Suggested Cruising Menus??

[BigNut]

Originally Posted by Tidjian

I've bought dried meats before like those long dried sausage looking things from an eastern European market. They often have them hanging above the meat counter. They last a couple weeks but eventually do get white mould spots all over them. I often keep them in paper bags to dry them out more. Maybe that isn't a good thing?

If you notice mould “wanting” to form, just rub them down with a cloth dampened with vinegar, and try to get cool air moving over them. It’s a war, not a battle, but one that one can be on the winning side of indefinitely.

[JPA Cate]

redsky,

We eat differently on passages than we do at anchor. Usually, for passages we pre-make a big one pot meal. One I like a lot, is lasagne, to which, to the meats cheeses, and tomato-based sauce, I add Swiss chard leaves (dark green, leafy), and a layer of nickel-cut onions. Once cooked, we eat it, and when it has cooled, i finish cutting squares out of it, stack them, each in a ziplock bag, in the fridge. Each night thereafter, we have a square apiece re-heated in a skillet.

Your days 1 through x kind of meal plan doesn't work for going to sea because once out in the ocean, conditions change, and in a tender boat, complex meal preparation becomes an onerous chore, especially if you tend to get seasick. You want quick and easy to cook till you get your sea legs. Both Jim and I would be very skinny indeed, if he didn't do the cooking! The way we do it is to lay in a stock of ingredients that are easy to manipulate to make different things out of. Lay in a stock of herbs and spices that you like. In the States, you can buy decent canned meat. If you look at it differently, you'll see that you can easily figure out two meals from tinned fish, beef, corned beef, chicken; you can even find canned bacon and ham.
And then, there's soups....Now, if you're vegetarian, then you'll need to look at the Plant based foods thread, it has many recipes that you can check out, and I'll move right on out of the way.

Ann

[Morganministry]

Quick note on the eggs. Here in the states most stores have refrigerated them. Those eggs need to continue to be refridgerated. Get them fresh from a farm and they will keep for a long time unrefridgerated.

[El Pinguino]

We buy pita bread - which keeps reasonably well - and then use it to make mini pizzas ... just add tomato paste, olives, ham,cheese, pineapple and stick 'em under the grill...........

Ann... there is no such thing as 'decent canned meat'.... the meat in cans is always 'parts of the cow that hath no name' .. or in the case of canned pigmeat 'snouts and a...holes'.

And , if you think Spam is bad do not even think about Hormel Luncheon Meat.... that consists in the main of 'mechanically separated chicken'. I thought that involved some sort of wierd centrifugal process but is far far worse than that.....

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "Meats can be the most difficult..."

What happened to Spam??? Not the stuff you get on your 'puter but the stuff that comes in cans?

And how long does it take, and how difficult is it, to make chappatis? Or even a "pot loaf" of wheaten bread cooked in a "Dutch oven" (cast iron pot with a lid). You need an oven for that. I believe Ann Cate is our pot-loaf guru :-) An oven will do you a damn sight more good than a fridge in any event. "Sourdoughs" were called that for a reason. They kept sourdough in their saddlebags on their way over the Chilcoot Pass where there waren't no ten commandments, let alone any supermarkets. Cheechako, who frequents this forum, will tell you what a cheechako is :-).

If you like pancakes, just make up the mix ahead of the trip. I've no idea what you'd pay for an itty-bitty box of Aunt Jemima's, cos I never buy it. I make up the stuff at home and use it both ashore and afloat. Here is the receipt for the mix:

6 Cups of all purpose flour, , 8 tablespoons of sugar, 8 teaspoons of baking powder, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, 2 teaspoons of salt. Scale up this receipt by whatever factor you like. I make up enuff at a time to fill an 11 litre re-purposed cat litter bucket.

Ashore I use whole milk, just like you'd do with the boughten stuff. Afloat I make "milk" from skim milk powder (also kept in a cat litter bucket) and water. I can live with the inferior taste for a few days or even weeks.

How long does a passage last twixt anchorages/harbours? 2 weeks? 4 weeks? On passage you do NOT need "balanced", let alone delicious, meals. You just need sustenance. For four weeks on "passage rations" you don't even need an antiscorbutic. But why are Pommies called Limeys :-)? How big is a litre boggle of lime juice?

NOBODY where I came from had refrigeration when I was a lad. I'd read about such things, but I'd never seen a "fridge" till I was a grown man. You just don't need it. Refrigeration is an INDUSTRIAL process. Extremely wasteful! In a boat, do what peasants/fisherfolk/sailorfolk have done for a thousand years and still do over vast areas of the globe!

