Monday, November 25, 2013

Beer...

A truly excellent how-to for brewing beer on boats from Eric and Sherrell on the Sarana Slog...


Saturday, November 23, 2013

Friday, November 8, 2013

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A new book on my Kindle...

I just bought the new edition of "The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew" and I'm looking forward to seeing how Lin & Larry have updated it and brought it into the current century.

As it happens, I'm not a big fan of cruising cookbook genre... They never seem to have food that does not look like the recipes were cribbed off the back of a Velveeta cheese like product box, Good Housekeeping, or a Campbell's soup can.

Which is not to say that some of those recipes are not actually tasty but they are way too product centric to make a lot of sense on a voyaging boat...

I won't bother to go into the fact that such recipes are silly expensive as well but, I expect, you know how I feel on that subject.

Which is why you won't find cruising cookbooks on my shelves except for a couple of exceptions to the rule and "The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew" is one of those exceptions.

Friday, October 18, 2013

A great way to use less meat...

Post Punk Kitchen is one of my favorite food blogs and this recipe/video is a great example of why.

 

Monday, October 7, 2013

Foamy...

Did someone mention the word beer?




Tuesday, September 10, 2013

What we eat...

When all is said and done we don't eat a lot of meat aboard "So It Goes". Face it, meat, as in beef/pork/lamb/chicken/etc, is not all that boat friendly...

Luckily, folks don't really need all that much meat. For instance, an adult male requires around 56 grams of protein a day which works out to a single serving of seven ounces of chicken/beef/pork.

Obviously, we in the US of A eat a lot more animal protein than we actually need.

Truth is, since most people get a lot of protein from other sources (milk products/eggs/beans/nuts/etc) hardly anyone actually needs anywhere near seven-ounces of meat a day...

That being said, from time to time I'm not all that adverse to a big steak or prime rib but it is very much a VERY occasional thing. Though, after reading about current decisions in the USA meat business I expect I'll be eating even less meat in the future.


Friday, September 6, 2013

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

a real cruising cookbook...

To be honest, I'm not a real fan of what passes for cruising cookbooks. Maybe it's that I like food and the open-two-cans-and-heat school of cuisine just does not suit my taste buds. The other sort tends to be over-complicated but never seems to actually address the real differences that make cooking/provisioning on a boat while cruising... different.

So, my usual advice for folks setting off cruising is to get the "Joy of Cooking" because it has everything you need to know and the recipes taste better.

Well, maybe that's about to change...

Rod & Lu Heikell have a cookbook!

You may already know Rod from his many excellent pilots and guides to the Med and further afield or his excellent websites on cruising Mediterraneo and Tell-Tales (both awe inspiring collections of needful information for cruisers).

Rod and Lu know what it's like to provision in places where the stuff on the shelves is different, foreign, and nothing like what you're accustomed to at home... If for no other reason, this makes it a lot more interesting and helpful than the old Caribbean inspired cruising cookbook recipes where, while the shelves may often be depleted, the stuff you find is pretty much the same as in Miami.

Rod and Lu also like food... Having been a long time reader of Tell-Tales I'll admit I've cribbed quite a few recipes from their Gourmets and Gourmands pages and everything works, makes sense on a boat, and tastes good.

Need I say more?

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

An excellent post...

SV Estrellita 5.10b has an excellent post on provisioning...

You may want to check it out!

Sunday, June 9, 2013

So you just caught a big frelling tuna...

...and you need to know how to do the canning thing?

Great info on canning a tuna in this Canning Tuna 101post!

Friday, May 10, 2013

on the cost of some stuff and why you need to do your math...

Our local grocery here on St Croix has a sale on water this week and on the face of it, as things go, it looks like a good deal...

At first glance.

The subject of the deal is on a cheap no brand water in 16.9 oz bottles that normally gets sold in the store for fifty cents a bottle. The actual deal is three 24 bottle cases for $10.99.

Now, considering the cost of buying 72-bottles at fifty cents a pop would add up to $36 that really is a considerable savings over the normal retail price... Hell, they're almost giving it away!

Fact is I was tempted...

On the boardwalk here in St Croix good quality water (not like the ugly brown horrible industrial sludge they sell you at the local marina/gas dock) is available for ten cents a gallon. So, how does that compare to the cheap, almost giving it away sale, for the bottled stuff?

Seventy-two 16.9 oz bottles adds up to a kiss more than nineteen gallons of water and nineteen goes into $10.99...

Let's call it fifty-seven cents a gallon which is, admittedly, cheap for bottled water but compared to the water on the boardwalk at ten cents a gallon the truth is it comes out as quite expensive.

Anyway, it's just something to keep in mind...



Saturday, April 27, 2013

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

We all knew it was just a matter of time...

Guess what just came off the menu on So It Goes...


Lionfish are now testing positive for ciguatoxins in some places (including my backyard so to speak) so should now be considered to carry a risk of ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP).

You can read more about it here.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Wow...

Too good not to share...


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Galley costs...

I can't help but notice that every time I go shopping these days that prices on one thing or another has gone up... a lot!

Yesterday it happened to be propane. We've been paying between $20-$22 for twenty pounds of propane but yesterday it was $27... Quite a jump and it certainly got my attention.

That said, since 20-pounds of propane lasts us right around three months (and we cook/bake a lot), it's not the sort of budget buster grocery staple price hikes can be but, a penny here, a penny there does add up.

For instance, ground turkey used to be a regular part of our shopping list at $1.99 a pound but when it went up by 33% overnight to $2.99 that extra dollar a week has a lot more impact on the quarterly budget than the propane does at $0.42 a week.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

You'll need a smoker for this...

The Tasty Island, one of my favorite food blogs, shows us all how to smoke tako...


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Sushi madness...

Something to think about next time you have fresh tuna on your boat...