This is a question we get a lot- “What do you eat on the boat?” so I thought I’d shift gears this week and give a bit of insight into some of the mundane but necessary aspects of boat life. If this is something you enjoy reading, let us know and I’ll do more.
I’ll preface by saying I never really enjoyed cooking and food very much before living on the boat. I ate good meals sometimes, but mostly the food I ate was fuel to keep me going. I was also a lot “busier”, so cooking wasn’t an option all the time. Now, Paul and I spend the majority of our time just a few steps away from the galley, and we have a lot more time on our hands to cook and prepare and to think of meals. Paul is also a foodie; he loves to cook and he loves to eat. So he’s gradually brought me into his camp. Here is a sample day of food on the boat-
Morning: Whoever walks upstairs first starts the coffee maker. It requires a burst of electricity, so it has to get going before we use other electrical items, and also, it is our burst of energy to get us going. We both take milk in our coffee, so we may need to lift the couch to grab a shelf stable milk stored there. The first food we eat is generally fruit- I like to cut up an apple in the morning, while Paul prefers citrus. During the winter months he was buying bags of oranges, although we are on the tail end of that option now, so we will start shifting to ripe and readily available fruit (mangos anyone?). When we’ve (me really, I’m a slow morning person) woken up enough, we swim for 35 minutes to work up an appetite.
Breakfast usually consists of dinner leftovers. Our fridge* is the size of a mini fridge, so it can’t store things for too long, and it also isn’t very cold and drips water on things, so we like to have quick turnover. This morning, we had leftover potatoes that Paul cooked on the grill last night. The day before It was paprika chickpeas, and before, lentils. I used to be a breakfast purist and only eat oatmeal or breakfast foods in the AM, but I have switched out of necessity and frankly prefer it now. Some mornings, when there are no left overs or we are particularly hungry, we will cook eggs, avocado toast**, breakfast burritos, or salad wraps. Paul usually switches to iced coffee at this time.
*We have to defrost our fridge every 10-14 days to deal with ice build up, so we store most condiments dry, and eat everything in the fridge every week. We did not live that way in California, and when I met Paul I counted 18 different mustards in his fridge.
**a note on Caribbean avocados- they are much, much larger than the Hass avocados we were used to, and have a milder taste in my opinion. Because of their size, we typically buy one or two and that can last us a few meals. They are a great source of joy for Paul, because it’s like getting 6 Hass avocados in one.
We have become grazers for lunch. Mostly we snack on nuts, trail mix, fruit, pickles, or other items we are trying to use up from the storage or the fridge. We don’t burn as many calories if we aren’t going to shore, and it’s much hotter in the Carib, so our appetites aren’t as big in the middle of the day. Sometimes, if we are sailing or very hungry, we will make sandwiches or wraps using romaine, tomatoes, onions, whatever leftover is there, pickles, and beans for me with some type of meat for Paul. Also, more pickles.
Dinner time; here is where we shine. I make sure there’s always veg and/or a salad with dinner. Of lettuces, romaine does best on the boat (see problem A: our fridge), but tomatoes, bell peppers, and carrots and celery do awesome as well. Chickpeas, lentils, rice, beans are all also my jam. They are inexpensive, filling, and shelf stable. We always have a bag of onions and a bag of fresh garlic on the boat, so it’s easy to make anything taste good with a base of sauteed onions and garlic, tomato paste, paprika, etc.
Paul’s favorite cooking method is grilling. Our Christmas present to each other last year was the new grill, which is tiny, but used on the daily. It also doubled our capacity for cooking. We have a tiny galley which fits one cook at a time, so its best if Paul is on the deck grilling, and I am in the galley chopping/cleaning/using the stove. In the same vein that I always make sure we have vegetables and fruit with our meals, Paul is the meatman. Even if our meal is complete without meat, Paul likes the taste and likes to cook chicken, steak, or fish. Last night our meal consisted of a giant steak for Paul (with one or two bites for me), and foil packet grilled potatoes with garlic and onions.
We pack up leftovers, and if they’re still hot, leave them on the counter overnight. This prevents our fridge from overworking. The person who cooked least does the dishes, and pours any leftover coffee into an insulated cup in the fridge for iced coffee tomorrow. This person also brews a liter of iced tea to cool on the counter overnight.
Sweets: We both have a sweet tooth. Because of that, we try not to buy too much sugar to have around, but we’re not monks and we do indulge. I used to bake cookies, cakes, and pies when I had a good oven on shore, but it’s hot here, so our treats are all in the freezer (sort of a misnomer, our freezer is really just a slightly colder top loading fridge). We keep twizzlers in there for movie night, occasional wafer cookies for Paul, and chocolate for me. A sweet treat I like making is caramel popcorn- it’s easy, all ingredients are shelf stable, it keeps and its very yum.
Liquids: Gotta stay hydrated. After coffee in the mornings, we either switch to fizzy water with a hint of sweet flavor, coconut water (or La croix if we splurged), iced tea, tap water with an electrolyte addition, or just plain delicious desalinated water from the watermaker. We both have an insulated cup with something cold in it all day, and I keep my liter Nalgene bottle within grabbing distance at all times. With dinner, we sometimes have wine- but we’ve been forced to give up bottled wine, as it wasn’t compatible with boat life. We are converts to boxed wines, and our Soda Stream. Less waste, less items to roll around our boat.
That’s a typical day of food for us. We provision on shore once a week for fresh veggies and fruits, and Paul supplements his meat intake with local caught fish (including his new passion, spearing LionFish- more on that later). And if both of us can’t stand the idea of cooking- we take the dinghy to shore and splurge on a meal in a restaurant, where someone else will do the clean up!
Let me know if you have specific questions about our food prep or intake- in some ways its very different, and we have many workarounds because of the boat’s set up, but in many ways we’re your typical southern California brunchers, craving avocado toast and iced coffee like we used to.
Xo
Lindsay
TIBURON MARINO 