Introduction

 

Credit: Janette Watson

 

Many years ago, I wrote a book entitled Voyaging on a Small Income and to my considerable surprise it not only sold, but has been frequently reprinted.  In the book, I discussed the topic of food in some detail and particularly the merits of vegetarianism for voyagers.  Since then, a number of people have asked me to expand on this idea and for a while, I considered writing a cookery book.  Indeed, I did write one, but came to realise that very few people would be interested in buying it.  There were precious few people interested in being a vegetarian, let alone being one on a boat!  As well, it would appear that after a while one's royalties dry up.  Someone, I assume, is making money from Voyaging on a Small Income, but it isn't me.  So although I have tinkered with the book over the years, I set it aside.

I then spent five years building a boat and during that time, people suddenly started waking up to the fact that the farming of animals on an industrial basis, to provide food for humans, was neither kind, efficient nor sustainable.  It appeared that finally, what had been completely obvious to me for 40 years, was starting to be appreciated by others.  My blog, Voyaging with Annie Hill, has been quite popular and I decided that instead of writing a cookery book, I should instead put it all on a blog.  This would have the added advantage that I can post new recipes as I try them out.

In the first draft of the book, I carefully included phrases such as: ‘to my mind; in my opinion; to my way of thinking’, etc, but I don't feel this is necessary in a blog.  Everyone realises that these are personal productions; no-one else is involved and it can be taken as read that the opinions that follow are mine, and like most people, I come encumbered with my fair share of prejudices, bias and downright pig-headedness.  If some of the opinions seem startlingly sensible, somebody probably pointed me in the right direction; if they’re daft, they probably reflect my long-pondered, gravely-considered deliberations.  I have no 'affiliated links', nor any intention of trying to make money from this blog, so really, I have no one to please but myself.

You might reckon that there are already more than enough vegan  and vegetarian blogs out there.  You're probably right.  On the other hand, none of them is aimed towards those who live on small boats.  The themes that ran through Voyaging on a Small Income still dominate my life now, so that this blog is about a practical way of eating on your small boat, when many of the things people living in cities can have access to daily, are not available.  This also includes refrigeration.

I am a completely self-taught cook.  My mother, who was an excellent cook, did her best, but at the time other things seemed more interesting.  In the intervening 50 years, I have become something of a foodie, if you can be a low-budget, almost-vegan foodie.  However, my cooking is generally simple. I've never made a soufflé or a profiterole in my life. and, for most of the time, have lived without an oven.  The finer points of gravy making are as a closed book to me, and my pastry is only consumed by hungry diners because of the filling. Moreover, I don't really have a sweet tooth and Pete was more than happy with a steamed pudding, so there are very few sweet things that I can give recipes for. 

When it comes to the parts about Vegetarian and Voyaging, I’m somewhat better qualified: I can offer over 45 years of cooking on small boats, always with simple equipment and, for several years with only one burner. And I’ve been largely vegetarian since 1978. During these years, I’ve sailed nearly 170,000 miles and have always been the chief cook with the responsibility of planning and preparing meals and provisioning. It’s with a light heart, therefore, that I say that any recipes I suggest can be prepared in an average galley.  Even the most ambitious of voyagers spends a lot of time at anchor, so I leave it to you as to whether you want to try them in half a gale of wind.  In fact nearly all the recipes are - or should be - labelled.  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 recipe that suggests using a blender comes under this label. 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. 

Both my cooking and my ingredients tend to be straightforward, influenced by my rarely having had an oven and never having had refrigeration. I am blogging from Northland in New Zealand, and while we do have the most marvellous produce, you are as likely to encounter a dragon fruit as a real, live dragon, so I hope I won't be like all those irritating bloggers who ask you to lay hands on fire-roasted tomatoes, or obscure mushrooms that I've never even heard of.  If I do use something that's not available in my local Four-Square, I shall try to suggest an alternative.  The only exception to this rule is spices: I love Indian food and tend to go overboard with these, but generally, if you leave the odd one out you are unlikely to notice, on the principle that what you've never had, you won't miss!  I will also be posting my tried-and-tested 'basic curry' recipes for those who don't want to clutter their lockers with spices. I’ve always prided myself on turning out an appetising meal, regardless of the weather or how long it is since I last shopped. It’s against this background, and with these matters in mind that I offer this blog: about cooking on, and provisioning a small boat that is often away from sources of re-supply for weeks, or even months at a time.

 

If you’ve never gone voyaging before, the whole prospect of provisioning the boat and feeding the crew can be very daunting. Many women overcome their doubts and fears by focussing single-mindedly on the domestic side of the adventure. This can become obsessive and send you back to where you started, because the prospect is as perplexing for the competent cook of many years, preparing for an extended voyage, as it is for the young adventurer, fresh from home who has never cooked before. However, the voyaging life is very simple and pleasant: that’s why so many people carry on doing it for years and years. There’s nothing to be worried about as far as your tasks in the galley are concerned. Cooking at sea is not all that difficult; nor is provisioning for a long passage, or for several months away from supermarkets; nor is creating and inventing tempting and delicious food from the contents of your lockers; nor is it difficult to keep everyone healthy.  I hope this blog will have ideas to get you on your way as well as lots of recipes to help you enjoy all those lovely things available, once you 'get to the other side!  Best copy the ones you fancy to a document file, or print them out before you set off! 

