An Island Gourmand

Pretty much says it all...

2012-02-01T09:41:00.000-05:00

Ya think?

A cool rum link...

2012-01-23T08:21:00.001-05:00

Serious Eats has a too good to miss post on rum... Check it out!

Important stuff if you read blogs like Island Gourmand

2012-01-18T09:44:00.001-05:00

What is so bad about SOPA and PROTECT IP?

Threat to online freedom of speech

According to the EFF, proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab Spring, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by the act.On TIME's Techland blog, Jerry Brito wrote, "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?" Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology warned, "If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent."Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard University professor of constitutional law, released an open letter on the web stating that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment.”The AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida, arguing in favor of SOPA, has stated that free speech was not a relevant consideration, because "The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."

Negative impact on websites that host user content

Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says.The EFF has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter.Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits. Conversely, Michael O'Leary of the MPAA argued at the November 16 Judiciary Committee hearing that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries. Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.

Weakening of "safe harbor" protections for websites

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1998, includes a provision, known as the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a "safe harbor" for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who feel that a website is hosting content that infringes on their copyright are required to submit a notice to that website to ask for the infringing material to be removed, and the website is then given a certain amount of time to remove such material. SOPA would override this "safe harbor" provision, by allowing judges to immediately block access to any website found guilty of hosting copyrighted material.According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about even a major website could be enough to cause the site to be blocked, with the burden of proof then resting on the website to get itself un-blocked. The focus of much of the criticism is on a statement in the bill, that any website would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a website that does not actively monitor its content for copyright violations, but instead waits for others to notify it of such violations, could be guilty under the law.Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".Goodlatte stated, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]".The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."

General threat to web-related businesses

A news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated that "The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating that "The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," and that "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated that "It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital... No one would invest because of the legal liability."Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.As reported by David Carr of the New York Times in an article critical of SOPA and PIPA, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies sent a joint letter to Congress, stating "We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ Web sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. However, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of Web sites.” In response to Carr's article, bill sponsor and Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the article "unfairly criticizes the Stop Online Piracy Act", and, "does not point to any language in the bill to back up the claims. SOPA targets only foreign Web sites that are primarily dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Domestic Web sites, like blogs, are not covered by this legislation." Lamar also said that Carr incorrectly framed the debate as between the entertainment industry and high-tech companies, noting support by more than "120 groups and associations across diverse industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce".

Threat to users uploading content

Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law, expressed concern that users who upload copyrighted content to sites such as YouTube could potentially be held criminally liable themselves, saying, "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct, purportedly criminalizing the former and permitting the latter, in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."An aide to bill sponsor Lamar Smith has said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation".

Threat to internal networks

A paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."According to A. M. Reilly of Industry Leaders Magazine, under SOPA, culpability for distributing copyright material is extended to those who aid the initial poster of said material. For companies that use virtual private networks to create a network that appears to be internal but is spread across various offices and employees' homes, any of these offsite locations that initiate sharing of copyright material can put the entire VPN and hosting company at risk of violation.Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote: "Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."

Threat to free and open source software

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that free and open source software (FLOSS) projects found to be aiding online piracy may experience serious problems under SOPA. Of special concern is the web browser Firefox, made by Open-Source advocate Mozilla, which has a plug-in, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to the new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government. In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to pull MAFIAAFire from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"

Ineffectual against piracy

Edward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communication Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."

Deep-packet inspection and invasion of privacy

According to Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, which opposes SOPA, the section of the bill that would allow judges to order internet service providers to block access to infringing websites to customers located in the United States would also allow the checking of those customers' IP address, a method known as IP blocking. Erickson has expressed concerns that such an order might require those providers to engage in "deep packet inspection", which involves analyzing all of the content being transmitted to and from the user, and may raise new privacy concerns.

Negative impact on DNS, DNSSEC and Internet security

The Domain Name System (DNS) servers, most often equated with a phone directory, translate browser requests for domain names into the IP address assigned to that computer or network. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for infringing domains to their assigned IP addresses.Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System.Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it."According to David Ulevitch, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS, the passage of SOPA could cause Americans to switch to DNS providers located in other countries who offer encrypted links, and may cause U.S. providers, such as OpenDNS itself, to move to other countries, such as the Cayman Islands.In November 2011, a new anonymous top-level domain, .bit, was launched outside of ICANN control, as a response to the perceived threat from SOPA, although its effectiveness (as well as the effectiveness of other alternative DNS roots) remains unknown.

Internet security

A white paper by several internet security experts, including Steve Crocker and Dan Kaminsky, wrote, "From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."

DNSSEC

There have been concerns raised that SOPA would harm the usefulness of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ensuring internet security. A white paper by the Brookings Institution wrote that "The DNS system is based on trust," adding that DNSSEC was developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and that "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."On November 17, Sandia National Laboratories, a research agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, released a technical assessment of the DNS filtering provisions in the House and Senate bills, in response to a request from Rep. Lofgren. The assessment stated of both bills that the DNS filtering would be unlikely to be effective, would negatively impact internet security, and would delay full implementation of DNSSEC.On November 18, House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren stated that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding, "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it."

Lack of transparency in enforcement

Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."

Who are my congressional representatives and how do I contact them?

Congress needs to hear from all of us or this bill is going to pass. Each representative usually publishes their phone number, email address, or a contact form on their individual official websites. Links to their websites can be found in these directories:

I don't live in the US. What can I do?

