Advice on meals on Passage

[zeehag]

meals on passage are hand held stuff or fish. hand held stuff includes pizza--best was a 4 pizza passage of 180 miles duration..finish last slice as you dock boat..... and there are pb and j passages .
folks without fridges have been sailing the oceans for centuries without resorting to mres.
cruisers who are full time aboard eat different than part time cruisers.
cruisers with fridge eat different foods than those with freezers.
i have mexican food passages , pizza passages and other --depending on my shanghai'd crew.
to date, mexican food passages are almost as easy as pizza passages, and much easier than spaghetti passages or gourmet food passages. one pan and tortillas--how simple can ye get. use tortillas as spoons and ye dont have much to clean up.

[Olly75]

Originally Posted by jstevens

John

I should add we sterilized the inside of those rice and pasta bags before filling and sealing them.

Can you share how you sterilise the vac bags?

Ta

Olly

[GILow]

I feel guilty about the waste, but I do love my pod coffee machine when under way.

It gives way to the Italian style stove top espresso machine at anchor or in light conditions.

[Zofia]

Many of the suggestions already put forward are in our repertoire. Here are a a couple of other things we do.
**Pre-made lasagna, curry and rice meals vac sealed and frozen in FOIL TRAYS. They defrost quickly and can be heated in the oven. I like the oven as both our meals can be done at the same time and without any attention in rough weather even if it’s a bit more greedy on the gas use. We eat directly from the tray. No washing up except 2 forks.
**Mushroom risotto, a batch can be eaten over a couple of days. We like this in colder weather ahead of a night watch as it sits in your tummy for a while like a heating brick. Adding peas, beans and cooked chicken over successive nights provides some variations until it’s gone.
**We buy a cooked chicken, strip the flesh and store it the fridge in a plastic container.This is then available for sandwiches, salads, adding into risotto etc.
**boiled eggs. Sustenance on the go, particularly if weather is a bit willing and going below to prepare anything, at all, is out of the question. There will always be some salt on the silverware to improve flavour. No dishes and shells go over the side.
***Passage soup. Key ingredients are a couple of tins of tomatoes + 2-3 tsp of ground cinnamon, then as many chopped veggies as you can. Onion, carrot, celery zucchini, broccoli stalks, parsnip, shredded cabbage. Whatever you can. It shouldn’t be a sloppy soup but quite dense like a stew. Add any pulses over the days like kidney beans, chic peas, lentils etc. chopped salami, chorizo, leftover cooked chicken. Serve with parmesan cheese, croutons, chopped fresh herbs etc
***quiche or zucchini slice. Eat hot or cold. In your hand or on a plate.
***bacon & egg muffins. Single pan. Plates optional.

We sail two up. Skipper downloads the weather at supper time and updates waypoints in the chartplotter while I prepare supper. After eating he goes to bed between 8pm and 1am. I’m a night owl and don’t struggle to stay awake for this shift. After handover, I go below until dawn. We have breakfast together before skipper gets weather update before having another short snooze. We nap as we need during the day. We tried various 3 or 4 hr rotations but it didn’t work well for us.

Bon appetite - Happy passaging!

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by TheThunderbird

As an Italian gourmet and cook, eating with best porcelain dishes l can afford, Japanese cutlery and Norwegian bowls/French pans, l feel....APPALLED

You've been hearing from the cooks. I'm about as far from a chef as you can get. What I often make at sea is a one pot meal starting with mac and cheese, and throwing in junks of ham and a can of green beans.


That's a step up from my racing days, when the breakfast of champions was Oreos and beer...

[hellosailor]

Gazza-
I think you can see how much variation there is in what people want or do. There's also a coffee-at-sea thread, either here or on that other forum, that goes on about which kind of coffee is best and how to make it on a boat. I think a thermos bottle is fairly essential for any of them, to keep the coffee hot after making it. The "vintage" genuine glass thermos bottles, not the new stainless steel ones, keep things hotter far longer. Of course, they are more delicate.
There are "drip filter baskets" very similar to the Melitta baskets, which require only that you put the coffee in them, and then pour hot water over it. Place one of these over a thermos bottle in the sink, pour in hot water from a kettle, cap it and you've got coffee for six or eight hours, scalding hot. Simple and cheap, if you enjoy plain drip coffee.

If you look online for older (1900's) cook books, refrigeration was a rarity then too, so the methods and recipes can be good for small boats. There are number of cooking threads out there, the trick is, what works for you? If one of you is willing to spend three hours doing galley prep while the other helms, by all means go haute cuisine.