But here is a hint: In any "ethnic" cuisine - French, Indian, Hispanic, German, Persian, Scowegian, Afghan - the "structural components" are all the same. It's the SAUCES that make the meal, enjoyment-wise. It's the sauce and the presentation that differentiates. Learn to make what the French call a "roux". Dead easy. Flour and grease, preferably butter, but margarine or even palm oil (which is what margarine really is) will do in a pinch. Dicky up the roux with spices. The roux is the foundation for a dozen different sauces. "Beure blanc" is equally easy, even on a two burner alcohol stove. BB is the foundation for a whole, and entirely different, family of sauces. It goes well on fish. Mackerel is a special favorite of mine, but any edible fish hauled in over the transom will do. Nothing better than a lowly herring "butterfly-ed" and given 30 SECONDS on each side in a pan of butter just this side of separating. And if, in these waters, you save a bit of the belly skin and put it on a hook you'll find yourself hauling in a nice salmon.

Do you know what kedgeree is? People just LOVE kedgeree. Say it “Kit-cher-ree” and the people where it comes from will understand you. Used to blow the sox off my “croos'n'learn”students with kedgeree. Just mind the strength of the curry sauce if you haven't yet got the Mahabharatha under you belt :-)

Spuds? Don't mess about with chips ("French fries"). Too pedestrian, and the mark of an amatoor. Peel and parboil your standard Russet spuds, slice 'em thin and finish-fry em in a "black frier" in a bit of marge. Now you have German "Bratkartoffeln". Simple and delicious. Don't peel 'em, don't slice 'em, and bake 'em. Takes a while but they mind themselves, and you can't screw it up. Make an incision as if for an appendectomy in the topside of the beasts, then scoop out the soft starchy goop within. Reserve it. Fry up a chopped buncha onion till just transparent. Blend the onions with salt and pepper into the goop. Stuff it all back into the empty spud jackets. Poach an egg for each spud just to the point that the yolk won't break. Plunk the eggs on top of the spuds and garnish with chopped chives. Or parsley. Or even the right kinda seaweed. Call 'em "Œufs en nid de pommes de terre”. Invite the other people in the anchorage over and tell 'em you had the recipe from “a certain young lady” in the old part of Marseilles. They'll be glad to supply a bottle or two of Chateau de Plonk.

It's a poor spud that won't keep for 4 weeks in a bilge compartment. Just keep 'em in the dark and keep them cold-ish and dry, i.e. keep them in a "root cellar" in the bilge. Around here the water temperature is only a few degrees above that of a refrigerator, so that'll be the temperature in the root cellar. And that's good enuff. In the tropics, spuds may not last, but so what? Use any other kinda starch. In short - "go native" :-)

TP

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

What happened to Spam??? Not the stuff you get on your 'puter but the stuff that comes in cans?

............

Spuds? Don't mess about with chips ("French fries"). Too pedestrian, and the mark of an amatoor. Peel and parboil your standard Russet spuds, slice 'em thin and finish-fry em in a "black frier" in a bit of marge. .....

TP

Spam??!!!?? See my comment above... snouts and a'holes....

Re the spuds ... that is essentially what we do.... give big lumps of spud about 2 minutes in the pressure cooker with some carrots.... then make a stew or curry .... pressure cook stew or curry for about 25 minutes on very low flame... test... drop in spuds and carrots and just put back on heat for a few minutes.... I rarely bother with rice any more...

Set half the spuds aside and slice and fry 'em in the morning when doing the 'full english'...

Re salads... even after the fresh toms have gone I find we can make perfectly good salads with salami, dill cucumber, olives ( we buy the small cans), pickled onions, tinned beetroot, canned pimientos as a tomato substitute, and a bit of cabbage as greenery.

[JPA Cate]

@El Pinguino,

It's always possible that I am wrong in terms of what is available today, but we used to be able to buy dark meat chicken in small tins, and white meat in large ones, like a big tuna fish can. We could also buy a whole chicken in a can. It was those we used to make fake Chinese food with, the baby corn, the water chestnuts, and whatever we had fresh to add, usually carrots, onions and cabbage leaves. It's not as good as starting from scratch, but it worked fine on passage.

Never tried tinned pork. Have bought tinned duck and goose, and it is usable. We used the corned beef (and honestly, I'm picky about it, some of it is full of fat, others have a little fat and are mostly lean meat, which I prefer) to make fake sandwiches and a dinner dish, which was a biggish batch of biscuit dough (about 10 x 14 in. rolled out, layer in the meat, chopped carrots, chopped onions, and chopped carrots, Bake in a hot oven till done. Serve with a mustard sauce. No bread, for those "sandwiches", used Arnott's cabin biscuits. Mixed the meat with a little hot English mustard, and fine chopped raw onion.

We use rice, and I'm really fond of brown rice. So, i guess one man's "too much trouble" or water, is another's staple. You can pre-soak rice, and it will cook faster, when preserving fuel is the concern.

The OP will want to think about what they like, and then work out how to approximate it.

We actually tried Spam. It is not as appealing to me as tinned bacon or ham from Denmark. I don't know if it's really rectums and cheeks. And, for the OP, imo, tinned butter is a wonderful product. We did an experiment and opened one 3 years after purchase, and it was fine, with raspberry jam on the cabin biscuits. I would not have touched it if it were even a little off, YUCK! ...so I am picky. It also makes perfect cookies and cakes.