The US State Department constantly speaks out against internet censorship in other countries. Pressure them to speak out against America’s new domestic censorship system.

Email the State Department

First thoughts on the new galley project...

2012-01-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

In redesigning the new galley for the umpteenth time, I've decided to change tack and not design it around ways that I think will be making it better but to simply focus on how I actually cook and use the galley. So, in short, do it for how I cook rather than how I'd like to cook...

Case in point, the stove. Truth is, I really only use one burner and the last time I recall using the second burner on the stove was about four years ago. The only use the other burner actually gets is to sit pots on to cool. Based on that fact, the idea of finding a single burner stove makes all kinds of sense as I can certainly use a little bit more counter space!

So, what I really want is something like this...

I would want to gimbal it and sort out a proper fiddle system but, at less than $30, it fulfills all the needful galley chores a stove does as well or better than a "proper" marine stove....

You should check this out...

2012-01-09T09:04:00.001-05:00

Dave over at TriloBoat talks food!

A better way to bake onboard...

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

I've been on something of a baking binge of late and it's nice to have that smell that says "spice cake" and suchlike...

Part of the reason for the baking is that I recently purchased a stove top oven and it has worked out so well that I actually want to bake. The secret is the new oven does not heat up the boat's interior like our old oven did. Trust me, when it's 85 degrees outside the idea of making a carrot cake is seldom on my list of things to do, and it is always about 85 here in the tropics...

There is not much to the oven in question... a pan with a hole in it, a bundt pan, and a cover. In a word, simple.

Of course, on a boat, simple is no bad thing! Speaking of no bad things... so are pans and suchlike that stow easily, and in the case of the Ominia oven it even comes with it's own little nylon bag to keep the bits together.

While the bundt pan is not huge it does make a full sized cake or, to be more precise, is just the right size for a standard cake mix of the Duncan Hines/Betty Crocker variety.

All in all, this is an excellent product and very well thought out. So much so that I've decided not to bother getting a new stove with an oven in the current round of galley makeovering as this one does the job so well!

What's not to like?

French onion soup...

2011-11-02T14:10:00.000-04:00

Over at my favorite pressure cooking blog there is an excellent post on adapting a recipe for pressure cooking... In this case a French onion soup recipe from Julia Child.

Awe inspiring...

2011-10-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

I am simply in awe of this post over at The Tasty Island...

Kinda important message...

2011-10-11T13:32:00.000-04:00

I guess the thing to do is have a drink...

2011-08-16T08:28:00.001-04:00

Being that I've lived in and around the Caribbean for some time, rum factors in to the general scheme of things...

Rum pervades the history of these islands, the cuisine, and it's social life...

Over at Ministry of Rum, since it is August 16th, Ed is reflecting on National Rum Day!

The Tasty Island...

2011-07-24T11:25:00.000-04:00

The Tasty Island is one of my favorite food blogs and I'm sure if you check them out it will become one of yours as well...

Amazing how time flies...

2011-07-07T10:29:00.002-04:00

Who'd have thought it was National Macaroni Day again already?

Check out Serious Eats for some macaroni goodness...

They had me at soy & ginger...

2011-07-01T07:47:00.000-04:00

Grilling Companion ponders a new office and parts with an exceptional Grilled soy and ginger Mahi recipe...

Nope not a Painkiller...

2011-06-20T07:02:00.000-04:00

Serious Eats talks about a drink...

Just plain good...

2011-06-19T09:56:00.000-04:00

Homesick Texan gets it right with Jalapeño and beer brined pork chops

Bouillabaisse...

2011-06-08T11:59:00.000-04:00

Steamy Kitchen has the how to for Bouillabaisse perfection...

Best check it out!

Happy National Doughnut Day!

2011-06-03T10:14:00.000-04:00

You are celebrating National Doughnut Day!

Serious Eats has some recipes...

Smoked rum is as good an excuse as any...

2011-05-24T14:16:00.003-04:00

I've been toying with the idea of replacing the BBQ on "So It Goes" with a grill/smoker... Having a smoker onboard would be very handy in dealing with a big mahi mahi or tuna and be more adaptable to being the go-to oven for making bread and suchlike.

The problem is that no one seems to make a boat friendly sized smoker (though this one looks promising) and, to be truthful, I am up to my ears in projects so adding building a propane-fueled smoker from scratch is just more than the system can handle.

Or so I thought, till I read this today over at Serious Eats...

Two words...

Smoked rum!

This is really good...

2011-04-30T10:44:00.001-04:00

A great BBQ fix...

2011-04-29T14:59:00.001-04:00

One of the most difficult parts of cooking on a cruising boat is that so called "marine" stoves and grills are, at best, pretty awful (I won't go into the part about them being way too expensive).

Right now we have an OK grill/BBQ. It gets hot enough to cook stuff but not quite as hot as I'd like and it really does not throttle down to where I'd like it to either. That said, it is OK considering every other propane BBQ we have had has been lots worse.

I have been considering swapping out the anemic burner for some time but it is nice to see that others with the same problem have already sorted out the problem and come up with a workable and affordable solution...

Check out Boat Projects for everything you need to know!

Biscuits, chorizo, and sweet potatoes...

2011-04-22T10:34:00.001-04:00

How did I miss this on Homesick Texan?

