What I Need the Most Often, and How I Make it Last the Longest . . .

[savoir]

OK, I'll save you all from the flies for a while anyway and go back to containers.

There are lots of good brands besides lock and lock. There is one just as good called Snapware and some of the Chinese copies that Target and KMart sell aren't too bad. The basic idea is that you must have a lockable tab and a gasket. Get lots of little ones too. They are great for herbs and chillies. Herbs and spices are heaps cheaper if you buy them in plastic sachets rather than little bottles.

Buy your favorite sauces in the big bottles they sell at Costco and then divide them up into several little ones. Drizzle a little oil on top to keep the air off the sauce. Stored this way your ketchup etc will last at least a year. Lots of little bottles are better than a few big ones because it's the air that sends the food off.

Salami will keep unrefrigerated for about 4 months provided it comes in a traditional case and not a plastic sleeve which will make it sweat. Hard and dry salamis like cacciatori will keep 6 months.

Wrap all your hard vegetables in newspaper and store them in a dry locker where they should keep about a month. Potato, carrot, sweet potato, garlic, ginger, onion, oranges, lemons, limes and cabbages can all be kept this way. Once whatever was in the paper has been eaten trash it immediately lest the cockroaches move in.

Oh, one more vote for eating native, perhaps without the flies. American supermarket food is so bland and boring and genetically engineered to within an inch of its life. Oh how I miss the lumpy, bumpy, spotted poxy looking bananas they sell at the native markets - yum, they were the best ones. Those perfectly formed, yellow, smooth, blemish free supermarket bananas just don't compare. Then there's the tasteless apples, tomatoes, peaches, bread, chicken . . . . . . . . sigh !

[Pelagic]

I am all for eating native produce.... just not native health standards when it comes to preparation or storage

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Boatman…please….. I’ve got to say advocating that we should be eating to 3rd world health standards is such a load of crap, I can only believe you enjoy stirring the pot.

There is a reason that our bodies react to such food and it is not because it is full of such healthy goodness.

Consider life expectancy difference between countries or this simple bar graph showing percentage of deaths due to intestinal diseases per country.

Intestinal diseases death rate by country. Definition, graph and map.

Your blessed Pakistan is right up there as is my Philippines

Sure, over processed foods are also unhealthy, but we are intelligent enough to recognize that it is not good for us and take steps other than eating a slice of fly infested meat from a market stall as you recommend.

Geez!....

ROFL..... well.. the West has heart and lung/bowel deaths..
3rd World has intestinal diseases.. but usually the deaths are results of poverty/poor medical facilities and ignorance...
Worms are a major cause.. usually water buffalo meat which is famous for 'tape'... also thread worm... easily sorted if you know the symptoms... and something you get in the west as well...
also living conditions... lets face it.. live in Mumbai's slums or a village in a mud hut and cooking on open fires with cowpats mixed with straw... yup your at risk..
But I lived there 16yrs... my Mom from '43. when she went out there with the WRAF during the war... and she's still going strong at 88... she did not move to Canada till '97....
and at 62 I'm just fine.. with the occasional worming... but then one does that with 'old dogs' if sensible..
So making a 'Poverty vs Rich' comparisons is unfair...
check the herbs/spices/roots they use for food... Ginger, Garlic, Turmeric, Cloves, Chilli etc, etc... all acclaimed beneficial stuff full of antibiotics, blood thinners, antioxidants etc... its good stuff.. just needs tying in with good health education and practices...
Not exactly 100% in the west either....
But I'd rather have a Naan Kebab at a Pakistani road side stall that I've watched being cooked than a mechanically recovered burger pre cooked and nuked in pap from 'Mac's' anyday.. same goes for the 'Nuggets' from the Colonel'...
And I won't even mention the Vomit thats used in Taco King...
Horses for courses....

[savoir]

You won't find too many natives storing their food. When you can't afford electricity you eat everything the day you buy or the day after.

That leads to another habit that must be learned - eating seasonal.

