Boat Life Basics: Where's My Food At?

We eat a lot. Like A LOT of food. My parents were visiting over Christmas and they both commented on how we spend a fair amount of time eating…I countered that they needed naps everyday and we didn’t so there ;P (I am super mature).

But with living basically outdoors all the time, on a boat where every movement is a compromise requiring some degree of strain (even sitting) and with 3 growing kids…we basically burn caloric fuel pretty quickly. Oh ya, also Greg being diabetic means that we generally eat routinely so his blood sugar can be more stable.

So for this next set of instalments in Boat Life Basics, I’m going to share the good, bad and ugly that comes with finding, storing, and preparing food (and drink) onboard.

Finding The Food

One of the most common questions after “what do you do when you are sailing at night?” was “what will you do for food?”. While I love the idea of having my own chicken and herb garden on board…it’s not practical ;) So I would reply with “we will buy it where ever other people buy their food”. I think probably what this question was really getting at was more like, how often will you need to buy food or how much food will you have with you…and those are questions we didn’t know how to answer until we moved aboard.

Turns out buying food anywhere in the Caribbean is pretty easy…with a few exceptions including deserted islands in the Bahamas where we hope to go maybe next season…there have been food stores of some kind at every island we’ve been to. Makes sense though right? I mean if people live on the island they have to get supplies from somewhere. Anguilla had the fewest with a few tiny variety stores and one large-ish grocery store (that we saw anyway) but there were also multiple fruit stands, coconut stands and so on that if you had your sh*t together in the morning to you could re up on your coconuts. When we get to a new place we like to confirm where the food stores are based on the info we had prior to arrival (from the various cruising guides we have)…I like to do a walk through before I actually need to buy something so I don’t get any wild ideas about grilled salmon or something else that is hard to come by. Every little store we’ve been to so far offers something unique…some places have a randomly big selection of baked goods, others have a really good ready-made pizza, others have 18 kinds of instant coffee (yes that is my life now in the coffee department)…so I find it helpful to know what is there before I need to make lists or plan meals.

What do we have here?? Yes it’s boxed rum! Everything a self-respecting sailor needs…

It helps that we are still working our way through the staples we purchased in the United States. Like….4 months ago? Crazy. We have lots a beans, lentils and rice, canned tomatoes, canned fish, canned chicken, tons of spices, coconut milk and other plant milks and flour (though starting to run low due to the gratuitous pancake making onboard). We have worked our way through most but not all of of our random things and still have items such as dried apricots, chia seeds, hemp seeds, Nutella and peanut butter, almonds, yeast, chicken stock…the list goes on. The two things I am most sad about running out of that we got either in Canada or the US are: maple syrup and turkey jerky. Both are too expensive to justify buy down here when they are not really necessities. On a regular basis (like weekly) we are buying eggs, cheese, bread, vegetables and fruit as well as various treats to keep us happy like crackers, cookies and chips...those treat really vary by island as some places sell these things at a WAY higher price than we are willing to pay (e.g. anyone want to pay 10$US for a bag of Doritos? No thanks). The English islands (e.g. Anguilla or Antigua) have lots of good quality sandwich cookies from...you guessed it...England. And buying cheese or bread or meats (or wine) on a French island is a dream come true...amazing selection, price and quality. Fish is expensive and not as easy to come by as you might think...we really need to start fishing ourselves in between islands. We bought live lobsters in Barbuda and I killed those so fish is next on my chopping block (no one else on board will kill fish so if we want to fish it's up to me). Generally the food is much more our taste on the French islands (sorry English islands...but really your cookies are nice!). Before we left St. Martin we filled our fridge with cheese and our freezer with baguettes :) Now we are in Guadeloupe and can eat fresh baguette again :)