Provisions... A few thoughts on the dried stuff

2011-04-20T11:01:00.001-04:00

I've been meaning to catch up on provisioning and it's funny how things change when looking at what you've eaten in hindsight.

For instance, we've eaten a lot of dried carrots over the last few months due to the fact that carrots have been silly expensive of late and at best rather low quality. Looking down the shopping list it also becomes apparent that the same could be said for broccoli. At $3.69 a pound broccoli has us reaching for the dried stuff on a regular basis...

The other dried vegetables we use all the time is the Harmony House dried vegetable soup mix that we never use as a soup but more of a throw-a-handful-in-the pressure-cooker-with-whatever-we-are-cooking-for-a-vegetable-boost sort of thing. Seriously, I should buy this stuff by the case...

Seriously ono...

2011-04-08T09:58:00.000-04:00

Ever wondered what Epic Meal Time would be like if they were not haole shark bait from Canada but hailed from an island in the Pacific?

Yeah, I thought so...

Ono...

Floating sweat shops...

2011-04-06T09:30:00.001-04:00

It's a scary world...

We've touched upon about how a lot of the greed connected to big business commercial fishing is harmful to the environment. Sadly, it's easy to forget that there is a human toll as well... Check out the ever excellent "The Old Salt Blog" for more on the dark side.

Color me impressed...

2011-04-05T10:36:00.001-04:00

Over at HIP Pressure cooking an exceptional way to cook a whole chicken!

Waffles, waffle irons and percieved wisdom...

2011-04-03T10:49:00.001-04:00

I just made waffles...

Sundays aboard "So It Goes" is pretty much always a waffles for breakfast affair. For this to happen we have to have a waffle iron and for a space-constrained galley you have to consider the wisdom of having a pan or tool that only has one purpose and the general advice going around is that if it only does one thing you should do without it...

So not wanting to swim upstream or go against perceived wisdom of other more experienced sailors we did without a waffle iron for years...

Which leads us to our hand powered blender which works really well and is oh-so-practical and can be used for countless galley jobs and makes a mean Margarita to boot. A galley tool that no one would suggest superfluous to the cruising lifestyle and some might even say something of a requirement... and we've used it twice. I guess we are simply not blender folk.

Which points out that a lot of perceived wisdom and good advice does not actually have a lot to do with how you actually live your life and run your galley and should be taken into account when you are making galley and provisioning decisions.

So now I get to have waffles on Sunday and life is good...

It's what's for dinner!

2011-03-31T11:03:00.000-04:00

Just what we needed!

I remember when a pound had sixteen ounces...

2011-03-30T09:42:00.003-04:00

Doing our monthly provisions has become sort of an ongoing WTF experience as prices fof basics keeps getting more and more expensive...

Even more frustrating is the stealth downsizing of packaging so that when you think you are buying a pound of pasta in fact you are actually only getting 13.25 ounces.

Got to start reading those labels again...

Can you say z-o-m-b-i-e?

2011-03-29T12:15:00.000-04:00

The Miami Rum Renaissance Festival begins with the Zombie Jamboree...

They had me with the word zombie!

Coffee...

2011-03-27T14:18:00.000-04:00

Path of the Blazing Sarong talks about roasting coffee...

Bagels...

2011-03-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

Bagels... Serious Eats has what you need to know when you don't have a place to buy bagels.

Beer...

2011-03-22T10:20:00.000-04:00

Deborah Bach over at Three Sheets tells us a little about brewing...

Ribs...

2011-03-21T10:38:00.000-04:00

Lobster Squad gets it right...

A good book...

2011-03-19T09:19:00.002-04:00

Living on a boat, it is easy to get a sense of the fish you put on your table and not so long ago the same could be said for commercial fishermen...

Not so much these days though... Most fishing decisions in the commercial sector are made in board rooms and is the thing of short term profits and balance sheets.

Bummer...

There is a small country where the fishermen fished sustainably and made a life for themselves. Well, until the waters of that country became a place for other more wealthy nations to deposit their toxic wastes while other nations' fishing vessels in factory ships stole what catch remained...

Welcome to Somalia in 2011! A country where people earn a couple of dollars a day if they have work and if they don't are simply out of luck. The fish are no longer there or stolen by industrial fishing concerns where short term profit is the only law. Hardly surprising that some of those local fishermen are angry and just might consider a different line of work... The real story is always a lot more complicated than you might think.

Big business fishing has never been about sustainability or caring about the environment and it never will be... But, it does not have to be that way.

All over the world there are still fishermen and women fishing in a way that is sustainable and a very good primer on the subject is "Fish Tales: Stories & Recipes from Sustainable Fisheries Around the World" by Bart van Olphen and Tom Kime. Whether you get it as a cookbook with a back story or a study of sustainable fishing with some recipes, it most certainly belongs on your bookshelf...

A few thoughts on keeping the beer cold...

2011-03-16T09:47:00.001-04:00

Back when we first set out cruising, if you wanted a cold beer the accepted practice was to have a box with ice in it... While sailing in the Med where ice was not readily available we just adapted and went without, which as it happens was actually a whole lot easier than one would expect.

We had considered refrigeration but in those days we noticed that our fellow cruisers with refrigeration seemed to sail from one port to another not in search of cool Mediterranean sights and experiences, but in the unending quest to find a refrigeration mechanic who could top up or repair their system...

