Two Anticipated Spring Cookbooks Are Likely Lost at Sea
Y’all remember when the Ever Given container ship got stuck and blocked the entire Suez Canal? Well, I come bearing more shipping container-related bad news, at least for anyone looking forward to some of this spring’s most anticipated cookbooks. Good news first, though: No one seems to have been injured when on January 7 a very large boat going by the name of Madrid Bridge hit heavy winds and lost 65 shipping containers in the mid-Atlantic. Okay, now for the bad: It seems all copies of New Orleans-based chef Mason Hereford’s Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans and New York Times food writer Melissa Clark’s Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals are now sitting in shipping containers at the bottom of the ocean.
Clark and Hereford have taken the highly unfortunate news in stride, both posting memes on Instagram of their books at the bottom of the ocean. After two straight years of truly terrible and shockingly awful pandemic, climate, and general world news, it appears both authors were at least somewhat prepared for what I can only imagine were the extremely awkward calls in which they were told their books had not been delivered to the port of New York, and were instead soaking up sea water.
On his restaurant’s Instagram page, Hereford described the fate of his cookbook as “perhaps the most hilariously 2022 thing to happen yet this year.” And on hers, Clark announced that “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.”
Despite the boatload of bad news, both authors are pushing ahead with their cookbook launches — only slightly delayed. Hereford’s book was originally going to be released in February, and will now reach readers June 21, 2022, and Clark’s, set to release in March before the water-induced fiasco, will come in early September. In the meantime, hold tight to your favorite cookbooks, and send some good thoughts to shipping containers everywhere.
