Monday, December 8, 2014

Well when you think about it...

Grant Petersen (of Rivendell Bike fame) talks about what he's having for dinner...

Saturday, December 6, 2014

A couple of interesting recipes

Dave Z (of Trilo boats fame) doesn't like to waste anything so, of course, he has some recipes to deal with the leftover bits from making Boat Wine.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Some insanity from the Virgin Islands...

Now while I'm not a big fan of canned corn beef and suchlike I thought you might want to take a moment and do the math on what this stuff from one of the more affordable stores on one of the cheaper islands in the Caribbean actually costs...


Yeah, that's works out to $9.32 a pound!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Friday, November 14, 2014

What I'll be having for T-Day...

Hip Pressure Cooking (one of my favorite sources for pressure cooking goodness) has what just may be the best method of dealing with T-Day turkey on a boat I've yet come across...


Need I say more?

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Man, I sure cook a lot of cakes...

Yesterday I baked a cake and it got me thinking.about my Omnia stovetop oven and how it's made it easier to bake onboard. So easy, in fact, that I use it about twice a week.

For those of a number crunching bent, that would add up to something like three hundred times or so in the last three years.

That's a lot of cake!

Aside from a couple of tiny dents it's still good as new and I'm pretty sure it will continue to provide baked goods for a long time to come.

Of course, nothing is perfect as there was a pretty awesome recipe I just read and adapting it to the Omnia is going to take a bit of thought but rest assured I feel a cunning plan coming on...

I'll let you know how it goes.


Monday, September 15, 2014

A link you should check out...

Some really good advice over at Nourished Kitchen (one of my favorite food blogs ).

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Drought and prices...

Folks on boats tend to take a lot of things for granted where provisions and provisioning are concerned... I know I do.

Here in the Caribbean things tend to be pricey but the current climate change induced droughts are going to play hell with prices in the coming year.

For instance, the current drought in Spain is seriously going to impact the price of olives and olive oil especially by the time those products wind up in the Caribbean. What's even worse is that some products set their price as a percentage of other products so when olive oil goes up in price so does corn and peanut oil.

Sadly, the standard advice to eat local doesn't help all that much as very little in the way of food is actually local to the Caribbean and what there is tends to be geared for the uber-high markup of the tourist industry.

Might be a good time to start stocking up on some staples, looking at alternative products, and taking a longer view on provisioning habits...

Friday, June 27, 2014

Something of a must read...

Here's a really good post over at Gin & Tacos on what tends to pass for food poisioning these days that anyone cruising or plans to cruise should read...

Nuff said.

Friday, June 20, 2014

a different kind of bread maker that certainly seems perfect for a galley...

Now, does this make sense on a boat or what?


The big question is whether or not it will fit inside my stove top oven...

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Saturday, June 14, 2014

a book I must get and a couple I already have...

I'm not a huge fan of the add a can of this to a can of that school of cookbook writing... Fact of the matter is to put it bluntly I hate them.

Of course, most cookbooks of the cruising on a sailboat ilk are by and large full of add a can of this to a can of that recipes. Kind of bummer that.

It does not have to be that way...

One of the food blogs I read on a daily basis is Nourished Kitchen whose stated purpose is to revive traditional foods (which in my mind translates in real food).

I've never read a bad recipe on the blog which from me is say a lot. So it's not a real big surprise that I'm excited about the current cookbook "the Nourished Kitchen" by Jennifer McGruther...

More importanly all of the recipes in the book are actually a lot more boat and cruiser friendly than you'd expect. Fact is cooking with real ingredients is a lot easier than yopu've been told by folks who have a vested interest in selling you value added/overly processed products with highly inflated prices.

So yeah, "the Nourished Kitchen" is going to be a permanent fixture on my galley shelf.

Another new cookbook I recently bought is "The Homesick Texan's Family Table" by Lisa Fain and it is even better than her previous book
"The Homesick Texan's Cookbook" which is actually a a pretty impressive feat considering how good the first one is.

Not only a lot of good recipes but all are very boat friendly, simple, affordable, and very, very tasty.

Three books dealing with real food and not a single add a can of this to a can of that with an envelope of onion soup mix recipe anywhere...






Wednesday, June 11, 2014

for those of you who like to drink fizzy stuff...

I'm a big fan of carbonated beverages...

That said, I also know that most all soft drinks are bad for you, cost far too much money, and, if you're particular about the sort of soft drinks you like, hard to find in a lot of places we tend to travel to on boats.

You can brew your own of course. There's a lot to be said for home made ginger beer and suchlike but then a lot of folks find home brewing (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) somewhat problematic on a small boat.

A lot of cruisers are into SodaStream but researching them I found the cost of CO2 works out to something like 80-90 cents a liter (or more if you're like me and like highly carbonated beverages) plus there's the cost of syrups and suchlike which adds up. The real negative for me is that the SodaStream CO2 bottles are hard to find a lot of places and having them shipped can be prohibitively expensive.

Which is why I perked up when I read this article on how to build your own carbonation system with off the shelf parts and refillable just about anywhere you happen to be.

Check it out...

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

a cure for anemic burners?

Anyone who's been around stoves on boats knows that burners on marine or camping stoves lean towards being anemic and it's often hard to get the needful temperature for searing or stir frying...

Serious Eats just had a very interesting post about a possible answer to our problem.

Color me excited...

Monday, May 26, 2014

We're back on track...

I really like food...

I mean I really like food. I'm sure a lot of you understand the emphasis.

The problem is cooking on a boat in a world spiraling towards harder times and keeping the boat stocked with good and healthy ingredients on a budget takes no small amount of work and creativity. That's the downside.

On the other hand, the upside is creativity is an enjoyable pastime from where I sit and, whenever you make a good meal aboard, the gratification is there for the tasting.

When we were cruising in Spain we met a well off American couple who were sailing their boat home to the States to sell it and buy an RV because they could not find Hellman's mayonnaise in Europe. Seriously the lack of "proper" mayonnaise in Europe was the deal breaker...

I'll let that sink in for a moment.

At the time I thought they were nuts... Firstly because mayonnaise is pretty easy to make. Secondly because I'd never actually thought of Hellman's as being real mayonnaise but more a sorta/kinda chemical sludge doing a bad mayonnaise imitation, and lastly, how had they escaped the fact that Europe was brimming with awesome freshly made mayonnaise and not taken advantage?

Over the years I've reflected on this more times than I can count because it tells a story and that story is just how important food is to how happy/unhappy we are... Mayonnaise is a silly example but it so perfectly illustrates just how important food can be.

Food is a lot more than just being a fuel that powers our engine and, as times become harder, it's going to be even more important to fulfil those more esoteric needs in a frugal galley.

So, consider this a restatement of purpose of sorts.


Monday, April 28, 2014

On pressure cookers making sense...

Over at SV Estrellita 5.10b (always a good read) they've discovered the wonderfulness of cooking with pressure...

Saturday, April 5, 2014

An alternative to the high cost of spirits...

SV Delos (always a good read) taking the moonshine route...





Sunday, March 16, 2014

Got pineapple?

This recipe looks more than promising...

Thursday, February 20, 2014

An excellent article on food storage...

You might want to take the time to visit Northwest Edible Life (always a good read) for today's excellent post about food storage.


Thursday, January 30, 2014

a pretty good resource...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium website is a pretty neat place to spend some time and you can check out some great recipes while you're there...


The Mahi Mahi Escabeche works for me.

Thursday, January 16, 2014