Recently we had some issues with our onboard charging system and the first casualty of our power triage was the fridge. As it happens, we have a small power frugal fridge but it still winds up being a considerable drain on the system, so it was needful to cut back and relive our old "no cold beer" regime for a couple of weeks.

So how did we fare without the fridge? Just fine...

The thing is, that being without the ability to keep stuff cold for a couple of weeks reminded us just how little we actually need a fridge. Which is not to say we have any plans of doing without, as cold drinks are better than room temperatur, and it is nice to be able to load up on pork chops when they are on sale, but it is not a crucial system in the grand scheme of things...

Some good stuff...

2011-03-09T08:41:00.001-05:00

Sailing With Totem has been writing on the subject of long range provisions and they are making a whole lot of sense...

Long-term Provisioning

Provisioning Look-back: Over buying

Provisions worth their weight in gold

Might be time to stock up...

2011-03-06T08:42:00.000-05:00

I've been noticing a rather steep price hike in coffee prices at the local shops...

The Seattle Times tells us why.

A must read...

2011-03-03T08:30:00.000-05:00

It's a complicated world...
The new school of fish

I want this book...

2011-02-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

The other day I was looking for a recipe to make some seitan and proceeded to do a search and came across just the thing and a great blog in the process.

Face it, how can you resist a food blog with a name like Post Punk Kitchen?

Even better, not only did they have the seitan recipe I was looking for but a bunch of other recipes featuring seitan that just called out "Try me..."

Some of you may already know Isa Chandra Moskowitz from her cookbooks like "Vegan With a Vengeance" (another great title) but for me she is something of a new discovery and one I plan to follow in the future...

How I like my oysters...

2011-02-26T09:37:00.001-05:00

Over at Homesick Texan... Some thoughts on oysters and a recipe that is exactly how I'd like my oysters cooked.

A knife of choice and dealing with an epidemic...

2011-02-24T10:29:00.001-05:00

On "So It Goes" I have a LOT of knives...

Off hand, I believe they sneak on to the boat and into the galley when I'm off doing other things as I simply did not buy them. Apparently knives must have legs!

The fact is, the knife that I use for 90% of my cooking needs is a cheap stainless light cleaver that was part of an all-the-knives-you-need-for-$19.99 sort of set.

I really like this knife as it holds an edge, does not rust and does all you want a knife to do (you know slice,dice and chop) really well.

On the other hand, I could use one of those awesome $600+ knives that hold an edge, slice, dice, and chop while putting up with a little rust as being part of the equation of having a $600 knife... But hey, since I only want to slice, dice, chop and feel no need to impress people with the fact that I can afford a $600 knife my cheapie cleaver is just the thing! Truth is, if I were to lose my cleaver I'd replace it with something like this.

For the other 10% of my knife usage the task gets shared by maybe four knives (more about those in another post) and it raises the question of why, if I only use five knives, do I have like two dozen?

Right now since I'm in the middle of a galley refurb, I have to make a decision whether to build in storage for the overpopulation of knives or jettison said knives and gain some space in the process...

Duh!

A very important message from Island Gourmand...

2011-02-22T12:17:00.000-05:00

It's National Margarita Day...

Got your Triple Sec?

A helpful link...

2011-02-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

The Boat Galley has another helpful set of downloads and the theme is PORK!

One of the first things we noticed when we were living and cruising in Europe is that meat cuts are a lot different and being able to show a butcher sorta/kinda what you are looking for is a huge help...

Altoids you can make on your boat...

2011-02-20T10:14:00.000-05:00

Folks, they had me as soon as they mentioned coffee....

The perfect can opener...

2011-02-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before that on "So It Goes" we try and keep canned goods to the bare minimum... Canned tuna, green beans and corn being the most likely suspects to be found aboard.

We do, however, have a most excellent can opener. It's fool proof, always works and cost less than a dollar...

Shrimp and scallops...

2011-02-15T07:58:00.000-05:00

Grilling Companion gets it all kinds of right...

Since we were talking about beer, Scientific American gives us the lowdown

2011-02-09T16:03:00.001-05:00

Ever wondered why beer batter tastes so good?

Finally a reason to buy Coors...

2011-02-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

Beer Review Dude makes some sense!

Wings...

2011-02-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Chicken wings are something of a conundrum for me...

Of course, chicken wings are tasty and all but WTF has happened to what chicken wings cost? The other day we were shopping and wings cost the same as breasts, Face it, as much as I like wings for the same price chicken breasts win out every time.

Luckily we can adapt any wing recipe (like this great one from the charter yacht "Three Moons") to breasts or thighs...

A few words about the nature of food we buy and hummus...

2011-02-04T08:30:00.001-05:00

The other day I saw the local store had a "hip" over-priced hummus on sale and being lazy (and cheap) bought it...

When I got it home and gave it a try it was not really hummus in any shape or form. Not that it was bad exactly, but it simply was not hummus. Sort of the hummus niche of what Cheese Whiz is to real cheese. Which leads me to believe that there are a lot of people who don't really know what a lot of things are supposed to taste like.

For a really good post about hummus check out The Homemade Hummus Challenge over at the Paupered Chef!

a needful link...

2011-02-03T09:12:00.000-05:00

The Boat Galley has an excellent resource today... Spices in foreign languages!

Trying to get TVP to pull its own weight...