[savoir]

I'm not too sure that the Colonel sells nuggets any more but Ronald McDonald sure does. Here in a book review one author gives a little detail on what goes into the things.

" The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a fascinating book that details the changing eating habits of Americans. It explains how, over the last 30 years, we have become a nation that eats vast quantities of corn – much more so than Mexicans, the original "corn people."

Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn?

What else is in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget? Besides corn, and to a lesser extent, chicken, The Omnivore's Dilemma describes all of the thirty-eight ingredients that make up a McNugget – one of which I'll bet you'll never guess. During this part of the book, the author has just ordered a meal from McDonald’s with his family and taken one of the flyers available at McDonald’s called "A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts: Choose the Best Meal for You." These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”


The "chicken" that goes into the nuggets isn't real chicken either. It's this stuff.

PHOTO: Pre-Chicken Nugget Meat Paste, AKA Mechanically Separated Poultry [Updated]

YUK !

[Fortytwo]

"What I Need the Most Often, and How I Make it Last the Longest . . ."

An original thread, and one that stays on topic...

[goboatingnow]

We live in the west in the " matrix". It looks right and fools our brain. But what's really there

Dave

[boatman61]

"What I Need the Most Often,
SEX
and How I Make it Last the Longest . . ."
Vaiagra...

An original thread, and one that stays on topic...

We really try hard..... HONEST....

[savoir]

Originally Posted by Fortytwo

"What I Need the Most Often, and How I Make it Last the Longest . . ."

An original thread, and one that stays on topic...

As you wish master . . . .

Fresh herbs are the best herbs and here is the best way to keep them the longest.

Take a plastic container that is wide and flat. Line it with 2 layers of that rubber mesh stuff that comes in rolls. I think it is meant for table mats. Place herbs in container and then into the fridge where they should last a week.

You have to wipe the container lid dry as you use it.

I got plenty more.

No flies were killed in the making of this post.

[paradisenow1946]

