Our culinary expertise at sea has been so impressive that we’re expecting Martha Stewart’s agent to call as any day for a book deal. Perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch – but it’s actually been kind of fun finding ways to whip up great tasting meals in a kitchen the size of a closet, without the luxury of a fully stocked neighbourhood supermarket at sea.
When we left Victoria we literally had enough dried, canned, dehydrated food provisions onboard to take us across the Pacific to the Marqueses, and last us 6+ months without restocking. SOOOO, when we decided to delay our Pacific Ocean crossing to next spring, we had to review expiry dates on everything, find as many ways as possible to use soon-to-expire items before mid-June, and re-pack/label items for 2013, 14, and 15.
We met a seasoned cruiser who was so obsessive about organization that she had everything onboard entered into an Access database! We have found that a combination of systems works best for us, with computer-based lists as a foundation for location of items, a labelmaker to mark expiration dates, and old-fashioned paper and pencil lists for items that are used and replenished frequently. When Cajun Bouillabaisse is on the menu for the night you don’t want to be rummaging through the 20 possible storage spaces spread across the boat for that extra jar of tomato paste!