One of my biggest apprehensions about making this trans-Atlantic voyage was the fear that I would be seasick for the entire three weeks. We have had a wonderful 10 days so far, a real ‘soft start’ and, with the help of some meds suggested to me by new friend George in Gran Canaria, I was only ill for about a day. After three or four careful days, I slowly resumed the cooking, which I enjoy and Bob does not. With enthusiastic, ace-saltwater dishwasher Mark Gordon on board, I found myself dreaming of meals to cook through my long night watches. After a day or two of guardedly simple meals, I realized I could do this and my planning started to become more elaborate.
I have been making a concerted effort to use the fresh items first and resist the urge to dig into the canned goods, pasta and rice, saving those items for week three. I have been working my way around the potatoes, carrots, and Bob’s absolute favorite, cabbage (that’s sarcastic by the way.)
The first big challenge that I faced was meeting the volume requirement for an additional adult. Not because cooking for a crowd is new to me, I know how to cook for a crowd, the problem was the size of the pots. This downwind sailing results in a significant roll to the boat so I can only fill the pots about half way, another serious limitation to quantity. My one-pot, go to meals were not working. Several meals have been altered with the final mixing of ingredients occurring in each diner’s dinner bowl versus, stovetop. We have tried fried rice, with the extra stuff served on top of plain rice, hot dogs and beans in tortillas and everyone’s favorite pizza. Our daily rhythm is beginning to establish itself and after a varied breakfast, we typically follow that with a ‘dinner’, a main meal, served midafternoon which makes cleanup easier (dishes in the dark is a little challenging, the forks end up in the drink.) If anyone is still hungry, a lite snack or supper before bed is rummaged from the fridge.
For those of you that followed the ‘Bobs’ on the east-bound journey, you will remember that they would do just about anything to avoid cooking. As they made their way across, they first ate all the snacks and then worked their way from top to bottom in the fridge, chucking the vegetables over the side as they came to them.
With this mindset to overcome and two growing children to feed, we tackled pizza the other day, using dough-making as an exercise activity for the kids. Making dough, chopping the giant chorizo sausage into bits for a topping, grating cheese and then assembly in four meter swells became a three hour project. The result had unanimous approval and the day was topped off with a zinging fishing line and the addition of a nice eating-sized mahi-mahi to the fridge.
I had let Bob take over preparation of the tuna I caught earlier in the week but I was having daydreams of a lightly baked fish served with boiled potatoes and a nice light sauce served over the top of it all. I began preparation chopping onions for the sauce (no shallots!), peeling potatoes, letting the kids throw peels into the sea for exercise, and then headed down stairs for assembly. Those persistent four meter swells quickly persuaded me that my plan for creating a nice sauce was not to be. I mixed my sauce ingredients and poured them over the fish which was nestled nicely in aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. I quickly realized that I did have my nice deep-dish baker I would have used at home for this activity. I got potatoes boiling, managed the fish into the oven without spilling the sauce and abandoned the idea of serving a vegetable. I somehow managed to cook the fish just right at the same time the potatoes were completed and I pulled the potatoes to drain the water into the waiting dishpan.
As I pulled the potato pan off the delicately-balanced, gimbled stove, my fish sauce sloshed over the side of the cookie sheet, erupting the oven into a chamber of orange flame. The bitter odor of burning sugar filled the cabin, I got the oven off and glanced at the smoke detector which goes off at some point during the preparation of any meal, but did not on this occasion.
One of the helpful pieces of advice I read before departure was to never pick anything up in the galley unless you know where you are going to put it down. With the whole boat rocking like a mechanical bull, this often proves difficult, nothing stays where you put it. I knew getting the fish out of the oven would be challenging and I cleared the stovetop to allow as quick a set-down possible. I shouted up top for Bob to let me know when it looked like we may have a moment calm enough to make the delicate transfer and managed the extraction with no spills, it was a miracle. Of course the stove was still swinging wildly so I ladled the ‘sauce’ into a bowl and set it down in the sink, only to be spilled a moment later.
I served up five bowls of fish and potatoes and handed them up into the cockpit. As we all settled in to eat, the rumbles began. The ‘kids’ did not like the sauce, the onions had not cooked as quickly as the fish and there was a distinctive onion flavor. A nice sautéed shallot, I admit would have been better but the jokes about using the baseball bat for sending the remaining onions overboard were not well thought out. The number one complainer should have realized that this was not the time to be suggesting the use of a baseball bat for anything. A quick question as to why I had not removed the pin bones from the fish got a glare and I assisted Finn in eating his fish by pulling from the middle of the filet with as little sauce as possible.
We finally all finished and I received a nice compliment from Mark on the fish, I think he was sincere but he could have been feeling sorry for me after the abuse I had taken. The three petulant children retired to the back room with a bag of Gummi bears and I sank into the end of “The Thread” a book about people with real problems, civil war, genocide, fires and earthquakes. Yes, I can read without getting sick!
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