Boat food

[FZR1KG]

Well, we have two burners, a microwave, a pressure cooker, a saucepan, can opener, potato peeler, stirring spoons, tongs, cutting board, two knives.
No oven.
Microwave useage is limited as we need to use battery power to run it and it uses a lot of power.

Every meal I make has to be made with just those items and in a very very tiny space.

I've managed to work out how to make bread, pretty good too just in a pan with no lid.
Same dough as our restaurant bread but tastes completely different.

Today I'm attempting to make pizza in a pan...without a lid.
Not sure how that is going to come out. (...much later, it turned out great)
We're limiting ourselves with certain types of food so while we have cans of tomato sauce that is normally used for pizza, I'm using ketchup and seeing what I can do with it.

Why ketchup?
1) its in a plastic container so it can't break like glass jars.
2) It doesn't need refrigerating after opening
3) Unlike a can, we aren't forced to use the entire contents ASAP.
4) Can's are made of steel and the weight gets high when you need 3 months supply of them on board.
5) glass is a no go.

In a boat these things are key to provisioning. Well it is when you have a small boat with limited refrigeration and no freezing capability.

To get an idea of what we're dealing with, we have the smallest bar fridge you can get as a fridge for two for the next 5 months or so.
Glass jars are a no no. They break and while thats messy in a house, in a boat with the wave motion its a a disaster waiting to happen.

Anything that requires long prep times, complicated procedures, lots of spices/ingredients, long cook times, large space, needs other kitchen equipment, require ingredients that need freezing or refrigeration or use a lot of water are not particularly suitable for a boat.

As an example, pasta is not so good. It wastes a lot of water. While you can use absorption the results are not what I consider food. If it's not al'dente it's not served in my kitchen.
Rice however is good if you use the absorption method to cook and it doesn't waste water.
Meat meals are a no go other than in port but when we're in port cooking isn't so important. Reason, they need refrigeration or freezing. We can't do that. Our fridge is to keep some cool drinks for the tropics and that is it.
If it uses fresh vegetables we can't use provision for anything but small trips. Normally customs at each port destroys all fresh produce and often all meat products even if frozen. Plus in the tropics it will spoil very fast.

What we've got so far is:
Rice (brown mainly)
Pasta (limited amounts only)
Noodles, different to pasta since most are soups and waste little water.
Flour
Limited dried foods such as beans ( its a customs controlled food).
Some cans of pasta sauce.
Cans of veggies, corn, peas, carrots etc.
Mustard, ketchup, vegemite, some thai sauces.
Olives
coconut milk
Spices: basil, oregano, salt, pepper, paprika, turmeric, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne powder, cardamon, star anise, cloves, bayleaves, fennel, thyme, rosemary, cinnamon, nutmeg.
olive oil, sesame oil.
Dried fruits.
Dried nuts.
Cheeses that are in wax.
Wasabi powder (we'll be fishing so sashimi is a definite)
Soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, bbq sauce, smoke flavouring, variety of hot sauces.
Caned fish. Yeah, no guarantees we'll have caught fish at any particular point in the trip but more often than not we're expecting a lot of fresh fish.
Snacks like chocolate, chips, muesli bars, crackers etc.
Powdered milk.

Basically, no glass, limited cans, be aware that customs might destroy it, and no refrigeration possible on the boat.

Now you know what we've got, what we can/can't consider, feel free to offer some suggestions of really simple meals we can make as well as provision for for a looong time without refrigeration.

I'm concentrating on meals involving fish since that will be our main form of meat during the trip.

Just don't get offended if we can't use the suggestion(s). Even though it may be a great idea it simply may not be possible with the room/requirements that we must meet.

Classic examples of things that are great on a short trip but not on a long one are ready to eat meals in cans or plastic (like Hormel, Campbells etc). The reason is they are very inefficient in terms of space. Imagine 90 days of instant meals for two people. It would weigh a ton and take up way too much space. While its easy to cook/prepare the cost is the space it takes up, the waste it generates (remember we have to hold our waste) and the weight.

For the record, we have 70 gallons of water in our tanks. We'll be taking another 70 with us. So imagine living, eating, drinking, showering etc etc for two with that limited supply of water. Hence the importance of not wasting it.

e.g. if it rains, I'll collect water and make a pasta meal then. Basically when we have an excess only.


Isn't this fun???? LOL

[cid]

I detect a comprehensive weight loss program in the making...

[The Supreme Canuck]

Hm. Well, I figured "Sea voyage? Why not look at meals traditionally eaten on sea voyages? Surely someone must have figured this out."

And they have. You can even have meat while at sea. Problem is that all of these meals seem to use a lot of water, since they involved soaking salt meat, dried peas, or hardtack. (Yes, that sounds awful... but it isn't. They still eat this stuff in Newfoundland. It's a traditional, well-loved meal there.)

So, er, I guess that's out...

