Well of course there is the odd mouldy carrot, mushy pear and cloud of spores rising above a hill of citrus, but more appealing are the cultures we actively encourage.

Let's start with koji. (Don't know what that is? Look it up, get some and don't look back. The most important thing you're likely to learn from any of my posts.) The smuggler in me allowed me to bring live bacterial cultures across international borders from CA to C. I. with no harm to my conscience, where I promptly proceeded to culture it in our shore side apartment in Las Palmas. We use it to marinate fish. You won't know until you try it.

Next is yogurt. Knowing that we wouldn't have the refrigerator space to keep 3 weeks worth, we decided to make it underway. Cy and I have both made it in the past but couldn't recall the details. Using the sterilized milk you just add a spoonful of yogurt and let it sit. But for how long? Cy discovered this morning that 5 days is too long, spitting the mouthful overboard. All in all a good product.

Last is sour dough starter. I didn't smuggle this one, but started it in LP, feeding it daily, as you do. The purpose of course is to bake a naturally leavened loaf of bread at sea. I bake this at home, carefully following recipes and weighing ingredients to the gram. I even brought an electronic scale, but discovered it will not zero itself in a heaving boat at sea. Something to do with gravity not pointing the same way even for a second.

So the process deviates from the home kitchen, but that we all know would be the expectation. Mix by feel, proof (rise) for too long, even have the oven turned off by mistake mid-bake. None the less the results were rather acceptable, which goes to show that bread making tolerates a novice's foibles.

The only problem is that we have two diabetics aboard. Fresh bread wipes out their daily carbo limits. Hopefully it's a worthwhile treat, not torture.

Rub a dub dub Four fungis in a tub....