2011-01-26T08:22:00.001-05:00

Back when I was in college I spent a lot of time in vegetarian eateries and one in particular was really exceptional in that you never even noticed they did not serve meat...

Part of their success was that they really knew how to cook and were masterful in the way they adapted the sort of things people actually eat into a menu that people wanted to eat. So how did they do it?

My guess is that they, like all good kitchens, realized that a meal or dish is always multi-faceted and paid a lot of attention to the big three... flavor, texture, and presentation. Cooking vegetarian dishes that taste good is no big issue as vegetables on the whole simply taste good. Presentation is also pretty easy with a little thought and flair. On the other hand, texture for me is the more difficult aspect of vegetarian cooking... And in this area they really excelled using tofu and TVP in ways that really brought dishes together and worked.

Most vegetarian dishes are somewhat challenged on the texture front and most cooks compensate by doing dishes that are not big on textures... soups, for instance. Adding tofu or TVP can add texture but often don't bring along their fair share of taste to the process and, more often than not, I prefer that they don't even bother...

So here is my personal frustration... Having experienced a kitchen that really could make TVP and tofu work in a way that did not elicit a "why bother" reaction I know it can be done but, truth be told I'm having a lot of trouble working through the process to get my Strogannoff using either tofu or TVP chunks to work in a way that you'd rather not just have the sauce over noodles... Know what I mean?

I've been hearing a lot of good things about "The TVP Cookbook" and will be giving it a read to see if I can ramp up my use of TVP in the galley and get to a higher culinary plateau...

Which is not to say I'm giving up meat, but TVP does make all kinds of sense in a cruising boat scenario as it is easy to store and costs very little. So you might say I find myself motivated to make it work the way I know it can.

Under pressure...

2011-01-25T08:07:00.000-05:00

Pressure cooking is really a no-brainer for folks on boats as it's fast, contained, and makes food that tastes really good... What's not to like?

Hip pressure cooking is now our blog of choice for pressure cooking goodness. Perfect for newbies to the wonders of pressure cooking and more than interesting for those of us who have been cooking under pressure for years...

For instance take today's post, an A to Z for a five minute meat sauce/ragu. Tasty, fast, and perfect for a meal on a boat!

Spicy...

2011-01-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

The Hummus Blog tells us all we need to know about Skhug and gives us a recipe...

A little sauce...

2011-01-20T08:38:00.001-05:00

Accidental Hedonist had a great little post about Eggs Benedict the other day and it got me thinking...

First of all I should say I agree 100% with the AH post and as much as I love Eggs Benedict it is something I simply don't order for breakfast or brunch and when I fail to remember that I am always disappointed. Eggs Benedict is not difficult but it takes a little more work and concentration than most eateries are capable of these days. Face it, in a world where most cafes can't tell the difference between over-easy and scrambled these days, do you really think they can get a sauce right?

Hardly surprising I don't eat out much...

One of the wonderful things about living on a boat and cruising is we can cook whatever we want and be as discerning as needful. Once you have slowed down to a cruising pace being able to bake a cake or do a proper breakfast becomes an enjoyable enterprise rather than a chore.

On the plus side, we can cook and eat on a level that most of us can't afford to back in the real world. Once you master the whole cooking is fun vibe, you really start saving some serious money. Which sort of brings us back around to Eggs Benedict...

While I was shopping for spices the other day I saw that they had some Hollandaise sauce mix and glancing at the price I noted that it was far more expensive than making said sauce from scratch. What's more, in looking at the directions for the ersatz sauce, it seemed to me that there was very little if any savings in time or energy... So why use a sauce mix?

Why indeed!

Some quick links...

2011-01-17T09:03:00.000-05:00

The Boat Galley gets serious about stove top baking, Down south StoneSoup shares some secrets about making soup (who'd have guessed?) and Homesick Texan makes me a very happy camper!

A taste test...

2011-01-15T09:14:00.001-05:00

Serious eats has a most excellent discussion on white rum and comes to an interesting conclusion... Which we heartily endorse.

By the way for those interested, down here in the Caribbean Bacardi Silver costs $7.99 (though it might have been on sale yesterday) and Castillo Silver goes for $2.99

Tofu...

2011-01-13T10:50:00.001-05:00

One of the disadvantages of living in the Caribbean is the Tofu available is somewhat lacking... A supplier of Tofu along the lines of Hodo Soy Beanery would be a welcome thing.

I've been looking for a good book on cooking and making real tofu from scratch and have even been looking at a kit...

In the meantime, a recipe for Sesame and black pepper encrusted tofu with oyster mushrooms and wilted spinach I found over on the Hodo Soy website recipe page, looks like just the thing for making second rate tofu come out a bit better!

Scary...

2011-01-10T14:35:00.000-05:00

Accidental Hedonist points out Things that should make you sit up and take notice!

A really excellent post...

2011-01-09T08:38:00.000-05:00

S.V. Shadow of Lorelei has info on Provisioning for Japan!

Seafood watch guides...

2011-01-04T07:17:00.004-05:00

The Monterey Aquarium has some excellent downloadable pocket guides and apps on it's website to help you choose the right "ocean friendly" fish or critter while shopping. The guides are done by regions and are well worth the download...

Of course, the best means of securing ocean friendly seafood is to catch it yourself as it is sometime difficult or impossible to sort out if the Mahi Mahi on offer is local and caught by trolling or pole (Best Choice) or the AVOID sort (imported)...

