Provisioning!

There are many different ways that one can provision when living on a sailboat, from having the use of a fridge, to having no way to keep things cold at all.

Our boat has the basics. In other words, Kokomo doesn’t have a fridge. She has an ice box, but we rarely use it at is would cost far too much to keep it cold. This means we eat a lot of dry goods. We eat a lot of rice, beans, sprouted lentils, potatoes, fish, and canned goods.

To prep for our voyage to the Bahamas, we stocked up on supplies we knew would be more expensive in the islands, such as toiletries, sauces and wine. We also filled all of our storage spaces with cans,

Our storage method:

On a boat you want to keep the water out. Unfortunately, it will always find it’s way in somehow. There is a constant battle over mould and rust and therefore the strategy in storing food properly becomes key.

Cans:

For storing cans it is important to remove all of the labelling as it will either mould, wear away or attract bugs. Make sure to label the cans with a permanent marker before removing the label or it can become pretty confusing what is what. We purchased extra large freezer Ziploc bags to store each category of can. Each bag is labelled with the type of can. For example we have bags labelled: Black Beans, Chick Peas, Tomato Sauce, Canned Fruit, Fish, Milk, etc. Of course it would be nice to have the label to distinguish which bag you are hauling out of store, but it saves you from a lot of water related problems in the future.

Dry Goods:

Remove all cardboard. This is just understood among boaters. Cardboard gets wet, the contents will get wet, even removing it and then trying to store in on board after is a problem because it will attract cockroaches as I’ve been told, and it takes us necessary space. Again, we use the large freezer Ziploc bags to store all of the dried goods such as rice, quick oats, grits, instant potatoes, lentils, sugar, etc.

We pride ourselves on eating inexpensive food, and spicing it up with flavour. One night we will enjoy a sesame asian stir fry with sprouted lentils and rice (a meal for under $1.00 for 3) or perhaps a homemade pizza with potato oat crust, carmelized onions, marinated fish and olives. There is never a time when we aren’t excited about what we are going to have for a meal, the fun part is designing ones feast out of the inexpensive and sustainably sourced food.