Monday 9th August (day 22)
Today another calamity struck us! Geoff managed to drop his phone into the water stepping onto the boat. We tried unsuccessfully for a while to retrieve it using the ‘fish magnet’ but decided it was more important to take yet another trip to Yeppoon shops for an Optus shop so he could get a replacement.
I managed a quick replenishment of a few stores while his phone was set up and then returned by bus once again.
Meals:
I have become quite accomplished at preparing food in order of what needs to be used first and combining ingredients to make the most of that. In future I will try to remember to list some of the meals I have created, and perhaps that should be a blog post on its own with some photos.
Our oven will certainly melt cheese for nachos and the pizzas (also made on wraps), but it isn’t reliable enough to bake bread or biscuits and roast dinners just use too much gas.
We tend not to eat a great deal of sliced bread but prefer to rely on flat wraps, but they can become a little boring. So, I’ve put some interesting combinations (mainly leftovers) together on top of a wrap in a frypan that’s been given a quick spray of olive oil, and then folded in half to toast the bottom. This is a nice alternative to wraps and a step from a toasted sanger.
Spiced Potato and Pumpkin soup has been eaten and leftovers frozen so that we have something quick for any overnight sails. These types of silicone storage bags can be reheated in a pot of water on the stove or in a microwave.
Upon our return, Geoff managed to dredge the seabed below the berth and retrieve his phone. After a quick fresh water wash we dried it in rice until an expert google post told us this what the worst thing we could do!. A bath with a pinch of baking soda to expel the salt, dried on a microfibre cloth and then placed in a box with dessicant sachets, we will hope that a phone or computer tech person can dry and clean it out and retrieve some of the data and photos Geoff has lost.
I’m trawling for Samsung
Shell de Mer 
The phone “Ploppp” is everyone’s nightmare, but for booties there goes the backup navigation system with the saved maps. “Buggah”.
Food is a good subject. I’m living on my own over here in Netherlands and being food creative is quite hard. I have at least one stand by, spaghetti. I make a standard half Kg of mince with one tin of tomato mash and two thirds pack of spaghetti noodles. That makes about 6 servings, 5 of which go in the freezer. Or at least they would if I had a half decent one. I take them to work where there is a huge freezer.
They have a lot of prechopped vegetables here so its pretty easy to knock up a vegetable soup.
Pea soup is a family standard.
I make the occasional batch of tomato relish from the John Edmunds Cook Book.
You want to get yourself a “steam boat”, or Mongolian Hotpot, a charcoal one. You can still have a pretty good feed using just driftwood when you run out of gas.
I have yet to acquire one of those round railing BBQ’s, but when I do I’m going to modify it so it runs on charcoal as well as gas.
I spent a silly amount of money to buy a Little Guy Espresso machine so have stove top coffee, oh and a whistling kettle. Another must is a pressure cooker.
Stews and pies go together, and, yes I discovered wraps this year.
Baked potatoes, of course.
The easiest thing is a bunch of chicken legs in the oven for half an hour.
Some years ago I started buying Spec, a European standard. There is a local Polish “Supermarket” i go to where I can buy a 1 Kg log of Spec for just €10. That is my version of bacon on demand.
No doubt you have a Soda Stream for ginger beer and dry ginger ale. But you can get a much better version at the home brewery suppliers I am told.
I am experimenting with an over stove extractor fan to get heat, steam and fumes out of the galley. That is going to be important next year.
No doubt you watch “Free Range Sailing”, Pascal has a lot of great cooking knowledge to share.
Apart from that I’ve got nuthin. No food ideas at all.
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The phone “Ploppp” is everyone’s nightmare, but for booties there goes the backup navigation system with the saved maps. “Buggah”.
Food is a good subject. I’m living on my own over here in Netherlands and being food creative is quite hard. I have at least one stand by, spaghetti. I make a standard half Kg of mince with one tin of tomato mash and two thirds pack of spaghetti noodles. That makes about 6 servings, 5 of which go in the freezer. Or at least they would if I had a half decent one. I take them to work where there is a huge freezer.
They have a lot of prechopped vegetables here so its pretty easy to knock up a vegetable soup.
Pea soup is a family standard.
I make the occasional batch of tomato relish from the John Edmunds Cook Book.
