Provisioning

For all you non sailors you might like to know how we provisioned Moosetracks for you our 6 months in the Bahamas, so for  my good friend Alma here goes:

We are flexitarians, that is we choose to eat vegetarian a lot of the time, in particular when we are on board. We do have a fridge and a very small freezer, so we can make our own ice. We have learned from many cruising friends and experience how un reliable the fridge can actually be, and you can’t carry 6 months of frozen foods anyway. Remember we have to be self sufficient for all our power, which includes the power to run the fridge.

We left St Pete with:

90 lb of assorted Beans, inc Black, Kidney, Lima, Garbanzo, Red Spilt, Continental and brown lentils.

75 lb of Grains, inc Quinoa, Couscous, Bulgur Wheat,  Millet and Whole Oats

45 lb Rice inc Wild Rice and Whole Wheat.

40 lb Assorted Flours inc Buckwheat, Rice, Bread and Whole-wheat.

We have many assorted dried fruits nuts and figs.

We have fresh Basil and Cilantro growing in pots.

Veggies & Cilantro

Fresh veggies

Crated squash for storage

 

Fresh produce inc;

18 assorted winter squashes

10 Rutabagas

10lb Green Tomatoes

50 Apples

50 Oranges

18lb Onions

10lb Sweet Potatoes

6 white Cabbage

20lb Carrots

2 Heads of Celery

5 Heads of Garlic

3 Heads of Lettuce

Many cans of interesting provisions inc

29 cans pumpkin

16 jars Roasted Red Peppers

12 cans coconut milk

Dried Shitake mushrooms and Sun dried Tomatoes and many colorful spices and herbs top off the list.

Everything is accounted for in a book, listing where it is kept, it is marked off as it is moved to the day to day storage areas in the galley.

Its not just food stores we have listed it includes anything consumable, for example toilet paper, toothpaste, batteries and glue, filter cartridges for the water maker, paper etc. etc. 

In Marathon we topped up on Fresh produce we had eaten and in Nassau, Potters Cay market we purchased Fresh Mangos, Avocado  and sweet mini Bananas. There are 3 main areas to provision in the entire Bahamas ( some 1000 islands), the next place after Nassau being George Town, the third Marsh Harbor Abaco. As we plan to be in the out islands we decided to take a full vegetarian menu with us.

To get the most flexibility from our stores, we cook everything from scratch, for example the oats are made into Granola for Breakfast, or Oatmeal, also used in extensive muffin, fish  and cookie recipes. Flat Breads are made 6 at a time, left over flatbreads are dried in the oven to break into Pitta chips for dips. Bread making is usually started very early, 6am, before the heat of the day. The artisan  recipe is great, because it keeps in the fridge for up to 2 wks, so I pull off a piece and make fresh pitta at almost a moments notice when we have impromptu happy hour. 

After the fresh lettuce is gone we have cabbage style salads with home grown spouts , sprouted from wheat berries / rye berries. and other grains we carry.

Thanks to family and friends we left St Pete with some treats, English chocolates, custard powder and even a Christmas pudding! 

It will be interesting to see how much we actually consume and learn how we provision for the next phase of our travels, provisioning for the Bahamas is perhaps the hardest place of all. We know once we head to the Caribbean we will not need to keep such an extensive supply as shops are on all the islands it just longer distances between the islands.