Ann's Blog

Green Island, Antigua:
April 23, 2010
Get Crackin’

Receta is anchored north of Antigua’s Green Island, and the Southern Cross (our favorite constellation) hangs low over the island. We’re tucked behind the barrier reef that extends off Green Island, and ahead of us, there’s nothing: no boats, no buildings, no lights. Dinner is in the cockpit tonight.

On the menu is Salade Niçoise, jury-rigged – as always on Receta – to take advantage of local ingredients. Tonight, it features sliced smoked tuna from Guadeloupe (the last island we visited), rather than fresh-grilled or canned; and boiled West Indian yams from Dominica (two islands back) instead of white potatoes. No substitutions necessary for the tomatoes, green beans, hard-boiled eggs, and anchovies, but the platter is lined with sliced christophene and cucumber. I’m out of lettuce.

As we start to eat, it’s the eggs that dominate our conversation. Steve no longer considers eggs “lonely guy food” – a phrase from Bruce Jay Friedman’s Lonely Guy’s Book of Life – eaten because of their ubiquitous presence in the fridge and their ease and speed of prep. We realize that since we’ve been cruising, eggs have become delicious. That’s because they’re generally not “supermarket eggs.” And often, they’re not even “farm-fresh eggs.” They come from small home flocks of free-ranging hens (“yardies,” or “yard fowl,” they’re called in Trinidad), and are decidedly hormone and antibiotic free. They usually have brown shells, and big, brilliant yellow (shading towards orange) yolks. And they don’t come out of a styrofoam or cardboard box. I have to remember to take my camping-style egg keeper with me to island markets (though sometimes the eggs are so large, I can’t close its top properly); otherwise, the seller simply dispenses them in a flimsy plastic baggie and knots it at the top.

A few weeks ago, we went to the market in Castries, St. Lucia, with our friends Pam and Ron from Toronto, who had come to visit and sail with us on Receta. At a stall at the back of the market, Pam and I spotted some very small eggs nestled in a woven straw basket. The young woman selling them told us they were Kwéyòl, or Creole, chicken eggs, from hens raised at her house. “You have to try just one. I know you’ll come back and tell me it’s the best egg you’ve ever tasted.”

However, “just one” of these eggs would give four people barely a taste. So we bought four, and the woman wrapped them individually in newspaper to help us get them safely home. (I hadn’t brought my egg keeper.)

We hard-boiled them for lunch, and discovered she hadn’t just been giving us a sales pitch. The yolks were creamy, almost as if they’d been mixed with good mayonnaise and repacked into the whites. And both yellows and whites had an unaccustomed sweetness. They were gone all too soon. When Receta returns to St. Lucia in late May, I will indeed seek her out in the market and tell her it was the best egg I’d ever tasted.

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