Foods for Extended Cruising

Martin, that made me hungry.

I have fresh cherries and cabbage in the storage in front of and below the Port side seat. Been there over a week, still good as new. The temps there, when running cool down to about 50, when anchored in a bad on an incoming tide they get up to 60ish. The highest I have seen is 62.

My yogurt has been there 9 days, and 2 of those were not water days. Cheese sticks are fine still.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
Harvey, that is exactly what I have been trying to explain to my American friends since I have been a C-Brat. They rag me about being English and drinking warm beer. Beer should be stored at cellar temperature, 59 degrees, not in a fridge that kills off all the flavour. The bilge on a C-Dory under the dining table is perfect. I have even kept lettuce there for a week and it has been fine.

Enjoy your Broughtons adventure.

Martin.
 
My favorite beer cooling procedure didn't work on Lake Ozette. I put an aluminum can of beer in a mesh bag and dropped it down 20 feet for 1/2 hour. When I opened it, it wasn't cold at all. I had my IR thermometer on board (used to check my trailer tires and hubs). The beer was 66 degrees. That is one warm lake. That technique on Puget Sound or any lake fed by snow melt always gets it down to the low to mid 50s. On Lake Superior, it got it into the 40s even in mid-summer.

Finding a drinkable beer in an aluminum can is a bit of a chore. Aluminum cools fast and crushes down to almost nothing when empty. Foster's Ale is two beers in one can and real beer for the price of Budwiper, so that's one of my choices. I recently found Redhook ESB in aluminum can four packs. Bought out the store's inventory. Problem solved for this summer.

I surprised myself with how much drinking water I went through. I normally don't drink plastic bottled water, but I took a bunch on board. Storage, both full and when crushed, wasn't too bad, but only because I really didn't have enough for three days. I almost opened my Life Straw. A week's worth of bottled water would tax my storage. Time for a bulk water supply that's easy to access.

Mark
 
It really does help to be boating in cool/cold water. Lake Superior is great for that :mrgreen:

I had to laugh in the tropics because the bilge was still cooler.... if you want to call 85ºF cool :lol: (and that was a deep bilge, too).
 
Marco. you post reminded me of high school in Placerville Ca. We would go to sly park lake in the summer with inter-tubes and floating chairs to party near the dam. Would bring beer and a mesh laundry bag. Beer in the bag, long rope ( 80 ft or so) tied to the bag, suspend bag under tube. This served two functions. 1. It kept the beer really cold. 2. If the cops came by you just untied the rope (use floating rope) . Can't have the cops taking your beer when you are in high school. When the beer sinks another 10 to 20 ft deeper to the bottom of the lake the rope is only 10 to 20 ft from the surface, One of use could usually find it.

ps. dont forget the rock,beer will not sink with out a few rocks in the bag
 
Interesting thread. Glad it was opened again. I may add some food tips soon, but until then I will add a cooking tip. For several years now I have been carrying a cooking bag from MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) in Canada. They are light and cheap and will pay for themselves in fuel savings in a week. I own several and we carry one in the boat, camper or when travelling light such as backpacking or sea kayaking. We just spent 15 days sea kayaking off Vancouver Island and used it everyday. The process is simple, start with your dried foods, such as pasta, rice, dried or fresh veggies and protein, bring to a boil for a minute or so, take off the stove and into the insulated bag. Enjoy a cold one, 15 -20 minutes later your meal is cooked. Sometimes I put it onto the stove for a minute or two more to reheat. We totally redefined our backcountry cooking a few years ago when we did our Grand Canyon backpacking trip in 2012. 9 days below the rim, with everything on our backs. We don't like freeze dried meals, but with good planning and the new heat exchanger cookware and the insulted bag, we were able to do 9 days with only 2 - 8 oz butane canisters and had fuel to spare. I now allow 50 grams of butane a day when backpacking, canoeing or kayaking. On the boat you can use more fuel and eat fancier things, but tricks learned backpacking can help on longer trips. I also find that caring a couple of thermos bottles works great. Fill your thermos with boiling water, add soup powder and by noon you have soup ready to eat.

https://www.mec.ca/en/product/5008-218/ ... -Insulator
 
I've started carrying more canned and bagged foods that are precooked and just need to be warmed up. Canned Ham, spam, etc for meats. And various canned vegetables. There are also bags of various Pasta and Rice that you can heat up in a microwave or on a stove. Once cooked, I keep the leftovers in a cooler, but otherwise, this has cut down on the need to keep foods cold before cooked. Colby
 
To continue the insulated pouch idea, I bought an insulated "bento box" at a discount store ($5). It is an insulated lunch bag with fitted "RubberMaid" type boxes. I bought it mainly because the heavy-duty plastic storage containers were cheaper than just buying them in a 3-pack. Those I filled with a trip's supply of coffee, rice, etc. and I don't put them back in the insulated lunch bag. I keep my two cooking pots in that. Then, when I cook something, I have an insulated bag to put the first pot in while I'm cooking my entrée. A lot of things (like rice, instant mashed potatoes, etc.) can benefit from just sitting in the insulated bag.