Before I leave on a cruise, I go to sams club and stock up on cases of canned goods, toilet paper (5cases last one winter season) box milk (parliment is one of the best)
IN the canned goods, i get canned pink salmon, Tuna, Canned cooked potaotes, corned beef, green beans, canned tomatoes (or in the island s you can get soft packets of tomatoe sauce, Pasta of all sorts (lbs of it) Olive oil and corn oil, Tomatoe Paste, Kraft boxed Spagetti dinners, Walmarts Great food brand soups , cambell soups, Great foods Mac and cheeze (absolutley hands down the best ) canned oilves and pickles (sweet ones) they are great for sweet cravings. Crackers usually 3 or four big packages, NUTELLA (several huge jars) it is a spread of skim milk chocolate and hazel nuts, great on bread or crackers. Chips in small bags (two cases at least)
chips in islands are very very expensive, Dry beans of all sorts esp navy beans, black eyed peas and chick beans (garabanzos esp dryed are the best)
long lasting frig idems to have are salt pork (last forever) Bacon, Butter ( you can never buy enough and if you bag it in plastic baggies it last ages) eggs (try to get fresh from the farm- those lasted me 2-3months. dinner rolls (great for fast dinners)
Condiments (catsup, mustard and mayo) i buy the 3packet of small cans of mayo by hellmans, that way you dont have to open huge ones and worry.. Sardines and smoked oysters (a good appitizer to bring to onshore parties is crackers topped with good mustard and smoked oysters and cheeze. Oh plenty of cheeze, usually sharp chedder last the longest and u can use for any dish, staples like flour sugar salt (oh make sure all those are in sealed plastic containers and rice is added into salt as will turn to a block of hard stuff if left out. Salt shakers (two with rice and salt) handy for salting pasta water (make sure to add olive oil to pasta water to get better tasting pasta cooks faster anddoesnt stick) Rice (usually 20-30lbs for a winter) i buy mexican rice at the dollar store its great and cheap, i put a bit of olive oil and spices in water with rice too , its great)
Meat is the hardest thing to find traveling, the most expensive. A steak in st thomas for one lb rib eye was $18, it was great btw but pricey..
again Milk in boxs, Milk in virgins is $13 for a gallon.. box milk for a qt is $3..
I also buy bulk idems like Cannelli beans (white kidneys) and Powdered milk and powdered cheeze (like in mac and cheeze boxs) its on bulkfood.com.
For winter provisioning food only takes me 3months to buy and get the amts i need, dry goods are one trip, I stock up on dog food for my cavalier (her bin is 80lbs) and the cat food bin holds 40lbs enought for one season (one 3lb thing of dry cat food was $8 down in virgins and higher elsewhere if you can find it)
ON fruit buy the delmonte case of mandarin oranges, you can put them in salads and they are great snacks,s uper good eating, peachs, pears and such in cans,
OH a tip on storage, put things into plastic bags esp packaged foods, they will last longer and be fresher. dry food goes into plastic boxs with tops, and dont store can goods in shelves, i put them into plastic boxs i get from walmart the ones like you store sweaters in. I found they wont rust that way. Make sure your can opener is in a plastic bag, it will rust due to salt in the air exposure.
Luxury idems like cigarettes, chocolate and candys are also plastic bagged, i buy gallon freezer bags in a case from sams club and bag it all when i get it, if i can take it out of the box, i do, remember to take the instructions and put them in the bag if its a prepared meal. try not to keep any cardboard on the boat even for stuff from the store like pasta boxs, roachs love paper of any sort esp newspaper and brown boxs.
If your out and run out of something and there is a local place on the islands check them out, go to where locals shop, there are usually two stores in most places one the tourist go to (higher prices) and the one locals shop at , ask soemone, they love boaters were there economic base in winter. buy local stuff, if you find butter check am prices to british or dutch brands, the import is usually cheaper in the islands.
When im in long island bahamas i stock up on english drinking chocolate as is cheaper and easy to get, same with chocolate bars i buy the cadbury brand its cheaper than the american stuff and much better tasting last long in the frig in plastic bag too.
ON fresh produce check out local out door markets, usually they are on weekends, also check out local transportation, like in boqaron pr there is no laundrmat it closed ages ago, but there is alocal bus (like an open mini van) that you can pay .50 cents and got to cabo rico and do laundry and find an open fruit and veggie market
Laundry is expensive, buy soap in quanity in the US, a 5gal thing of tide in US at sams was $12, one tiny bottle in bahamas was 12 dollars (10ozs) get a small bottle to take what you need. do small loads, most washers are old and dont wash good, if they have big ones ask how many loads andhow well it washes to the attendent, most are honest and they will save you money
in st thomas i did 4loads and two loads of rugs, for $17. The rugs were small area ones like kitchen rugs.i get at the dollar store. if they are terrible or you cant wash rugs for ages ( iget two sets) you can toss one or two if you need to..
I do alot of stocking up at general dollar before i leave. esp soaps, and cleaning tools and also keep lots of bar keeprs friend for spot cleaning inside and out
Another staple on the boat is VINEGAR

[downunder]

Originally Posted by Fortytwo

"What I Need the Most Often, and How I Make it Last the Longest . . ."

An original thread, and one that stays on topic...

Try the Sumatran food, with enough chilli in it it is displayed in shop windows without refrigeration.

[F15EWSO]

Originally Posted by savoir

As you wish master . . . .

Fresh herbs are the best herbs and here is the best way to keep them the longest.

Take a plastic container that is wide and flat. Line it with 2 layers of that rubber mesh stuff that comes in rolls. I think it is meant for table mats. Place herbs in container and then into the fridge where they should last a week.

You have to wipe the container lid dry as you use it.

I got plenty more.

No flies were killed in the making of this post.

Savoir,
thanks for the tip on the storage of the herbs, that's the level of detail or clever little trick I was looking for.

Cheers