Water,water everywhere...

One of the first things that living on a small boat teaches you is your place in the eco-system... Unlike most land dwellers, you know exactly how much stuff you consume, how much waste you generate, how much electricity you use and how many hours of sun/wind or generator used to replace it. In other words, living on a boat gives you a clue (which I guess makes most land-dwellers clueless?).

Water for most newbies on boats is something of a panic-attack inducing conundrum as the wasteful practices ingrained in the resource wasting land dwelling model is very hard to break and trying to make these ingrained bad habits work on a cruising boat... Well, that way lies madness!

On the other hand, water IS serious stuff. We need water to live so it is something that does need to be factored in terms of how much you use, how much you actually need, how to obtain it, and how to keep it.

Throwing money at the situation with something like a watermaker or turning your boat into a sailing tanker truck seems to be the two most popular initial answers to the problem of having enough water. The real answer is getting in touch with the need/want equation and begin using what you need, rather than what you want or think you need or, in other words, get smart and waste less...


Speaking of waste and water, here is a great presentation on a perfect example of silly waste/being dumb where water is concerned and a great example on how what we think is true, simply is not.

Great ideas to save money...

Stone Soup is on something of a roll these days with eating on $1.50 (US) a day series and even better they just did 18 tips to cut your food costs... Read it here!

Green Chile pancakes...

I've always felt pancakes and waffles were especially boat-friendly foods and I have been working on various cunning plans to make pancakes and waffles a not just for breakfast and Sunday brunch event...

Serious Eats gets it all kinds of right!

Four frying pans indeed...

LobsterSquad makes a VERY good point!

A cooking blog of note...

One of our readers just dropped us a line about Galley Notes...

Check them out!

The basic bookshelf... cooking on boats

On the whole. I'm not a big fan of nautical/cruising cook books as they always seem to leave me with a serious lack of appetite and something akin to wonderment that people actually eat some stuff... Does the word "dire" resonate?

Maybe it's that I like cooking, and as such the labor saving (if any) sort of recipe that opens a can of this to add to a can of that and top with a can of sauce just does not make me all warm and fuzzy. Which is not to say that I think cooking on boats needs to be complicated or labor intensive, simple is a good thing, but it really does have to taste like something you want to eat!

A book of some interest you might want to check out is "The Care and Feeding of the Offshore Crew"  (or the updated version "The Care and Feeding of the Sailing Crew") by Lin and Larry Pardey which while not overly exciting to the taste buds it does give  a lot of needful information about such things as cooking on passage, provisioning and storing food and other such needful stuff. So much so I'd recommend this book to anyone considering going cruising as the first book to read on the food front.

The second book I'd recommend "Cheap Chow" by Kenneth Lo is somewhat difficult to find but well worth the search and for me was something of an enabler that made cooking on boats on a budget go from getting by  to thriving. I should point out that "Cheap Chow" has nothing to do with boats but has everything to do with boats if you know what I mean. Fact is if I were to limit myself to one single cookbook aboard "So It Goes" "Cheap Chow" would be it.

You also need something like the "Joy of Cooking" or the like which pretty much covers any food and any situation, so that when you find yourself in some strange place and all that is available is something you have never used or know how to cook, you're covered.

"Diet For a Small Planet" or one of it's many sequels or spin offs would also be no bad thing as it deals with the whole meatless thing in a way that both makes sense and tastes good... I'm pretty sure over the next few years most of us are going to be eating a lot less meat and "Diet For a Small Planet" makes it pretty painless and enjoyable.

Lastly, you really need a cookbook that is fun and will stretch your boundaries... Maybe something you have always wanted to try or thought was beyond your abilities because one of the nice things about cruising is that you will have all sorts of time to do the galley thing if you want to...

Eating on a $1.25 a day...

Stone Soup shows it can be done...

A decent coffee grinder...

As coffee is the drug of choice on "So It Goes" we take coffee gear and paraphernalia very seriously and have been keeping an eye out for a real non-electric coffee grinder for some time...


The GSI Javagrind sure looks like the real deal and unlike most of the manual grinders I've seen is more about doing the job rather than looking "quaint" and being something that would rust out in short order. Throw in the fact that we have a GSI Blender that is finest-kind makes us think the Javagrind just may be the right choice...

A galley gear thought...

I've long been of the opinion that to be happy cooking on boats it is needful to take a step back and think before you try to recreate the sort of kitchen and cooking gear you are accustomed to on land. Which, is not so hard when you consider that most of the gear in your land bound kitchen never ever actually gets used if you are like most people. The trick is not to change the way you cook but to simply take note of how you really cook and the tools you use.

All of us who cook tend to use the same tools all the time and the rest just gets stuck back in a cabinet and waits till the urge to pull them out and do something with them... Face it, when was the last time you used that set of jello molds?

On "So It Goes" I use three pans and a pressure cooker that get constant use and a corner of my galley storage has some pans that never get used so why are they there? The fact is, If I had a huge kitchen with all the room in the world I'd still use those three pans because that is what works.

The point it... You don't really have to change how you cook or what you use simply work out what you don't use and give them to the goodwill or some such and they might actually wind up with someone who will use them (well maybe not those Christmas Jello molds...) but you get the idea!