A new favorite of mine is dried refried beans. WinCo bulk foods section (a favorite hangout) has them that are already seasoned with chili and onion. They take a long time to cook, but boil them a minute and put them in the bag for 15 minutes and they are good to go. Fish tacos and frijoles. Yes, it takes a little more effort than eating Dinty Moore out of a can, but that always makes me feel like I should be dining under a freeway overpass.

Seafood flavored Ramen (usually shrimp) is another favorite. Fish, clams, mussels all work well as an addition. I repackage the wimpy cellophane wrappers by vacuum bagging them in my Seal-a-meal. That makes them impervious to moisture and rough handling.

While cruising in Clayoquot earlier this year, I found a little stash of vacuum bagged goodies under the V berth from last year that would have allowed me to extend my trip another 3 days. My favorite way to "stash" is re-using the "Buy 6 and get 10% off" wine bags that are free at most grocery stores. They, like my Seal-a-meal bags, are impervious to damp. Cut out the dividers and put 3 days of food in each bag. I pull out a bag and the others remain stashed and more difficult to access. That way, I don't tend to "cherry pick" and eat all my favorites first. I pull a new one out late in the trip and it's like Christmas. Applesauce! Yeah!

Here is the same type of insulated bag just waiting for a C-Brat logo.

Mark

https://discountmugs.com/product/lun01- ... =siiAwZ3W7[/url]
 
Our last long trip with no access to a grocery store was 8 days on the St John. We were able to get bagged ice daily, so I brought with us those gourmet chicken sausages they sell at the grocery store, and hot dog buns. Easy to heat up on our butane stove, and don't require more than a bottle of mustard for my taste. We also had canned soup, although it was hot and I don't think I ever cooked the soup. We brought with us eggs and some butcher bacon that stayed fresh for the week on ice, which we alternated with steel cut oats and dried fruit for breakfasts. We had loaves of bread and peanut butter and jelly for lunches. Also I brought fishing gear, and had brought along a gallon of peanut oil, plus some north Carolina fish fry mix. You see where this is going. There's nothing better than a fresh fish fry while camping on the boat IMO. We ate fish and grits a couple nights so it wasn't hot dogs the whole time. Longer than a week, our menu would have been more canned foods which we've done in the past.
 
I would say a good restaurant app for your phone and a Visa card with a high limit. I hope I was helpful.
 
I am not much of a fan of processed, prepackaged foods, but on the boat, practicality of storage rates pretty high.

At Cosco you can get a box of near ready to eat (microwave for 1 minute), Madras Lentils, 8 pack. There is plenty more room in that box. I add the small packages of OreIda mashed potatoes. There is room for one pacage between each lentil bag. And if you want to heat them you can, but the potatoes will mix in room temp water in that colapasable bowl, and the the lrntils go on top for the gravey. Meal for two, or two meals made at one time - eat half, and put the other half into the hold for the next meal.

Also at Cosco, there is a box of 3 loaves of take home and finish baking, sourdough bread. (Also works well with the lentils, or), I have found the foil packs of tuna make a nice sandwich. (And then rinse those packets out after dark, overboard, with a light shining onto the water. Lots of fun watching all those little critters dashinf around. ATTENTION: Safety Alert. For those of you in Florida you might want to skip that last part, just in case you like keeping your usable arms, or arms usable.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
. ATTENTION: Safety Alert. For those of you in Florida you might want to skip that last part, just in case you like keeping your usable arms, or arms usable.

Harvey
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Naw Harvey, we just noodle or gig the barracuda and bull sharks, and then eat them raw. Saves the food storage problem.

On the serious side: We do a variety of food solutions. The first long distance cruise, Marie didn't fully realize that folks in Mexico and Central America buy food just like we do--except there are central markets, fresh butchers etc. So she canned meet, we used eggs right out of the hen house, (turn every few days and last for months), used vegetables like cabbage which will keep for a long time, We also had a 12 cu foot freezer full of per cooked (by Marie) meals. Breads were baked onboard (or better yet purchased at the local panadería.) We carried food for 6 months. In rough weather at sea, slipping a home cooked frozen meal into the microwave sure beats an hour in the galley.

We took this same philosophy to the C Dory. We stay out for a month at a time in some places, and don't need to buy food. We have a chest freezer about 2 cubic feet and and a slightly smaller chest refrigerator. Along with canned or dehydrated food, plus fresh caught fish, we have plenty to eat.

We keep an emergency supply of dehydrated meals at home, and rotate those. Since we are going to "eat out" frequently on the Cumberland/Tennessee River trip in Sept, we are taking several weeks worth of those commercial dehydrated foods with us, "just in case"

We have grown sprouts and other greens on board. We have dehydrated and packed our own foods in the past. There is a vast field of literature on preparing foods yourself, including canning, drying, dehydrating, smoking, One of the stables of our diets is rice, so we always have plenty of that. Potatoes last well, Yams will do fine if in a cool and dry, place. There are many varieties of dried or dehydrated soups (as well as canned), if you want quick preparation.

Breakfasts are easy, for us it is oatmeal, prunes, and juice. Pancakes twice a week.
 
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