Popcorn...

2011-01-03T09:39:00.001-05:00

Being a maker and watcher of movies, popcorn has something of a special place in my life...

On a boat, popcorn makes all kinds of sense as it is a snack food that takes minimal space and costs very little. Throw in the fact that it is easy and quick to prepare... What's not to like?

Over the years we have found ourselves sitting out hurricanes and while all hell was breaking loose outside, what better comfort food to prepare than some popcorn?

Off hand, I am something of a purist popcorn wise... butter and salt being the order of the day but from time to time chili sauce and garlic also work when mixed with the butter. That said, this curry popcorn recipe looks like it might be worth a try...

Ed making sense...

2011-01-01T10:33:00.000-05:00

Ed Hamilton over at the Ministry of Rum sums up the year and looks forward...

Lion Fish recipes...

2010-12-29T08:25:00.000-05:00

Now that you know how to clean your Lion Fish you need some recipes...

Lion Fish Hunter has a bunch!

Lion Fish... It's what's for dinner!

2010-12-28T07:23:00.000-05:00

Since Lion Fish is becoming such a problem down here in the Caribbean it's time to make it a regular part of what's for dinner...

Biscuits...

2010-12-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

My dad used to make ham biscuits for New Years and I've been looking for a recipe for quite some time...

Baker's Banter has just the thing!

Braised red cabbage...

2010-12-24T07:34:00.003-05:00

Cabbage is something of a cruising staple as it keeps for ages without refrigeration and is more often than not ...cheap. What's not to like?

Sadly though, most folks don't do the noble cabbage justice when it comes to bringing it to the table and some might even be surprised that it is for something other than cole slaw or an adjunct to corned beef...

Lucky for us that LobsterSquad has an awesome recipe for Braised Red Cabbage using a pressure cooker! Perfect for a holiday or any old day...

Note to self...

2010-12-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

Before we up anchor and leave St Croix I really MUST stock up on Miss Anna's Hot sauces...

A study in contrast...

2010-12-21T07:04:00.005-05:00

I'm really a pushover for this sort of dish...

Serious Eats has the recipe!

All sorts of squiddy goodness...

2010-12-19T09:20:00.001-05:00

Over at Fishing Under Sail we've showed you people catching squid and here we've shown you how to clean the critters...

Maybe we should point you to a great recipe so you can cook your squid in a pressure cooker?

Lucky for us, Laura over at the most excellent Hip Pressure Cooking has a great pressure cooker recipe just filled with squiddy goodness...

Since the subject of pressure cooking came up...

2010-12-16T10:15:00.003-05:00

Since we're on the subject of pressure cookers...

I was actually serious about wanting another pressure cooker. I'd love a small one that would fit in my sea swing which would be a huge help from time to time. That said, an on-board still would be no bad thing either!

The thing about pressure cookers is that a lot of folks either believe the hype that they are bombs just waiting to go off or, even worse, they have eaten horrible meals thrown together in a pressure cooker and they think that everything à la pression is going to taste yucky.

Folks, it does not have to be like that... and we never do "yucky" at Island Gourmand as we are a certified "yucky " and "Barry Manilow" free zone!

One of the problems is that most cookbooks of the pressure cooker variety are, shall we say, really awful, but that does not quite convey the gravity of the awfulness that is most pressure cooking cookbooks...

The first issue I have with said really awful cookbooks is the fact that they tend to make complicated recipes which is sort of exactly NOT what pressure cooking is all about. If you find a pressure cooker recipe that reads like rocket science, remember the famous words of Robby the Robot...

"Danger, Danger Will Robinson..."

...and avoid it like the plague! Another danger sign for pressure cooking recipes is the use of canned anything (though I make an exception to that rule with tomatoes and tomato paste).

A couple of excellent, simple, safe, and boat friendly (for the most part) cookbooks you may want to check out would be "Pressure Perfect" and "Cooking Under Pressure" by Lorna Sass. Either would be a great place to get your pressure on...

I think I need another pressure cooker...

2010-12-15T07:01:00.001-05:00

Solar Burrito shows us the path...

A great Galley blog...

2010-12-09T09:53:00.000-05:00

The Boat Galley is just the sort of galley oriented websites that we need more of... Written by Carolyn Shearlock, its simple and sensible vibe goes a long way towards making it a great resource which only looks like it will get better and better..

In the something to look forward to department there is also mention a a cookbook on the way (so-authored with Jan Irons) that I for one am really looking forward to...

Check it out!

Now this makes sense...

2010-12-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to get around to making something along these lines to deal with excess Mahi Mahi and Tuna for jerky making as well as fruit when it's cheap...

Looks like just the thing!

Flashlight-in-your-teeth-change-the-bottle-two-step...

2010-11-30T08:21:00.002-05:00

We use propane for cooking and grilling aboard "So It Goes" and it's a fact of life that we always run out of gas in the middle of cooking at night... Oh the fun and frolic of doing the flashlight-in-your-teeth-change-the-bottle-two-step!

That said, we seem to get a lot of cooking out of a 20 pound tank of propane as a tank lasts about 2 1/2 months which works out to a bit less than 27¢ a day.

Musing on the price of chicken...

2010-11-28T10:39:00.000-05:00

I have always liked chicken wings, and truth be told given the choice grilled chicken wings always works for me...

