What is your best provisioning tip?

[Brent Swain]

Buy Rose Elliot's book"The Bean Book," learn to cook beans many different ways . You can cruise a year on less than $50 worth. They keep forever, take little space , and cost penies. Also good emergency supplies.
Brent

[AdamY]

We've been cruising in Mexico and we've discovered that there are few things that you can't get in Mexico. There are Costcos everywhere, not to mention good grocery stores and farmer's markets.

If anything, I recommend that you avoid buying too much of anything and just eat fresh foods that the locals eat. We've been doing this and haven't regretted it. The food that locals eat tends to be local prices too, as opposed to gringo prices, which is nice.

I agree with previous posters...stick to stocking up on those few particular gourmet-type items that you will really miss. For me, I miss peanut butter Clif bars and Toblerone chocolate bars. I also miss spinach.

Also, we love asian/Thai/Indian food so we bought a mega-bag of Jasmine rice from Costco and vaccum sealed it in small bags. Haven't found jasmine rice anywhere, so it was a good move.

Kris
s.v. Estrella

[savvy]

powdered wasabi and wheat free soya sauce. crystallized ginger and carr's crackers. lemon joy for everything salt water related.
great thread

[cnj]

I like Lipton Sides. They come in all sorts of flavors. Cook according to instructions. All of them say to let sit for 2 minutes before serving. During that 2 minutes I add a tin of canned meat and stir. Viola, a decent meal in half an hour and only one pan to clean.

[JusDreaming]

we stock up on paper goods. They seem to be the one of the priciest items to buy in the Bahamas. And tortillas, seem to last forever, and make great sandwich wraps, also packages of nori,(roasted seaweed), and powdered wasabi for sushi.

[hellosailor]

"wheat free soya sauce."
Has become damned hard to find in the States, even in the Health Food stores. The Japanese have two distinct words for soy sauce made with/without wheat, like we say "Coke not Pepsi!" In the US, we used to reserve the word "Tamari" for the wheat-free kind, but somewhere in the past 30 years it has all become soy sauce, with wheat.
Except for LaChoy, bless their pointy little heads. In the 60's LaChoy brought tinned Cantonese food to a US that largely didn't have Chinese Restaurants (unless they also served "polynesian" platters<G>) and once we learned there was more than that, UGH, no one who orders Chinese takeout these days buys LaChoy tins. But...they still use wheat-free soy sauce (or "a miserable excuse for soy sauce" according to some) and gluten-free products in their tinned dinners. Bless 'em.

Tortillas: Heck, what could go moldy in a sluge of ground corn and LIME?!<G> But now tortillas have also become a big deal in the US, be careful because all the "fancy" ones are now back to FLOUR tortillas, not just corn, and the flour ones don't keep the same way either.

Lipton Sides remind me of another product they had in the 70's and eventually pulled from the market, "all in one" freeze dried meals with beef stroganoff and other "meat and noodle" dishes all in one. Considering there weren't many freeze dried camping meals back then and no MREs for civilians <G> they had a window of opportunity.<G>

These days I read some of the ingredient lists and decide a cup of rice and some dried or frozen catch-as-catch-can mixed in has certain attractions too.<G>

[Mustang Sally]

Dryed mushrooms. Get lots before you leave, if heading to the Caribbean, cause they are very hard to find. Dryed ones will last for years, just soak in water and they are good to go. If heading to the Bahamas stock up on everything. If heading to the VI's don't worry, lots of big supermarkets at great prices.

[susan collyar]

Originally Posted by starfish62

Pressure cooker is a must! I have a recipe for pressure cooker bread that actually works. The vacuum pack thing sounds like a great idea. It would have been nice to have something dry after a rainy passage!

Would love to get your recipe for the bread. Love to use my pressure cooker but never have heard of this recipe. Someone had mentioned to use that they had heard about pressure cooker fried chicken. Have you seen this recipe? Sounds dangerous!

Thanks, Susan

[hellosailor]

Many (all?) of the fried chicken chain restaurants pressure fry their chicken. And modern pressure cookers are all "safe" if you read and follow the directions. Jam 'em up and safety valve should blow out without a major explosion--but you're still going to have a problem.

[cat man do]

What is your best provisioning tip?

You can never carry enough beer, spirits and mixers

(Having flown rum into Lizard Island Qld by Seaplane)

Dave

Dave

[Wahoo]

Don't you have to be careful about what you provision and where you do it, as your next port may make you toss it all? Have to say though, that Costco has some of the best meat you can find...at least it is here in the US, not certain about Mexico (but would love to know that answer). I'd load up in the filets and ribeyes, vacuum packing will make them last 2-3 years w/out going bad...there's just somethiing about a nicely grilled steak.

As for smoking your meat while grilling, I have both a stove top smoker and a smoke box for the grill...have to say that I love both of them and have given them as presents often. Camerons Professional Cookware I also works great w/ fish.

Wahoo

[forsailbyowner]

Nobody mentioned it so ... We can with our pressure cooker we have a big one that holds 20 pint jars. We have 200 pint jars and a large stock of lids. When we find an especially good sale on pork beef veggies or just about anything we stock up and run a couple of rounds in the pressure cooker. It all gets packed in polyester wrap used to wrap cushions when upholstering. Works great when landing a large fish or running into a school of something. We recently bought 100 lbs of mullet from a netter for $40 and smoked and canned it. mmmmmm good. and keeps literally for years

[Sandero]

A vacuum sealer.

[Nauticatarcher]

"GLAD" ice cube bags, great way to make ice at sea no spillage

[waterworldly]

What's the deal with every boat coming with a double sink? I have had both, and if you can only have two tiny sinks in your double, I personally would much prefer a large single, and then I can partition it when needed with a smaller square wash pan, or usually at home I use whatever was used at dinner (salad bowl, pot etc) as the "washing sink" and rinse all at the end in the big sink. The larger sink comes in handy for baking pans, washing a whole chicken, fish etc. Just a point, as they always use that as a selling point, but I don't understand how two undersized sinks are an advantage.