You want to get yourself a “steam boat”, or Mongolian Hotpot, a charcoal one. You can still have a pretty good feed using just driftwood when you run out of gas.
I have yet to acquire one of those round railing BBQ’s, but when I do I’m going to modify it so it runs on charcoal as well as gas.
I spent a silly amount of money to buy a Little Guy Espresso machine so have stove top coffee, oh and a whistling kettle. Another must is a pressure cooker.
Stews and pies go together, and, yes I discovered wraps this year.
Baked potatoes, of course.
The easiest thing is a bunch of chicken legs in the oven for half an hour.
Some years ago I started buying Spec, a European standard. There is a local Polish “Supermarket” i go to where I can buy a 1 Kg log of Spec for just €10. That is my version of bacon on demand.
No doubt you have a Soda Stream for ginger beer and dry ginger ale. But you can get a much better version at the home brewery suppliers I am told.
I am experimenting with an over stove extractor fan to get heat, steam and fumes out of the galley. That is going to be important next year.
No doubt you watch “Free Range Sailing”, Pascal has a lot of great cooking knowledge to share.
Apart from that I’ve got nuthin. No food ideas at all.
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Hi Bill,
We have a chart plotter and paper charts, so don’t rely on phones or laptops or tablets for that…Having said that though, the chart plotter is probably out of date.
Yes I watch FreeRange Sailing – Pascal is who inspired me to make yoghurt and sprout mung beans and take me back to my hippy youth!
Obviously different horses for different courses. We have a small fridge but a generous freezer. Our gas stove – two burner with a terrible oven that barely melts cheese for pizzas. I will be attempting some very flat bread in it later on and will post how it turns out. It’s all convenient in the marina when you have shore power and can use the microwave – even with the new inverter I am loath to use it for a microwave when I’d rather save it for charging the laptop. One of the burners on the stove top sputters and produces too much yellow flame and puts carbon all over the pots so I cook only on ONE BURNER!! (I am amazing!)
So with those limitations to the galley it is pretty much a juggle how to cook what we like when on the anchor and not hooked up to power but I manage. Even when we ran out of water I managed to cook pasta and re-used the water for veggies and again for a stock. Buying pre-chopped veggies is expensive and not fresh Bill! But you are working and I understand the expediency required – When I lived alone and came home from work it was often just a rum and ginger beer and a frozen tv dinner!
Being in a cold climate I can understand the need for comfort food – I love pasta and although we have some dried pasta I really like to freeze some of the ready to cook fresh stuff, and use some olive or basil tapenade as a stir through with some dried tomatoes, eggplant and roasted capsicum and anything else available. Of course you can do the same with couscous.
We have a cast iron frypan and a cast iron BBQ plate that we will utilise when ashore somewhere, but so far it’s not been our thing to do just yet. I’m a bit afraid of pressure cookers but I do have a “DreamPot” thermal cooker where you can put the food on the stove top and finish it while under way in the cooker like a slow cooker – it’s brilliant.
My Chinese steamboat is at home – I’ve had it for about 30 years but I won’t do that on the boat. We don’t need to store charcoal as well as all our other crap, and I don’t know about the Netherlands but here real driftwood is supposed to be protected just like all the shells and other items on the beaches in National Parks…not that it is adhered to – as evidenced by the hacking of the she-oaks on the foreshores.
I have a lovely cast teapot for leaf tea that Geoff bought me, an individual tea infuser as well, and we have a hand grinder for coffee beans for the plunger coffee but I can also make it for one using a paper filter. Yes the Soda Stream is vital for us – ginger beer and tonic water are our vices. I had one on Shell de Mer as well and it saves on bottles etc – we converted to buying canned beer instead of in glass stubbies, and we have two large pint glasses to decant our canned beer.
As mentioned the oven is all but useless but we do have a double jaffle iron for those leftovers to put on the stove top but we haven’t used it to date. I’ve just put leftovers in wraps and dry fried them in the frypan and folded them in half like a crispy burrito thing.
Geoff has just today installed the port visors over the majority of the portlights – I’m so happy to have them ready for when it gets rainy or even when there’s condensation because our ports are angled outwards from the cabin and it drips.
We aren’t ‘free range’ and don’t dive or fish (not yet anyway) for our food, but I have sprouted and have our microgreens going as well.
I hope you like some of the food I prepare and maybe it will give you some ideas:) xx
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