The last few times shopping I've noticed that chicken wings are priced just about the same as chicken breasts. Fact is, just about any sort of cut up chicken now seems to be the same price per pound... Odd! Not sure if it is a local thing confined to the USVI but it does throw out a whole new slant on things as while I still love chicken wings they do suffer greatly on the bang for the buck scale if par with other cuts of chicken.

Meanwhile Grilling Companion makes a great case for wings...

Where I go for information on rum...

2010-11-26T15:14:00.002-05:00

Ed Hamilton is the The Man from the Ministry of Rum and what better place to start than Rum 101!

Tasty...

2010-11-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

Stone Soup does it again...

Rum and spice...

2010-11-15T07:40:00.001-05:00

Serious Eats continues with their rum series How to Make Spiced Rum From Scratch
and only one word comes to mind... YES!

Pancakes...

2010-11-14T10:03:00.001-05:00

Chuck and Laura Rose make pancakes on their Albin Vega 27...

Serious Eats is talking rum...

2010-11-11T09:07:00.000-05:00

Today's installment... Can spiced rum be serious?

A quest for a decent Mai Tai...

2010-11-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

It's pretty amazing when you think about it, but I don't think you can get a decent Mai Tai anywhere in the Caribbean...

Beachbum Berry (my main resource when it comes to Tiki culture and libations) has been on something of a quest for Mai Tai's in Europe and having a lot better luck than he'd find here in the Caribbean. You should also note a previous post of his on the correct recipe for a Mai Tai... You might be surprised!

A good read...

2010-11-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

A great (albeit in French) explanation on why dried fruits and vegetables make sense on a boat...

Check it out!

Just the thing...

2010-11-06T11:35:00.000-04:00

Garbanzo beans or Chickpeas are a very boat friendly staple and Smitten Kitchen has a great way to use them in Spaghetti with chickpeas...

A quick pre-Thanksgiving thought...

2010-11-03T12:43:00.003-04:00

Most folk have more sense than to deep fry a turkey on a boat but then again, a lot of folks just voted Republican, so you can't be too careful...

That said, you may want to reconsider that deep fried T-Day Turkey in the cockpit idea...

Chocolate cakes...

2010-11-01T10:10:00.002-04:00

Stone Soup does chocolate cake in four ingredients...

More importantly she does it right!

Another lobster recipe...

2010-10-24T07:56:00.002-04:00

Our friends on the charter yacht "Three Moons" sent us some recipes recently and this one also has me looking for my lobster snare...

Grand Finale Grilled Caribbean Lobster

Ingredients: Serves 6

6 (10-12 oz) lobster tails
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Mrs. Dash original seasoning
1/2 tsp sea salt
Lemon wedges for garnish
1 cup drawn butter, divided

Instructions:

Preheat grill.
While grill is heating, boil lobster tails in a large deep pot of salted water for 3 minutes or until the tails JUST begin to curl.
Remove the lobster with tongs, drain excess water and place on a cutting board. Allow to cool slightly.
With a very sharp knife or kitchen scissors, split the lobster tails all the way through, top and bottom.
Melt butter, stir in seasonings, and brush the tails liberally with seasoned butter mixture.
Place the lobster tails on the grill for 3-4 minutes and baste occasionally. Don't overcook!
Place the lobster tail on serving plate and place a ramekin of drawn butter in the center of the "V".
Garnish with lemon wedges.
Add your favorite side dish and veggie.

On making your own ricotta cheese...

2010-10-23T09:45:00.002-04:00

The other day while shopping I noticed that ricotta cheese had had a big price hike to make it simply too expensive for anything but serious entertaining which is silly as ricotta is more of a basic day to day staple...

As it happened the store in question always has near its end day milk on deep discount and as I passed the milk section I wondered why things I don't use are always cheap and on sale while the stuff I want keep going up.

What did not occur to me at the time is that ricotta is so easy to make (even on a boat) that it's really silly to buy it when cheap milk is available.

So it goes...

Butter poached lobster sounds like just the thing...

2010-10-22T07:49:00.003-04:00

Steamy Kitchen is always a must read for us here on "So It Goes" and her recent lobster recipe is a great example of why...

Simple, tasty and impressive so go and check it out and while you do that I'll be looking for my lobster snare ...

Color me surprised, dried eggs I like...OvaEasy

2010-10-21T07:10:00.001-04:00

Back when we were living in France and cruising about, eggs were a non-problematic issue as they were mostly not refrigerated. In fact, it was illegal for anyone to sell refrigerated eggs in France and this was no bad thing...

It might surprise most people but refrigeration radically cuts down on the shelf life of a lot of products, especially eggs. In the States and down here in the Caribbean almost all eggs are refrigerated and unless you keep them refrigerated they tend to go off.

The other day at the local discount store they had some packages of dried eggs with a clever name. My last memories of dried eggs was the sort of awful breakfast you'd find yourself trying to feed to feral dogs in the boonies of SE Asia (who, I might add, had better sense than to actually eat it). So dried eggs are not exactly a warm & fuzzy memory.

Old memories aside, with the recent problems with eggs and the recalls, I've been somewhat nervous about buying eggs of late and so with a "what the hell" bought a package to give them a try...

