An article worth reading...

Noonsite (a great cruising resource) has an excellent guide to provisioning you really should check out and well worth your time.

Better than the usual...

A better than the usual provisioning article you might want to check out.

Late but well worth reading...

Truth be told, I seldom find articles or blog fodder regarding cooking on boats to be very educational or inspiring. Maybe my problem is I read a lot books, articles, and blogs on cooking and, as a result, I just find the boat oriented output less than exciting.

One of my regular reads in terms of food and suchlike is Serious Eats which is entertaining, educational, and inspirational in the "Boy, do I have to try this recipe!" sense.

As it happens, Serious Eats had a really good article "Life at Sea: The Pleasures and Perils of Nautical Cooking"  by Lauren Sloss a couple of years back on the subject of cooking on boats and you should really check it out.

Really.

Pretty much sets the standard from where I sit.

A very interesting article from the BBC...

Just about everything you need to know regarding protein and well worth checking out.

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!

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...

In the "why didn't I ever think of this" department...

Some great advice on food storage for the galley over at Serious Eats...

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.

An excellent post...

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

You may want to check it out!

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.

A quick note about portions...

On my last few trips to the local Cost U Less I've been noticing that a lot of products have been changing their packaging and playing with the volume/weight...

This does not make me a happy camper!

In my world, a half-gallon bottle should actually contain a half-gallon, a five-pound bag of rice should contain five pounds and so on... The old standard one-pound package of spaghetti now seem to be 14-ounces or less.

Fiddling the amounts to increase profit is an old trick used by companies but, for those of us who do long term/range provisioning, it requires some higher math to figure out if you can get from point A to B without running out of something needful.

I don't know about you, but my higher math skills really suck when I'm forced to listen to piped in muzak while being jostled by folks who can't seem to control their shopping carts. So to be safe I tend to overbuy or not buy some stuff at all.

Kinda problematic!

On being frugal...

I'm a sucker for articles about how to save money on the food front, they always suck me in and most of the time I feel suckered when the article does not provide the answers I was looking for.

Of course, part of this is because most of those writing about saving money are not actually on budgets and it usually winds up being a short list of things to cut out or use cheaper ingredients... DUH! My favorite, a couple of years back, included the advice to economize by trying a California Champagne instead of French...

Over at Boing Boing today they actually had a pretty good one and you should give it a read. Where it does not work for boat folk is gardening is not really an option but otherwise it makes a whole lot of sense.

Provisions... A few thoughts on the dried stuff

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...

Some good stuff...

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

A really excellent post...

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

Popcorn...

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...

Braised red cabbage...

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...

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

A good read...

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

Check it out!

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

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.