I pat myself on the back a lot for my awesome provisioning job. Since we were leaving for about a year, I decided to take all the stuff we weren’t using up at home, in the hope that when we found food really expensive, we would finally actually eat the dried peas and canned beets. And yes, out here every speck of food is treasured as something that maybe you couldn’t even buy here if you tried. In later posts I will share food provisioning ideas more specifically, but let me just say dried seaweed (which I “didn’t mind too much” back home has turned into a key ingredient that has made so many of our meals truly memorable and exceptional.

Gnocci and seaweed: Gnocchi and seaweed: Cut dried kelp (aka kombu. We get ours from clean Maine waters, aka http://www.theseaweedman.com) , soak 15 min,rinse twice and marinate in lemon juice/garlic. Add to Sirachi or garlic chili sauce spiced up tomato sauce with whatever veg (0nion, green pepper, etc) you have. If you like add sliced sausage or canned chicken. Stir in one bag of boiled gnocchi. Add a tablespoon of squeeze tube tomato paste. You can prepare in morning, bag it and have it for a hot super while you are doing an overnight sail.

In addition to taking advantage of all your already collected supplies that at home you merely wanted “to use up,” there are also certain items  that are a lot more useful  at sea than you might realize at home.

Take for example, our beloved wonderbag, from http://www.wonderbagworld.com. At home, the WonderBag isn’t that necessary to save fuel, or to keep the cabin cool, or to speed up preparation time. At home, in cold weather maybe we like standing in front of the stove for an hour. But in the Bahamas, our Wonderbag allows us to throw legumes and veg and rice together in a pan, off the stove in about ten minutes, bag and then have it hot for supper. As we use it daily, I will share some of our delicious recipes now and again.

Not only does our Wonderbag double at a comfy pillow, we use it as a very cool (literally) way to make yogurt, cook rice, lentils, squash, potatoes etc.