Welcome to "The Voyaging Vegetarian"

Kia ora and welcome to The Voyaging Vegetarian.

For many years, I intended to write a book of this name, but for almost as many years, the number of people likely to be interested in it could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  However, thankfully people are becoming more aware about the plight of many of our farmed animals and the terrible burden they place on our planet, due to their biomass and food requirements, so I think its time has come.

I have decided to 'publish' the book in the form of a blog, because this makes it a lot easier to add recipes and enlarge on ideas as time goes by.  There are very few voyagers these days who have no mobile phone or tablet, and blog pages can be copied and pasted for use under way, so I hope it will be a user-friendly method.

How to use this blog

 

This blog is really divided into two parts: one part is related to boats and food, the other is simply the recipes.  With all the zillions of food blogs on the Internet, I doubt that anyone who isn't interested in boats is going to stumble across this, but by separating pages from posts, it means that should this unlikely event happen, voyagers can go to find information, but that anyone can go to find a recipe.

If you are interested in ideas around a voyager's galley, you will find an article about it, under Topics, as A Voyaging Galley.

If you want to find a pasta recipe, you can use the search function at the bottom of the post, click on pasta on the labels, or go to the list of Topics and have a rummage through Pasta, Potatoes, Rice, etc.  This last choice will also bring you to the topic with reference to voyaging.

Topics on Breakfast, Bread, Soup, Salads and other food categories include different recipes, linked to posts in the blog, so you can simply go to this topic for a quick  look at what is available.

Recipes are usually pretty straightforward: I love cooking, but have limited resources in my boat galley, I live on a fairly tight budget, I don't want to waste litres of fresh water by making a lot of washing up and I'm aware that things like canned, fire-roasted tomatoes don't even exist in many countries (including, as far as I can tell, New Zealand), and that jarred red peppers aren't a very good choice for someone who doesn't have a fridge.  Lots of voyagers don't have ovens and ovens are often expensive to run, so the blog isn't groaning under the load of yet more recipes for roasted vegetables. 

Recipes rarely call for more than two pans and I try and suggest alternative ingredients, knowing that often you might be anchored somewhere that simply doesn't sell broccoli or green beans.  I am a slow cook - one of the slowest I know - so I don't give suggestions as to how long the food will take to prepare.  Generally, the list of ingredients isn't that long.  However, I love making curries with lots of different spices, so I will be including these along the way for other people who might also enjoy them!

All (or nearly all) recipes are tagged and I add extra ones to indicate both the ingredients required and the complexity of the meal.  Voyaging, implies that this is a meal that can nearly always be cooked underway and with the ingredients that most boats will still have on board, after a couple of weeks at sea.  Cruising implies that you will be sailing in moderate conditions and that you will have a greater range of fresh produce available.  Thus you might have broccoli or green beans, but are unlikely to have fresh spinach, which - without refrigeration - only keeps for a day or two.  Any recipes suggesting using a blender comes under this label, the assumption being that you are probably cooking in fairly mild conditions.  The final tag: At anchor implies either that you require super fresh ingredients or calm conditions.  Occasionally, therefore, At anchor food could be cooked a thousand miles from the nearest land, in calm conditions.

All comments about how effective this method is are welcome and I shall try to make improvements when people suggest them.  All comments are moderated, ie they aren't published until I have read them.  This means that it's quite safe to leave your email address, should you want to.