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by Zofia

Many of the suggestions already put forward are in our repertoire. Here are a a couple of other things we do.
**Pre-made lasagna, curry and rice meals vac sealed and frozen in FOIL TRAYS. They defrost quickly and can be heated in the oven. I like the oven as both our meals can be done at the same time and without any attention in rough weather even if it’s a bit more greedy on the gas use. We eat directly from the tray. No washing up except 2 forks.
**Mushroom risotto, a batch can be eaten over a couple of days. We like this in colder weather ahead of a night watch as it sits in your tummy for a while like a heating brick. Adding peas, beans and cooked chicken over successive nights provides some variations until it’s gone.
**We buy a cooked chicken, strip the flesh and store it the fridge in a plastic container.This is then available for sandwiches, salads, adding into risotto etc.
**boiled eggs. Sustenance on the go, particularly if weather is a bit willing and going below to prepare anything, at all, is out of the question. There will always be some salt on the silverware to improve flavour. No dishes and shells go over the side.
***Passage soup. Key ingredients are a couple of tins of tomatoes + 2-3 tsp of ground cinnamon, then as many chopped veggies as you can. Onion, carrot, celery zucchini, broccoli stalks, parsnip, shredded cabbage. Whatever you can. It shouldn’t be a sloppy soup but quite dense like a stew. Add any pulses over the days like kidney beans, chic peas, lentils etc. chopped salami, chorizo, leftover cooked chicken. Serve with parmesan cheese, croutons, chopped fresh herbs etc
***quiche or zucchini slice. Eat hot or cold. In your hand or on a plate.
***bacon & egg muffins. Single pan. Plates optional.

We sail two up. Skipper downloads the weather at supper time and updates waypoints in the chartplotter while I prepare supper. After eating he goes to bed between 8pm and 1am. I’m a night owl and don’t struggle to stay awake for this shift. After handover, I go below until dawn. We have breakfast together before skipper gets weather update before having another short snooze. We nap as we need during the day. We tried various 3 or 4 hr rotations but it didn’t work well for us.

Bon appetite - Happy passaging!

Good post!
Sounds like good tasting food too. Similar tastes.
Good methods for a couple.

[JPA Cate]

One of the snack foods we sometimes prepare in advance that does not require refrigeration is pickled eggs.

I keep our pickled onion jars, and their juice, with all the spices. Hard boil up "enough" eggs, to fill the jars. [People seem to eat them one at a time, so the smallest eggs give you more per jar, but whatever size you generally buy works fine.]

When you're ready to go, start the eggs to hard cook. Pour out the juices, and put them in a pan, they must boil, but don't have to be at a full rolling boil. In another pan, place the empty jars and lids, and steam them.

When the eggs are done, put them in cool sea water to cool them. You want to keep changing the water till they are coolish to hold. Then you can peel them. Put the peeled eggs in the jars (I use a spoon, to keep them intact), and pour over the simmering juices, screw the lids down. Wait at least 3 days, and they're a savory snack.

Another easy snack food is boil up some small potatoes. Keep them in the pressure cooker. Open PC, and eat with salt and pepper, no lube (butter or whatever), if you're seasick, it may calm that tummy.

A.

[barnakiel]

We make all regular meals as we did back at home. Pasta, rice with odds, soups, potatis and salads (as long as green stuff lasts, anyways). When we have no longer fresh green stuff, we move on to canned goods.

I think only exception being when it is too rolly we generally do not boil nor fry but much rather overuse the oven. Fresh pizza can be made from basic ingredients in anything but severe weather, in less than 1 hour.

We bake bread when we want fresh bread but as we are butter people once the butter goes out, we stop baking bread. We move on to sweet Swedish buns etc. then.

So this is how it is from the perspective of a small boat with no fridge.

Cheers,
b.

[jstevens]

"Can you share how you sterilise the vac bags?"

Fill them with boiling water, empty, then fill with food.

John

[zboss]

You can’t sterilize them without an autoclave but you can sanitize them using a properly diluted solution of bleach and water or you can do the same with “five star chemicals star San” much faster. The star San is preferable because it’s less sensitive to improper dilution and will still work.

[jstevens]

Thanks for the info.

[Pete7]

What happened to full cooked breakfasts? okay perhaps not on the first couple of mornings at sea, but from then onwards. Fried eggs and bacon, fried bacon grill or sausages and fried bread dipped in the pan to set the crew up for the day.

Pete

[Olly75]

Originally Posted by Pete7

What happened to full cooked breakfasts? okay perhaps not on the first couple of mornings at sea, but from then onwards. Fried eggs and bacon, fried bacon grill or sausages and fried bread dipped in the pan to set the crew up for the day.

Pete

After a particularly heavy night I had a full English in a Glaswegian greasy spoon the other day (first time in years). Once I had persuaded my heart that the end wasn't nigh, did wonder how its still legal to serve proper fried bread.

Edit: it might have been a full scottish but I was in no condition to tell.....

[Olly75]

Originally Posted by zboss

You can’t sterilize them without an autoclave but you can sanitize them using a properly diluted solution of bleach and water or you can do the same with “five star chemicals star San” much faster. The star San is preferable because it’s less sensitive to improper dilution and will still work.

Star San looks like the right stuff. Thanks