Provisioning: On Reflection

On Reflection 

Good food & little celebrations are important moral boosters.  On our best and early days, we had steak and salads and on our worst, packet mashed potatoes stirred into tinned, rich soups with crackers.  We always had a “Happy Hour” (even better when we worked out how to make some ice!), which followed on from our “Herb Hour” (daily radio sched).  After Happy Hour, it was time for dinner then bed for the off-shift crew.  We had something fresh every day (usually fruit & vegies).  We found by eating regularly and well, we didn’t need too much in the way of snack food, although a coffee/tea and a plain sweet biscuit (granita) seemed to help the early morning watch survive.  So did the kit-kats!

Bubble wrapped glass jars survived; groceries held together well clustered in supermarket “green” produce bags and a large ham (wrapped in a vinegar soaked tea-towel) travelled well.  Eggs didn’t crush in their cartons and we chose packaged milk with a clip-down pouring spout to minimise spills.  Frozen mixed vegies taste infinitely better than tinned and creamed corn stirred into 2 minute noodles can taste like the real thing!  Baby cos lettuce are quite robust and pack into the fridge well (in Ziploc containers lined with paper towel).  A couple of butternut pumpkins, bags of potatoes, carrots and packet gravy mix made for an easy roast meal.  Oven bags kept the oven clean when roasting.  It seems that a little forethought goes a long way.

I still have a few things that make me wonder why I ever bought them; like dried Chinese mushrooms.  I also didn’t cook as much pasta as I had planned.  Why?  It requires a large pot of boiling water that can be quite dangerous in a seaway – even with an industrial rubber apron on!  I didn’t make cakes (package pre-mix) or spend hours baking bread.  We ate from bowls rather than plates and made much use of our large vacuum mugs, which kept coffee, soups, noodles etc hot.  Our fishing exploits remained empty threats and we were lucky that the weather treated us kindly, all things considered.  In all, we lived simply and well, arriving at Flores with little need to take on too many fresh provisions, only water.  We could wait until Horta with its larger supermarkets, filled with fresh foods and the pervasive aroma of Portugal – bacalhau – to replenish our dwindling supplies.

The constant motion plays havoc with your taste buds too and we arrived in the Azores with plenty of tins of beer, bladders of wine and even some chocolate leftover.... 

Our most useful things were without doubt, the WAECO, paper towel, fresh meat (frozen) and ice.  “Making life easy” awards go to Idahoan dried mash potatoes, 2 minute noodles, eggs and Progresso tinned soups.  And YES, I would provision again this way.