Wife's a Vegetarian - Any Good Veggie Storage Strategies ?

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by storyinframes

How is veg situation like in south pacific?

Wish I knew and hope one day I can find out in person.

Unfortunately my experience to date is limited to the Bahamas, Caribbean and a bit of South America.

I'm sure there are plenty on the forum that have been to the Pacific and can comment from personal experience but I would speculate that the situation is similar to what I found. Small, low islands like the Bahamas are typically pretty dry so agricultural options are limited. When they also have a very small local population and few tourists there is no reason to for local farmers to produce much for resale.

The larger, higher islands have more rainfall and usually larger populations to support, so more food options.

I would use this as a rule of thumb to plan my provisioning stops. Look forward to hearing what the Pacific experts have to say.

[JanetGroene]

You didn't mention availability of refrigeration, freezer, re-supply and water. If water is in short supply, scrub white and sweet potatoes in port, dry well, wrap each in a paper towel. That keeps them dry and isolates any that go bad. Pick over often. Much depends on how fresh vegetables were when purchased. Canned beets and green beans are versatile, good hot or cold, but canned spinach is vile and canned squash is a waste of space because it's mostly water. Start now to sample freeze-dry vegetables. They're darned good. I haven't found many dehydrates that I like (except white potatoes or onions) but one has to sample and experiment with different prep methods. If you get into home canning, try canning mashed butternut squash because it makes the best use of space. Look in all sections of the market including places you don't usually shop and you'll find treasures such as sweet potato latke mix with Kosher foods and canned eggplant appetizer with Italian foods. Many baby foods are also a good value. Put a jar of strained beets in chocolate cake. Yum.

[MarkJ]

Many people say only to get food that hasn't been refrigerated, however in most of the world thats very difficult in supermarkets. (Excapt maybe Asia).
Here in the Caribbean everything seems to be flown in from the USA or other countries and is cool-stored.

Contary to opinion I find cool-stored fruit and veges last quite well, like at home.

If you wanted fresh unrefrigerated food here all you would eat would be plaintians, weird looking things and coconuts.

Perhaps instead of a never ending search for farm fresh it would be an idea to build or use a second fridge not as cold as the normal one.


Mark

[Kapena]

Very difficult to obtain fresh veggies in the atolls in the Pacific, but easy in the high islands. Fiji, Tahiti, Cooks, Tonga and Vanuatu are easy and plentiful. Non existent in Kiribati (except Tarawa), Marshalls (except Majuro), Tuvalu, Tokelau. The soil there is sandy and will not support most veggies. The islanders don't grow enough to sell.

We used the green veggie bags for storage. You can wash them out and reuse them many times over. Incredible the length of time your veggies will last in them, maybe 5 to 10 times longer.

[SaucySailoress]

Keeping them dry is important. Salad stuff, naturally goes in the fridge - but harder veg - roots and stuff go in wire drawers which we built in especially. They're from IKEA - and we took the runners from the frames and mounted them under our table. Works OK for us!

[GordMay]

Q: If vegetarians eat vegetables; what do humanitarians eat?

[SaucySailoress]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Q: If vegetarians eat vegetables; what do humanitarians eat?

humanitables?

[SaucySailoress]

Originally Posted by Kapena

We used the green veggie bags for storage. You can wash them out and reuse them many times over. Incredible the length of time your veggies will last in them, maybe 5 to 10 times longer.

Never heard of them. Can you find one online and post a link (even better, a picture as well) so we can see?

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SaucySailoress

Never heard of them. Can you find one online and post a link (even better, a picture as well) so we can see?

Debbie Meyer and/or Evert Fresh “Green Bags”
➥ Do Debbie Meyer and Evert Fresh Green Bags Work?

Debbie Meyer ➥ http://www.cakecutter.com/greenbags.html
Evert Fresh ➥ http://www.evertfresh.com/

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Q: If vegetarians eat vegetables; what do humanitarians eat?

I Googled: How to Fatten a Missionary.

But the results were a bit slender.