Ann

[StuM]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Never tried tinned pork. Have bought tinned duck and goose, and it is usable. We used the corned beef (and honestly, I'm picky about it, some of it is full of fat, others have a little fat and are mostly lean meat, which I prefer)
...

We actually tried Spam. It is not as appealing to me as tinned bacon or ham from Denmark.

Nothing wrong with Tulip canned meats and our locally produced Ox & Palm corned beef. Both are pantry staples for us.

[Jersey Girl]

Check out The Boat Galley blog and Carolyn's new cookbook for living with no refrigeration. I have not read it (because we have a great fridge on our Bluewater Coastal Cruiser) but everything I have read of hers has been spot-on.
She is also donating a portion of her sales to help cruisers in the Florida Keys which is very kind.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

@El Pinguino,

It's always possible that I am wrong in terms of what is available today, but we used to be able to buy dark meat chicken in small tins, and white meat in large ones, like a big tuna fish can. We could also buy a whole chicken in a can. It was those we used to make fake Chinese food with, the baby corn, the water chestnuts, and whatever we had fresh to add, usually carrots, onions and cabbage leaves. It's not as good as starting from scratch, but it worked fine on passage.

Never tried tinned pork. Have bought tinned duck and goose, and it is usable. We used the corned beef (and honestly, I'm picky about it, some of it is full of fat, others have a little fat and are mostly lean meat, which I prefer) to make fake sandwiches and a dinner dish, which was a biggish batch of biscuit dough (about 10 x 14 in. rolled out, layer in the meat, chopped carrots, chopped onions, and chopped carrots, Bake in a hot oven till done. Serve with a mustard sauce. No bread, for those "sandwiches", used Arnott's cabin biscuits. Mixed the meat with a little hot English mustard, and fine chopped raw onion.

We use rice, and I'm really fond of brown rice. So, i guess one man's "too much trouble" or water, is another's staple. You can pre-soak rice, and it will cook faster, when preserving fuel is the concern.

The OP will want to think about what they like, and then work out how to approximate it.

We actually tried Spam. It is not as appealing to me as tinned bacon or ham from Denmark. I don't know if it's really rectums and cheeks. And, for the OP, imo, tinned butter is a wonderful product. We did an experiment and opened one 3 years after purchase, and it was fine, with raspberry jam on the cabin biscuits. I would not have touched it if it were even a little off, YUCK! ...so I am picky. It also makes perfect cookies and cakes.

Ann

Ah ... was forgetting tinned USA ( not 'american' * ) chicken , esp whole chicken in aspic ... you could buy that in Australia in the early '60s.... excellent tucker on camping expeditions in the pre refrigeration days.

* one of the last 'american' chickens we bought was from Argentina, with russian and kurdish(?) writing on the wrapper.... that hard frozen for that long it had lost all its flavour , I swear the shop had bits of wooly mammoth in the bottom of their freezer, .... and it only had one leg....

Yes tinned NZ butter is good as is proper ham such as Plumrose out of Oz... but in the days of vacuum packing and with a half decent fridge the only tinned I buy these days is fruit and veg... and fish.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by StuM

Nothing wrong with Tulip canned meats and our locally produced Ox & Palm corned beef. Both are pantry staples for us.

At least Tulip don't put 'mechanically separated chicken' in their luncheon meat... Hormel Spam Luncheon Meat - Lite 340G | FairPrice

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-G...ucts/292341443



All you ever wanted to know about Tulip's answer to Spam... https://www.dezeen.com/2017/01/15/sp...ctory-denmark/

Popular with some.....

[redsky49]

Thanks for all the input.

We have gotten a lot of ideas from SeaWorthyLass:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ed-113368.html

Plus my wife has found several ideas on line while searching for "one pot meals".

We are not inexperienced cruisers, but have fallen into a rut when it comes to on-board food prep. I am bored with our meal choices. Also, I should have said that the focus was on meals at anchor, which are, of course, the majority of most cruisers meals.

Passage meals are typically premade and very basic, unless conditions are sufficiently benign such that more effort in meal prep is possible.

Other than canned ham, I have not found a quality canned meat source for things like chicken (beef?). Plenty of tuna, oysters, etc. though.

I will see if my wife will post some of the new dishes we have found. Probably add to SWL's great thread.

Thanks again!

[john61ct]

We used canned chicken from Aldi, white meat likely breast, cubed about big dice size.

Great for chicken salad, stir fry, stew / soups, curries, with a sauce over rice or pasta, in a tortilla

[redsky49]

We have just discovered Aldi in the USA. We will check them out.

[weavis]

One of my favourite tapas is cubes of cheese in Olive oil and Jamon and fresh bread.

The cheese in oil will keep a long time. Jamon will last too if hung in a gentle breeze on the boat.

So Boaties and JPA Cates suggestions are great for longish voyages...

I make use of a vacuum sealer for Pita bread, for Tortillas and anything else that will last without oxygen... Vacuum for single or double portions and it works well.