[FZR1KG]

Generally for the boating community it's a case of food to live on during the trip unless they have a bigger boat that can take loads of stores and weight. It's one advantage of a monohull over a multihull, at least until the multi's get beyond say 33 feet in length at which point things start to change significantly.
We're in a 27 foot catamaran so have to be more careful. Plus the reason we don't have a big fridge is I can't fix the one on the boat in time for the trip. Otherwise things would be a lot easier. As it is we have a small bar fridge and a large storage area that is the non working fridge.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know the change in lifestyle that goes with such a trip seeing it's probably rare to find someone that has done this or is planning to. Even the simple things can get complicated. Such as cooking.

Water usage can sometimes be minimised by mixing fresh and sea water. That's the way to cook pasta unless you have a water maker which we won't have on this trip. Not in the traditional sense anyway.

TSC, we'll be taking a lot of crackers with us. They call them saltines here.
They make easy snacks that are pretty healthy.

I'd have no problem buying dried peas, corn etc but its pretty limited on that sort of thing here.
Dried meats, jerky, not a good thing to take. It's almost guaranteed to be destroyed by customs depending on the country.

[The Supreme Canuck]

TSC, we'll be taking a lot of crackers with us. They call them saltines here.
They make easy snacks that are pretty healthy.

Ha. Yeah. Saltines are not hardtack. You can eat a saltine out of the box. You need to soak a hardtack biscuit overnight before you can eat it.

I'd have no problem buying dried peas, corn etc but its pretty limited on that sort of thing here.

Really? That's... odd. Isn't it?

Dried meats, jerky, not a good thing to take. It's almost guaranteed to be destroyed by customs depending on the country.

Right. Customs. Hadn't thought of that. Whoops.

[FZR1KG]

When I looked at wft a hardtack was it looked like a saltine to me.
By bad.
No idea if they even exist here. By here I mean the valley of death. Not to be confused with Death Valley, a much more friendly and hospitable place. LOL

They sound like some of the army ration packs I used to get 20 years ago. Alternative uses were throwing weapons, making bullet proof vests and replacing worn or broken tracks on tanks.
They lasted longer but left a trail of crumbs for the enemy to follow so the army stuck with high tensile steel instead.

[cid]

Meals Ready to Eat...three lies in one sentence...

[The Supreme Canuck]

When I looked at wft a hardtack was it looked like a saltine to me.
By bad.
No idea if they even exist here. By here I mean the valley of death. Not to be confused with Death Valley, a much more friendly and hospitable place. LOL

They sound like some of the army ration packs I used to get 20 years ago. Alternative uses were throwing weapons, making bullet proof vests and replacing worn or broken tracks on tanks.
They lasted longer but left a trail of crumbs for the enemy to follow so the army stuck with high tensile steel instead.

Ah, now you get it! If you wanted them (and you might - fuckers can last decades if you keep them dry) you'd probably need to make them and bring them along. Me, on the other hand... well. It's an oddity of Canadian supermarkets that you can buy them. Big item in Newfoundland, and they get distributed around the country.

[code monkey]

peanut butter!

[FZR1KG]

peanut butter!

Yep, SFC wants that on the boat. I just forgot to put it in the list above.

[SciFiFisher]

You could consider taking a small supply of emergency ration bars. They are concentrated rations that are packed and shelf stable for 5 years or longer. Not so much for cooking but if you run into bad weather that lasts for several days and you can't cook they can help. Dried fruit and nuts are a decent alternative but the "chunk of calorie" bars can be very useful due to concentrated aspect. Here is a link to some onAmazon

[geonuc]

Backpacker food might be something to consider. It's very light, obviously, and you just add hot water. Some of them are actually decent. I don't have any suggestions in terms of meals to prepare yourself. I think your kitchen facilities are going to be too basic to count on much of that.

Some questions: What battery recharge capability will you have? Add what kind of burners? How much rain water are you counting on collecting?

Why do you need a pressure cooker?

[FZR1KG]

Some questions: What battery recharge capability will you have? Add what kind of burners? How much rain water are you counting on collecting?

Why do you need a pressure cooker?

The motor supplies 15 amps, but, as you know we don't motor while sailing.
We will have a 950W generator and have a 15 amp charger that plugs into the mains.
Although the Haitian taxi driver in Florida suggested we get a battery charger and an inverter and run the charger via the inverter to charge the batteries...his friend does this all the time apparently...we won't be making a perpetual motion machine to charge the batteries any time soon. Too many people would be asking questions LOL

The burners are twin LPG open flame burners as supplied by the boat manufacturer. The both work great still. We used them a lot on our trip up the coast.

We're not counting on collecting any rain water at all. If it rains I'll collect some and naturally top up but it's not something to rely on. I was planning on building a solar powered water maker. Oddly I did a lot of research on that years ago to tackle the salinity problem in Australia as well as the lack of water, so have a solution but don't have the time to implement it for this trip.

