All Hands On Deck Cookbook: After Sandy, residents feel a hunger to help
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, many Red Hook businesses were shut down. To help them re-build and re-open, a local couple came up with an idea – create an on-line cookbook that highlights the neighborhood’s culinary treasures while raising money to help its small businesses, recover.
Thus, “All Hands on Deck” was born. Recalled Catherine Overman, one of the compilation’s editors, she and her husband had come up with the idea of creating the cookbook when they returned to Red Hook from Paris, where they had been honeymooning when the storm hit.
“A lot of the basic cleanup had been done, so there was not a lot we could do to pitch in,” she stressed. “So, we started to think what we could do to raise money. I’m an editor and my husband is a graphic designer (as well as a bartender at Fort Defiance, one of the Red Hook restaurants that contributed recipes), so we said, we’ll put together a cookbook.”