Meals on keels
Our galley
Planning food for 50 days was a challenge
While our intent is to stop at both St. Helena and Fernando de Noronha along the way, we wanted to be prepared in case stopping became infeasible due to covid restrictions or some other reason.
To tackle the project, I created a master spreadsheet with a long list of meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the first column, with an adjacent column indicating how many times each meal would be served. Then, I listed key ingredients individually in each subsequent column (i.e., eggs, milk, chicken, etc.) along with a relevant unit of measure (i.e., 1 cup, 1, kg, etc.). Next, for each meal’s row, I entered the quantity of each ingredient required, multiplied by the number of times that meal would be served. Once that was done, I summed each ingredients’ column, and voila! I had my shopping list! Because I love to cook, one might say I went a tad overboard on my meal planning, as my column count (reflecting the # of ingredients) surpassed “DD”! And that didn’t include basics like spices, oils, and vinegars.
Going through this process, I mentally praised my mom for all the times she planned meals for our family’s multi-week backpacking trips or Lake Powell excursions – those made even more difficult by limited storage and refrigeration! As with so many facets of my life, Mom modeled how it could be done.
Unlike backpacks or houseboats, however, Catalyst has loads of food storage space. She features 4 large drawers that can be dynamically set up as refrigerators or freezers, a sizeable pantry, storage under the salon bench seats, and a large, refrigerated space in the cockpit. Together with Captain Dunbar, who assisted me on my shopping spree (and added to the shopping cart a slew of snacks not on my list 😊), we filled up 3 carloads of groceries for subsequent transfer to the boat.
I also pre-made and froze 10 meals before our departure so that on busy days or days with rough seas we could pull out a meal and heat it up (another thing Mom would do). We did just that on our first night out – my homemade mac and cheese hit the spot with our queasy tummies!
I’ll credit (or maybe blame?!) Mom for all my on-board kitchen toys as well, since she not only instilled in me the joy of cooking but also an appreciation for a well-equipped kitchen. Catalyst comes with a 4-burner induction stove top (we want to avoid gas on the boat as much as possible due to the fire hazard) and a combo oven/microwave. We’ve added a Ninja instant pot that includes sous vide and air frying capabilities, a Vitamix, a bread maker, a toaster, an expresso maker and an electric kettle – plus a cockpit grill. While that may seem a tad excessive, we used them all on our first week aboard!
Beverage-wise, we’re staying alcohol-free while underway, so all our delicious South African wine is “aging” during our passage. Catalyst’s water-maker is working like a charm, and we’re making good use of two additional appliances: our Sodastream and an ice maker. To avoid carrying bottled or canned beverages, we have concentrated tonic, soda, and juice syrups to add to our bubbly water and have started making iced tea now that the weather is getting warmer.
So far, we’ve enjoyed grilled ribeyes, Cuban chicken tacos, lamb chops, spicy shrimp and coconut soup, chicken marbella, ostrich steaks, and more. As I test-drove with friends Marci and Wendy on our Tahitian sailboat charter, I try to make enough for dinner so we can turn the leftovers into some sort of salad for the next day’s lunch (ostrich rice noodle Asian salad, anyone?!). For breakfast, we’ve had coffeecakes, breakfast burritos, pancakes, and granola with yogurt. I’ve also used my Ninja instant pot to make egg bites a la Starbucks, which we’ve enjoyed with bread fresh out of the bread maker. We’re certainly not starving!