So, Gord, you will have to work it out for yourself


Mark

[bbbbbguy]

One of my favorite "chores" on the boat is shopping. Although I am a meat eater (and a very proud one), I love my daily jaunt to the market for the fresh local veggies. When distance cruising, you can take a collection of canning jars and replacement lids. You can pack 100 replacement lids in a very small space. Most onboard stoves are sufficient for the process. When near shore, plan to interact with the locals at the Farmers Market. When you are ready to head off, can your veggies as part of your trip planning. The stores will get you to the next Farmers Market.

[HopCar]

My wife has used the green bags and also a hockey puck like device that she put in the veggie drawer. Both the bags and the hockey puck would absord the ethelene gas that rippening fruit gives off. It did extend the storage life by several days maybe a week.

[w1651]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

I Googled: How to Fatten a Missionary.

But the results were a bit slender.

So, Gord, you will have to work it out for yourself


Mark

Excuse me I have to go run my big toe into furniture to get my mind off the pain..

But first my 2 cents:

1.0 onions, potatos, carrots,beets,anything that is a root, hang from a net in a dark cool place after washing and drying thoroughly. They will keep a long while.
2.0 Always Go to where the locals shop and Ask around to find that place. And don't be afraid to try new things.
3.0 Get a really good cookbook for use on your boat and get a few recipes under your belt using different things in the ares you want to venture to.Before you leave.
4.0 Dry goods are staples. Beans, Rice, Pasta are things you load up on before you leave..
5.0 No one has mentioned fruits. In the islands fruits can go a long way. Fish with coconut milk and mango fruit salad are just one.
6.0 Buy things that are NOT ripe. Tomatoes, peppers,plantains,etc will ripen on the way to the next port or sitting on a shelf.
7.0 Get a solar dehydrator. And you can dry tomatoes in the sun on the deck.
8.0 fruits and vegi's give off gas. Learn what can be combined together and what will spoil if you put it in the same place. I had a list of what gasses were given off by different vegi's and it does work to seperate them.
9.0 I like a small cooler that works off of 12 volts. It doesn't cool like a fridge but cools enough for vegi's and drinks.
10.0 Wash fruit and vegi's in water with a spoon full of bleach to help them last longer

Good luck and fair winds P.s popcorn really lasts

[w1651]

Here is a website about the gasses given off by vegis

Why should we avoid storing fruits and vegetables together? - Yahoo! Answers

[farotherside]

Originally Posted by cat man do

Apart from Beef, which I also eat some of, and pork and chicken, I have some of that as well and lamb and duck, and I have a bit of fish as well

But I am a vegetarian

I'm an omnivore, but my girlfriend is a moral vegetarian - that is, she'll only eat meat that is killed, cleaned and cooked in her presence. She believes - and rightly so - that there's just not enough food on the planet for everyone to eat like North Americans.

Agree on 'Sailing The Farm', however it seems that a lot of the techniques in the book are optimistic...drying food, pickling and especially sprouting are definitely the way to go, but getting water from 'solar stills' is difficult and unreliable.

On our 39' trimaran, we've recently converted the last 2' in the aft cabin to a shelf/ledge that houses four 16"x16" tupperware containers side-by-side, in which we're building four self-watering garden boxes to grow green leafy vegetables. Currently the plan is for leaf lettuces, beet greens and kale, though we can't actually start until we cross the border headed south in September, because we'd have to dump all the plants out as we cross the border!

Miya is also an avid sprouter - a handful of sprouting mix seeds in a glass mason jar with a 6"x6" square of mosquito netting instead of the pop-up metal lid insert, rinse the seeds with water twice a day and leave the jar upside down in the dish rack. After three days the jar is absolutely filled with delicious sprouts!

We only have an icebox, so freshness is pretty much key. So far we've had really good results with root vegetables and skinned fruits - apples and oranges last for weeks, potatoes, yams and onions also. Bananas only last for a few days, but we're happy to bake banana bread once they're past their prime.

I'm definitely interested in finding out more about the ethylene-absorbing bags! I added a "veggie saver" puck to the icebox, but I honestly didn't notice any change in the longevity of the veggies stored inside.