Most islands have small grocers that I would call a variety store back home, small space, jammed with mostly dried goods, some bathroom stuff, beer and other booze (not like at home) and most will have eggs and a few random vegetables. The fruit at these places is usually wrapped in plastic (like 2 or 3 apples on a styrofoam plate wrapped in plastic wrap) so we pass on those until we get to a bigger store when we can just buy the 20 apples we need each week loose. The bigger stores have most other things...we can easily get bell peppers, broccoli, kale, carrots, celery, potatoes and other local root veg, avocados, onions, garlic, ginger, zucchini and cabbage...these are fairly frequent fliers for us. We get apples in most places because they are so portable and can take a bit of a beating in the fridge and may get other fruits like mangoes, bananas (which last 2.3 seconds on board in the heat), coconuts (I guess not a fruit but whatever) and maybe oranges or something else. I'm not a huge fruit eater, though could exist almost entirely on vegetables if I didn't need protein and fat from time to time to survive. And since I am the one running the food show here, I don't spend a lot of time seeking out fruits. So far, there haven't been any complaints as long as we have apples or bananas. Speaking of bananas, there are so many different kinds here it's fun...there are the big yellow ones we are used to from home, but then there are some smaller ones that are green and never go yellow, and then there are these short and very stubby little yellow ones that might not be ripe even when yellow (you have to give them a little squeeze to tell) and have really thin skin and a firmer texture...these are my favourite. But they are so short and stubby that they are literally like 2-bite bananas...and a bit expensive depending on how you buy them (e.g. the fruit stand right beside the touristy port vs. maybe elsewhere down the road). I'm also not naive enough to believe the price is the same for everyone but that's ok to me...it's their stuff they can sell it however they want. We can always pass, and do sometimes, if the price is too high for a two-bite banana. Most of the local fruit comes from Dominica which is our next island so I am pretty psyched to see what the fruit-purchasing scene is like there. Finding and buying food on the islands is, really more for me than the others in the family, how I like to start getting to know a place. It's fun, and a bit of a challenge but not so hard that I worry about our nutrition.

It helps that I love to cook and can make something palatable with most things...def not claiming to be a chef or anything but I'd say a good home cook that can feed people tasty stuff and that is healthy. If I try a new vegetable I will ask the person selling it how they prepare it to get some ideas...I've not branched out too much, just played with some root vegetables and local ginger or turmeric but little by little I will onboard new items just for the fun of it.

Fresh lobster tail on rice. If this isn’t a good boat meal I don’t know what is!

I would be remiss, and misrepresenting ourselves as well, if I didn't write a bit about eating out. I LOVE eating out. LOVE it. It's basically the only form of entertainment that costs money that I care about. The closest relationships in my life are ones where I can eat out with a friend and totally geek out over where we are going to eat, what we are going to order, and possibly doing the 50/50 plate swap with them so we get to eat more things (thank you Liz for being totally down for this...Greg now does this too and I LOVE it). I do not love eating out at boring or touristy places (well touristy is ok if the food is really good but usually those don't go hand in hand)...I do not want a hamburger at every meal, or fries, or a chicken sandwich (no offence and zero judgement for those who do). I get food-bored really quickly and I love the variety and fun of discovering someone else's version of a dish I am familiar with, or discovering something totally new to me. LOVE IT. So with that gush over, you are safe to assume that we eat out a bit. We average 2-3 times a week depending on the island we are at. Barbuda we didn't eat out at all...there are like 1800 people on that island and we were anchored very very far away from anything resembling a place we could eat out. Anguilla was not really worth eating out for us...the food was ok but REALLY expensive; we ate out in Road Bay a bit but it was more because there were some really great beach bars there (Roy's is fantastic - watch out for their 'traditional rum punch'...stronger than you'd think!) and when you are having a great beach day it's easier to grab a sandwich then pack it all up and go back to the boat for lunch. St. Barths was SO CRAZY EXPENSIVE YOU COULD BLOW YOUR MONTHLY BUDGET IN ONE NIGHT...so we didn't eat out much there. Whereas in St. Martin it was really hard to not eat out everyday single day since there were so many amazing French restaurants within a short walk of the dinghy dock...and since they island was duty-free the meals were so so so reasonable. You could close your eyes and walk through a random door and still not make a bad choice. *Sigh* Guadaloupe has been great…not as good as St. Martin but pretty close. We’ve been here for Carnaval so we ate more homemade / street vendor food than restaurant food here and it’s been really tasty!

The kids are digging right in at one of our favourite spots in Antigua - Island Fusion Cafe. Amazing setting and even better food. The curried goat is not to be missed!

Thai food anyone? It was amazing what we could get in St. Barth’s…for a price :O

Our favourite places (and by favourite I mean we have been there more than once when there were other good options) so far have been:

St. Martin: Le Sous Marin (Jean-Bapsite and Paula make everything themselves and it's filled with cream, butter and love)
Antigua: Island Fusion (Sandra's goat curry is AMAZING, she will get pissed off if it gets too busy there so if you go don't tell her you heard it from me)
Guadaloupe: Trattoria (I know I know it’s Italian on a French island but the pizza was the best pizza I’ve had outside of Italy!)

We are heading to Dominica tomorrow so we’ll begin the research anew ;)

So in terms of the big question "what do you do for food?" our answer remains...we just get it where people get there food. And it's been really really fun doing so!

Storing and preparing food onboard however is a different story...to be continued.

Spoiler: it involves a lot of sweat and swearing.

Much love,

M