Eating Onboard

Life onboard means of course eating onboard, and the more we can cook onboard, the more economical our trip will be. Generally we always eat breakfast onboard, although we have taken advantage of harbors like Zeebrugge where they delivered fresh baked bread and pastries every morning; or shopped in A Coruna where we could pick up fresh orange juice and fresh baked bread a short walk away from the boat.

One favorite breakfast of ours is yoghurt, generally with müsli. Having watched some YouTubers talk about making yogurt, plus talking to our buddy boat Aliara, we have put our first batch of yoghurt to set. It is fun, easy, and hopefully it will work out for us like it has for everyone else. You literally just warm milk, add some yoghurt, and put it in a thermos for 10-12 hours before putting it in your fridge. And since you can use UHT (shelf milk); we can make yoghurt all the way over the Atlantic!

There are a lot of foods in the fridge that don’t need to be there, like ketchup, mustard, jams and jellies. Right now we have an excess of dried foods, but if we get lucky and catch a fish, we can move things out of the fridge and into the cabin. Our eggs have been stored in the cabin since we left, we eat a lot of eggs and have only had a few bad ones – enough to teach me to crack eggs into a small bowl first!

Since there is always the possibility of having rougher seas than expected, we carry a variety of prepared / instant foods that we can easily eat without having to cook more than heat water. That is everything from powdered soups that we add packages of pre-cooked grains to; or instant cups with noodles; or even just my personal favorite “never needs to be refrigerated” PB&J. We have peanut butter in our grab bag / ditch bag; if we have to jump in the liferaft, we have peanut butter and chocolate (and water, other foods, emergency supplies, etc.).

Otherwise cooking is a pleasant pastime on the boat, and I enjoy being creative with the foods we have on hand. We cooked a big batch of chickpeas in our pressure cooker the other day; and the first night we ate humous and sealed the rest in smaller vacuum bags. A few days later we made a curry with chickpeas as the protein source; and some days after that I made chickpea hamburger patties. Since we don’t have electrical kitchen appliances other than our induction stove, I use a pastry cutter in place of a food processer and it works great.

Some of my favorite go-to items to have in stock on the boat are: refried beans and tortillas that keep for a long time when unopened; canned tomatoes of all types; vegetable bullion (in loose powder if I can find it); UHT milk and cream; olive oil and onions. With those basic ingredients, I can make a whole lot of different meals in combination with other items on the boat. I think with the food currently onboard, we could eat for up to three months if we had to.

Of course, we love to go out and try local fare whenever possible, here in Portugal we have tasted a “Pastel de Nata” which was a lovely custard in a flaky pastry shell; and will be trying some of the local grilled fish before we leave Porto. We also tried their “Vinho Verde” which was a refreshing light green wine. In Spain we ate tapas, in northern Spain they were dishes meant for sharing and not the individual pintxos on bread slices found in Barcelona. I am really looking forward to trying Caribbean flavors when we get there!