The pressure cooker is a real bonus on a boat.
It cooks way faster than conventional cooking, that means saving LPG. Not that the cost of LPG is an issue but if we run out we can't cook and its not always easy to get topped up with LPG in the islands. So we'll take two 5gallon tanks. On the trip up we used only 1/4 of a small 3 gallon tank but we didn't cook every day either.
The pressure cooker uses little water to produce the steam and it can be salt water depending on the meal.
Rice for example is super fast.

To top it off, if we're desperate for water I can convert sea water into fresh by generating steam and distilling it in the pressure cooker. The ones we have are fitted with a little nipple on the lid which we can easily attach a tube to. Since we'll be in the tropics the sea water will already be warm so it won't need as much energy to make fresh water.

The third reason is that when we're in clam waters we can pressurize and get food cooked fast but in rougher waters we can still cook with the lid on and pressurized and won't lose any food if it falls over. We won't be cooking under pressure in rough waters as that is insane.

So far on the boat we've only had a couple of times when things fell off the table and we've gone through 8 foot chop with 80mph winds as well as some really rough choppy seas lasting all day. The main time is when assholes in 20ton power boats speed past as close as possible leaving a very unnatural wake. Overall we're both really surprised at the lack of things flying around considering the conditions we've been in.

[geonuc]

I suppose a solar battery charger would be expensive and not produce much wattage?

[Morrolan]

don't forget fresh fruit (stock up at every possible opportunity) and vitamin C supplements for when you're out. scurvy is still a real threat.

[FZR1KG]

We'll be able to get fresh food at port and that will last us about a week at the most. Luckily we only have three stretches of water that will take a week or more to cross.
For the rest of the journey we get to enjoy preserved foods that have vitamin C in them as well as having some multi-vitamins with us.

[SciFi Chick]

Emergen-C is my friend.

[brite]

Meals Ready to Eat...three lies in one sentence...

MREs aren't all that bad.... you just have to get the right kind...

[squ1d]

Developed any great sailing/cooking innovations yet Z?

Pasta cooked in seawater tastes like crap!

[FZR1KG]

Developed any great sailing/cooking innovations yet Z?

Pasta cooked in seawater tastes like crap!

We have!

Pasta in seawater is almost like normal pasta if you dilute the seawater with plain water.

We've got a super fast bolognese recipe.
I can have bolognese sauce done before the pasta boils and I start the pasta first.

We did a curry last night.
Wifey wanted fried potatoes, I poured in the paprika, only to realize it was cinnamon. Shit!
Add a few more spices and make some rice. It was a pretty good curry.

We also make damper (Australian bread for non Aussies), I've made pizza.

Fish meals we do plenty of.
Fish paprikash, fish cakes, fried fish with veggies etc.
Waiting to get to good waters to have sashimi though.

Wifey makes great breakfast shakes.
powdered milk, freeze dried fruits and into a small blender she bought.
Just had one, banana and mango shake.
It was great.

I'll be putting up a recipe section on the website too.

Damn, I just realised you aren't on the email list so unless you've been reading the website or the re-transmitted blogs you're probably not up to speed.

The fish cakes were the best of the new though. Did it with a fish that is supposedly rated as one of the worst fish you can eat.
in a fish cake it was delicious.

Made some cabonara sauce using powdered milk. It came out pretty good.

If you have any ideas of what to make feel free to add them. I'm up for a challenge.
Just remember we have limited variety:

Bell pepper (capcicum)
Mushrooms
Corn
Peas
Green beans
onions
carrots
tomato
tomato powder
Broccoli
potato

pineapple
apple
peach
strawberry
blackberry
blueberry
Rasberry
banana
mango
cherry
apricots
pears

Ground beef
Roast beef
Chicken
Turkey
Sausage
Taco meat
sloppyjoe
bacon

pinto beans
white beans
white rice
brown rice
pasta's of different types
noodles
rice noodles
flour
baking powder
sugar


Soy sauce
Worechestire sauce
Ketchup
Mustard, various types
vegemite
peanut butter
vinegar

rice vinegar
hot sauces

Chilli powder and flakes
oregano
fennel
cardamon powder and pods
star anise
Salt
pepper
tumeric
paprika
garlic powder
onion powder

pasta sauces
milk powder
various nuts
prepackages Asian noodles, they are good just on their own. Nothing like Ramen noodles.

Juice additives with Vitamin C.

Probably missed a fair few things but that's a pretty good round up of what we have on board.
We're not really doing it hard food wise, lets put it that way.

[Popcorn]

Meals Ready to Eat...three lies in one sentence...

I hate to dis agree, but the boss let me have some once and that strange looking goo isn't really all that bad! I just closed my eyes and thought og other stuff! Like razor blade baths and sand paper fire-poles.

[cid]

RE: MRE's...

...but the boss let me have some once...

We must sit down some time and discuss the essential difference between the concepts of 'reward' and 'punishment'...