The Great Wander

First off, thank you to everyone who shared last week’s post.  That was amazing.  On that day, there were over 200 visitors to the site, the next two days were over forty each day, that’s amazing traffic, so if you keep sharing, I’d greatly appreciate it. 

On to the topic of this week’s post.  Cooking on board.  No one has asked, but I’m sharing anyway , we can cook almost anything on board that we cooked on land.  The only real difference is I don’t have a smoker anymore, so I can’t really smoke anything.  I do have a gas grill, which, while smaller than my previous gas grill, I could take wood chips and put them in the base and generate some smoke that way. 

We have two fridges; both are a little bigger than a dorm fridge. We also have a 12 volt freezer.  It keeps the food about 5 degrees.  Cold enough that food stays frozen.

When everything was sold, we kept a few kitchen gadgets, the instant pot, the air fryer, a handheld blender, and a handheld food processor as well.  All of those run on 110 volts, which the inverter generates from the 12 volt batteries for us when we are not on shore power.  

What do we cook?  

Instant Pot slow cooker Chili Verde, scrambled eggs and bacon, steaks, fish, baked potatoes.  All of that and more.  

Cooking on board is a little more challenging for a couple of reasons.

First is the small space.  The countertop is smaller than anything I’ve ever cooked on before and one fridge is accessed through the countertop.  Second is that we cook on a propane, three burner stove.  Not a lot of space there either. Third we use propane tanks to fuel the stove.  While it’s pretty efficient, we still need to get those refilled as they get low on propane.  Lastly, is the issue of preserving the fridge.

The fridge is probably the more unique problem to the boat as compared to the rest of the issues.  That’s because the fridges are 12 volt fridges.  Which means they are battery powered.  Right now at the dock, that’s not a big deal because the inverter/charger simply charges the batteries and it’s not a biggie.  Once we leave the dock, though, we will be relying on the engines (which means burning diesel) or our solar panels to charge the batteries.  

Neither of those is too big a deal, but power consumption is an issue onboard.  As a result, you think about what you want from the fridge, get everything out at once and close the door as quickly as possible.  That keeps the cold air in and keeps the compressor from having to run too often.  Which in turn, saves on battery life.  I’ll address power management in a later post.  The other reason I like to get everything out at once is that one side of the fridge is a top opening fridge, and that’s located on the only kitchen counter!

The counter space is also an issue.  Once you have everything out of the fridge, you need to find a place for it.  I like to get everything cut up and ready to go before I turn on the stove or the oven, and that’s related to the fact that the stove is fueled by propane.  But, since the counter is small, there’s not a lot of places to put things once you have it all out. So, you get creative and some things might end up on the stove top for a little bit while you cut.

Minimizing the time the stove and oven are going is important, because it burns the propane.  Exactly what it’s supposed to do.  But refilling tanks isn’t always easy.  For example right now to refill the tank, we have to dinghy about 15 minutes to a dock, then we walk about a mile to the propane shop and get it refilled there…or if one of my dock neighbors with a car is around, I can usually get a ride into town. 

But the reality is, once we start moving, we will have to get the propane filled.  And, we want to minimize that, so we need to be cognizant of keeping the stove or oven on if we don’t need it.

I enjoy cooking a great deal.  I really do.  That hasn’t changed.  But I have needed to learn to adapt to the new situation of cooking and I think I’m getting there.  I am also working on trying to find and develop new recipes that are better suited to the galley space that I have.  It’s challenging, but fun.  There are a few things I miss, like smoking the pork should roast and chilis before making chili verde, but overall, we are still eating pretty well!