Passage food

Burgers at sea--definitely a favorite

 Provisioning for at least 21 days at sea was a beast. I tried to approach it with a very relaxed attitude: “just plan a menu for 3 weeks. No big deal.” That strategy maybe would work if I were only planning dinners and if I didn’t have to think about making bread and cookies and how many bags of chips and treats we might need. There is no running to the store in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I repeat, there is no running to the store in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. What we left with was what we had. That meant I had to buy enough butter, eggs, flour, crackers, cereal, etc. for three weeks.

I tried not to go crazy with portion size and excel spreadsheets, but I did need to think a little about how many loaves of bread we’d make, how many times Freja would make us chocolate chip cookies, and how many mornings we’d want eggs for breakfast and then a hard boiled egg for lunch. So despite my best intentions, it got a little complicated. I made a very thorough menu, 3 meals a day, and then calculated out how much I’d need to buy for each meal. Then added some extra. Then I remembered how expensive some Eriksson family staples are in the Caribbean (cereal) and added a bunch of extras. And what if we all suddenly had a craving for granola bars only five days out? Add extras! Then I started panic buying so I forced myself to stop. We did not buy enough eggs and butter! A near fatal flaw!

I purchased all our meat and chicken from the butchers in the big market in Santa Cruz. I brought them a list and went back a couple days later and picked up the meat and chicken, individually vacuum packed and frozen. We’re not sure what type of ground beef the butcher was selling in Santa Cruz but it was hands-down the best ground beef we’ve ever had. It literally smelled like steak when pan-frying. The burgers were amazing.

Overall my provisioning was a success. I kept a list of what we ate every day and compared it to the actual menu I made and the two varied quite a bit. But we still used my original menu to get ideas. We definitely didn’t go through the menu in order, and some days for example we felt like chicken curry instead of lemon chicken. We had bought SO MUCH FOOD that it was easy to improvise every day. Our passage menu was pretty meat heavy, more so than in non-passage life, because meat-based meals are easy and filling and require less fresh veg than vegetarian meals. We did enjoy bean and grain based salads for lots of our lunches and soups and fresh bread were also a good option. Of course we had planned to eat more fish but after Hans’s initial mahi experience fish was off the table for the rest of the passage.

Cart nos. 1 & 2 filled up, time to grab a 3rd cart for the much needed beverages.

Got these, despite (or perhaps because of) giggling over the name.

Did not get the canned broccoli. Gross.

Got milk? We bought at least 42 liters!

provisioning in Spain.

Now where do we put it all?!!

Our ways of eating didn’t change whilst on passage. I generally helped the kids get breakfast and lunch as needed; Hans and I ate lunch together; and we all ate dinner together. On calmer days and when we had early dinners we ate in the cockpit. Most nights we ate dinner at the galley table. Theoretically we can remotely connect a tablet or phone to our chart plotter/radar/AIS so we can still be on watch while sitting at the table down below, but that function seemed to only work about 20% of the time. Usually one person would be on watch during dinner and would pop up into the doghouse every twenty minutes.

Hans and I took turns cooking, based on whoever was inspired or whoever was the least fed up with cooking. Or sometimes we cooked together, helping out with chopping or making a marinade earlier in the day.

Below is a list of everything we ate, including notes at the bottom based on a discussion we had on one of the last days of the passage. I also have another spreadsheet, basically my master grocery list, where I took notes based on how and where I stored various items and how long they lasted. Bell peppers, for example, individually bagged in ziplock, lasted for weeks. We still have two in the fridge that are perfectly fresh and crispy. We did a lot of food rotation, for example leaving half the tomatoes out to ripen then putting them in the fridge and taking the unripe tomatoes out of the fridge to ripen. Citrus fruit was a fantastic long-life fruit. Apples did really well in the fridge but then ones left out became woody. We layered potatoes in newspaper and they did fine. Etc. etc. Hot sauce was a great condiment; as were capers and olives. Little things, long-life non-perishables that gave some extra flavor to dishes. 


I’ve added a column, pressure cooker, because I’m debating getting one. I really have nowhere to put it, but there were definitely times when it would have been very handy. 





Date	Day	Meal		Favorite?	Pressure cooker?
12/26	Day 1	Dinner	Spag Bog	Yes	Yes
12/27	Day 2	Breakfast	oatmeal
		Lunch	Leftover biryani
		Dinner	Mac & cheese	Yes
12/28	Day 3	Breakfast	Cereal/toast
		Lunch	Meatball sandwiches with lingonsylt	Yes
		Dinner	Beef curry		Yes
12/29	Day 4	Breakfast	Cereal/toast
		Lunch	BLTs/waffles	Yes
		Dinner	Toad in the hole, cooked carrots, broccoli	Yes
12/30	Day 5	Breakfast	Banana bread	Yes
		Lunch	Nicoise salad	Yes
		Dinner	Burgers	Yes
12/31	Day 6	Breakfast	Pancakes	Yes
		Lunch	Salad, leftover spag bog
		Dinner	Beef tacos, brownies	Yes
1/1	Day 7	Breakfast	Pannkakor	yes
		Lunch	Mac & cheese	Yes
		Dinner	Lemon chicken, noodles	Yes
1/2	Day 8	Breakfast	oatmeal
		Lunch	Mahi ceviche	Yes
		Dinner	Mahi fingers	Yes
1/3	Day 9	Breakfast	oatmeal
		Lunch	Mani wrap with lettuce and tomato
		Dinner	Sushi, then waffles	Yes
1/4	Day 10	Breakfast	Cinnamon sugar scones
		lunch	Quesadillas, salada/miso soup
		Dinner	Tomato soup, naan bread	Yes	Yes
1/5	Day 11	Breakfast	oatmeal
		Lunch	Tomato soup
		Dinner	Spaghetti & meatballs	Yes
1/6	Day 12	Breakfast	Eggs, cinnamon buns
		Lunch	mac & cheese/tuna salad
		Dinner	Pork chops, rice, applesauce	Yes
1/7	Day 13	Breakfast	Hot rice cereal/granola
		Lunch	Cheese quesadillas/nicoise salad
		Dinner	Spaghetti & meatballs
1/8	Day 14	Breakfast	Cereal/waffles
		Lunch	Quesadilla, Swedish nachos
		Dinner	Arroz con pollo		Yes
1/9	Day 15	Breakfast	oatmeal/cereal
		Lunch	Potato leek soup	Yes	Yes
		dinner	Pizza	Yes
1/10	Day 16	Breakfast	Chocolate chip cookies/toast/cereal
		Lunch	Pizza quesadillas
		Dinner	Arroz  con pollo, avocado-corn-tomato-bean salad	Yes (salad)
1/11	Day 17	Breakfast	Cereal
		Lunch	Celery-artichoke heart-heart of palm-bean salad
		Dinner	Burgers, mashed potatoes, lingonsylt	Yes	Yes (mashed potatoes)
1/12	Day 18	Breakfast	Toast/oatmeal
		Lunch	Leftovers
		Dinner	Chicken curry, rice	Yes
1/13	Day 19	Breakfast	oatmeal
		Lunch	Chicken Waldorf salad
		Dinner	Sausages, potato & zucchini pancakes
1/14	Day 20	Breakfast	Risgryngrot
		Lunch	Leftovers/Mac & cheese
		Dinner	Spaghetti carbonara
1/15	Day 21	Breakfast	Totally forgot to write down entries for the last day.
		Lunch
		Dinner