.

This highly original cookbook follows in the great tradition of story-telling cooks like Elizabeth David, Jacques Pepin and Anthony Bourdain. Each menu is associated with a different island, anchorage or harbor as Poseidon carries out its mission – voyaging to cook!

At left, Linda's delectable Lemon and Lime Tart with Berries, one of more than 20 recipes available in "Ten Favorite Menus..."

And here 's a sample recipe, taken from the chapter, "A Picnic Salad On A Remote Island":

Crab, Mango & Avocado Salad

By the way, you don't have to have a Kindle to buy or read this book.  Download a free app for your PC or smart phone by clicking here.

I first met Linda and John Andreotti when I was living on a sailboat in Ventura harbor.  Most days or evenings, I'd walk by Poseidon, a custom-built 65ft powerboat which combines the traditional and the modern.  Every evening, it seemed to me, Linda and John sat down to cocktails - often shared with friends - and a real meal.  They always looked exceptionally happy and clearly embraced life whole-heartedly. 

One night, they invited me for dinner and it all came clear.  How could one not be happy enjoying Linda's truly exceptional cooking and John's selections of fine wines?  All on a superbly equipped but understated boat, with the ability to cast off and take this gourmet lifestyle to the northern Channel Islands in three hours and Catalina in eight or so.  And that ignores wonderful harbors like Santa Barbara, Newport or San Diego.

These Southern California waters are one of boating's best-kept secrets: within a short voyage from one of the largest (and some say ugliest) conurbations in the world, are islands that are much as they must have been long before Columbus headed west.  Even Catalina, with its developed areas - charming and historic in their own rights - is largely preserved, wild and more or less pristine.  The sailing, swimming and diving are exceptional and, if you prefer not to cook, Catalina had some excellent restaurants - to say nothing of San Diego, Newport, Santa Barbara and LA itself.

As we became closer friends, I realized just what a talent Linda is, a talent wedded to a delightful, open and utterly unpretentious personality.  John, out-going, charismatic, a true gourmand and oenophile, is the perfect host.  It seemed to me that all this - the food, the wine, the boat, the waters and Linda's and John's personalities - were a perfect recipe for a new and unique cooking show.  It turned out that they had been thinking along the same lines, and were already working on a cookbook.  And so we set to,  developing POSEIDON COOKS!  and filming some serious demonstration materials.  During the filming, we learned a lot - one thing being that we probably needed some gimbaled footage.  We all love to sail and we're used to the movement of the sea and the boat.  Unfortunately, some of our land-based viewers started to feel queasy at the very moment their mouths were beginning to water ...

We couldn't have chosen a better subject but we certainly could have chosen a better time.  The economy was crashing and TV cooking shows... well, put it this way, we're more intrigued by food and wine than in-your-face egos. 

If there's one thing I've learned working in what's laughingly called 'the entertainment industry' it is that persistence itself is a talent.  We are beyond convinced that we have a real winner in POSEIDON COOKS! Not only will it sell in the US, it will have a huge foreign market.
The keywords for us are healthy, local and organic wherever possible but, above all, everything has to taste great.  You'll find out more about our kind of cooking, the variety of our recipes, our wine choices, Linda's cookbook, the developing show and life aboard Poseidon by visiting our website.


But perhaps the most important word of all for us is ... fun.