The verdict after trying them is way better than expected. In fact, hardly any difference could be found between the OvaEasy eggs and those that came fresh out of a shell. The downside, of course, is that if you sre like me and addicted to over-easy eggs with runny yolks, you're just plain out of luck. On the other hand, for doing omelets, scrambled and general cooking purposes, the OvaEasy eggs are excellent and for a cruising boat something of a slam dunk!

The cost down here was $3.39 for an envelope containing the makings of a dozen eggs which is not too much higher than what a dozen eggs go for locally. One thing that surprised me about our price when compared with stateside pricing, $3.39 is actually cheap. I'll be seriously stocking up on these next time I go to the store.

Really simple chicken...

2010-10-20T07:10:00.000-04:00

Lobstersquad on how to poach your chicken in a pressure cooker...

Liz Clark gets serious in the galley...

2010-10-19T07:53:00.002-04:00

Liz Clark doing the galley thing on her CAL 40 "Swell"...

If you have an oven...

2010-10-18T10:26:00.000-04:00

Stone Soup is talking sourdough and we should be listening!

Squid... it's what for dinner!

2010-10-06T17:08:00.000-04:00

Squid is pretty awful when cooked wrong (well unless your tastes run to old bicycle inner tubes) but Serious Eats tells us how to cook it just right!

A years supply of food...

2010-10-04T14:33:00.007-04:00

I noticed today that CostCo has a deal going on dried and freeze-dried foods in a years-supply-for-one-person selection that comes to a total of $799.99... YOWZA! That said, like all of the years' supply of food kits I have seen, the selection of actual food selection is somewhat dire but there is a lot to be said for $2.19 a day price tag!

Over the last couple of years we have been making an effort to incorporate more dried and long-life foods into our diet for a variety of reasons...

One being that the cost of food in the Caribbean has been getting more and more pricey and a second reason is that while the prices of produce and suchlike keep getting higher there seems to be an inverse situation with quality. As the prices go higher the quality gets more dire. Case in point: the other day we were shopping and the scraggy/gnarly only good for pressure cooking carrots were selling for $1.79 a pound as opposed to the normal 69¢... OUCH! It's scary when meat has become cheaper than vegetables!

Another reason being that, living down here in the Caribbean, we often have periods where some produce and other foodstuffs just don't make it down to the islands. Sometimes for a week or so you will have empty shelves in the supermarkets until the next container ship from Miami makes it down... It's a bitch being at the last link of a distribution chain whether it is toilet paper, cat food or broccoli!

Canned goods have fallen out of favor here on "So It Goes" as the quality of cans are such that they tend to rust in short order and we have never liked canned vegetables (we'll make an exception with canned corn or green beans) but for the most part, canned goods just don't cut it as far as we are concerned.

Dried vegetables on the other hand are pretty good as they store well, taste good (drying actually intensifies flavor) and are pretty reasonable cost-wise. The downside is that there is bugger all in the way of how to cook with dried vegetables cookbooks of a culinary bent and the learning curve in how to use dried food is something of a steep sucker.

Getting back to the CostCo stuff, I should point out that most of the purveyors of dried fruit and vegetable are not really boat-friendly in that they are seriously into bulk packaging which for most companies starts at number 10 cans (1 gallon) and goes up from there... I don't know about you, but trying to stow 84 gallon sized cans around the boat is somewhat problematic or in the case of our 34-foot boat, simply impossible.

Which is one of the reasons we like companies like Harmony House as they have a variety of sizes that range from a cup (sample size), quart pantry size, and in gallon family sized jugs (not cans) which are all very boat friendly resealable packaging and sizing. An added bonus of the smaller packaging is that you can try something and if you don't like it you are not stuck with nearly a gallon of beets (or whatever) that you hate!

For us, the advantage of having a store of dried food is that when carrots reach a silly price, dreadful quality or are simply not available where we happen to be, we can still have carrots or whatever on the menu tonight...

2010-09-29T09:53:00.000-04:00

I'm certainly looking forward to finding this on my local news stand...

Chicken wings done right...

2010-09-14T09:13:00.001-04:00

On a boat there's a lot to be said for simple and easy...

Guilty Carnivore gets it right and shows us how!

Happy national waffle day...

2010-08-24T09:20:00.000-04:00

On this day (August 24) in 1869 Cornelius Swarthout took out a patent for the waffle iron...

Do the right thing... You know you want to!

2010-08-20T09:28:00.001-04:00

Some time back I mentioned I liked the Coleman all stainless French press coffee maker and was getting one...

We've had it for a while now and it is even better than I expected. It's easy to use and clean and one advantage I had not considered is that being stainless you can simply boil water in the coffee maker... No messing about with sauce pans or kettles!

Best yet, is the fact that it is unbreakable so no worries like we had with our glass coffee maker or annoying plastic tasting coffee like the other sort (plastic) of unbreakable coffee makers provide...

Bummed...

2010-08-06T10:22:00.002-04:00

Since I've been concentrating on the weather and keeping an eye on "Colin", I seemed to have missed two very special days. Then who knew that National Cheesecake Day, International Beer day and Tropical Storm Colin were barreling down the track so quickly...

As for Cheesecake Day... Well, I did make a cheesecake yesterday, and while it was not the day in question, it did taste mighty fine. On the other hand, International Beer Day took us completely by surprise and there was not a drop on board... Bummer!

I did, however, read some very interesting stuff about beer over at Balloon Juice and you should too. If only to realize just what a great president Jimmy Carter was and how without him the whole micro-brewery thing would never have happened!