 

I discuss galleys in detail, to help clarify ideas, and hope this won’t seem too condescending to the experienced cook. However, I do have friends who are wonderful cooks and have large, well-equipped kitchens, who have been genuinely distressed at the concept of turning out meals in the tiny galley allotted to them. I include a list of galley necessities: this is minimalist, to avoid clutter, but includes sufficient to allow for three-course meals and entertaining. It should also be of use to the new cook/voyager, who frankly hasn’t a clue what is needed to cook a simple meal from basic ingredients. 

 

I'm not quite sure when I decided I really didn't want to eat meat, although like most 'animal lovers', I managed the cognitive dissonance quite successfully for a number of years.  However, not long after we returned from crossing the Atlantic in 1976 the prospect of vegetarianism became increasingly appealing, but I knew it would be an uphill struggle persuading my skipper to think along the same lines.  I'd also started to realise that the cost of eating meat every day was more than our tiny budget could stand and reckoned that this would be a more persuasive argument.  Having convinced my skipper of the financial merits of being a vegetarian (or largely vegetarian: I suppose it would be called flexitarian these days), I set about learning how to cook in this way - it helped that I did all the cooking!  At first it was a struggle because I so rarely met anyone else interested in vegetarian food, who could pass on useful hints or ideas to me.  In those days, being a vegetarian meant social isolation : very few people could conceive of a vegetarian meal other than a cheese omelette, even though most 'carnivores' unconsciously ate vegetarian food quite often.  Think baked beans on toast or muesli for breakfast. I can’t imagine how vegans coped. As I had to compromise with my skipper's preferences, I had to keep a foot in the meat-eaters' camp for much longer than I'd have chosen. This saved me endless embarrassment over the years, but meant that I used to be irresistibly tempted by bacon, salami and pâté, to say nothing of salmon, smoked or otherwise.  Since living on my own, I never eat any dead animal and am no longer tempted by the thought.  Indeed I am almost entirely vegan, but I think it makes sense to realise that there are lots of reasons why people choose to avoid or  cut back on eating meat, as well as many vegetarians who enjoy eggs and milk products.  I considered adding the odd suggestion for Occasional Meat and/or Fish Eaters, but decided against it: I'd rather encourage people to experiment with seitan.  In recent years, I’ve met many people who call themselves vegetarian and yet eat both fish and white meat, so appreciate that not everyone is a fundamentalist in this area, but it would be difficult to draw the line, if I went so far off course.  And I have to confess that my pedantic brain does struggle with the concept of considering either a hen or a fish as a vegetable!)  As I now infinitely prefer vegetarian food to meat and fish dishes, there is nothing wishy-washy about my adherence to a vegetarian regime, but because I started as a carnivore, much of my food is based on dishes that most of us know and like in meat form. I hope, if you’re faced with reluctant vegetarians, that this will make it easier, to persuade them to eat and enjoy your creations.  I don’t include a preponderance of  egg or cheese recipes, because these ingredients aren’t always easy to buy and are often expensive.; where I do, I try to offer a vegan (and often cheaper!) alternative.  Thus a majority of the recipes will be suited to vegans. I have also discovered that many home-made vegan substitutes are in fact more boat-friendly than their alternative: vegan 'parmesan' requires no refrigeration and (cashew) nut cream can be made as required, so I hope that there will be very few recipes that vegans won't touch.  Buying your foods in bulk and making these substitutes can also reduce the amount of rubbish you make, which is another win.  But again, I am not suggesting that all voyagers have to be fundamentalist vegans and will try to keep the recipes flexible.

 

Potential voyagers, who are interested in healthy eating, are frequently concerned as to how they can eat a wholesome diet ‘out of cans’. Don’t worry. I can assure you that cans need play only a small part in the voyaging diet. My recipes are designed to be both seamanlike and healthy. Most require only two pans – one of which is nearly always a pressure cooker. Most of the recipes are inexpensive to prepare, because many voyagers have more wanderlust than wealth. Most use fresh ingredients where possible – and in due course there will be pages to tell you how to keep food fresh for days or weeks. All can be prepared in the average galley and have been tried and tested afloat, for the simple and sufficient reason that I live permanently on a boat. Although a number of recipes call for an oven, an alternative top-of-the-cooker preparation is described wherever possible.

I was brought up in England and realise that other 'English' speakers use a multiplicity of names for the same ingredient.  Hopefully I can get round this with the labels.

Most measurements are in (metric) cups, which are almost the same as the cups used in North America.  Cups are far more practical than scales, which don't work very well on boats bobbing around at anchor or underway.  Any voyager worth their salt can translate from their home measuring system to the local one.

 

I hope you find ideas and inspiration in what follows. Cooking afloat is great fun – you have plenty of time and a wonderful view from the window. Inviting people for a bite to eat is always appreciated: every cook not only enjoys a night off, but also the chance to sample other people’s food, so please don't ask them to contribute anything!  A meal is one of the most honest of gifts, and an evening shared with new friends is one of the best things about cruising.  It’s my hope that for the new voyager, or newly converted vegetarian, this blog will be a useful resource, with pages and recipes copied and pasted for future reference.  Fortunately, as you get more confidence, you will need to come here less and less frequently, so that when the day comes that your precious 'device' gets inundated, you can just shrug your shoulders and carry on cooking, while the navigator dusts off the sextant and digs out the sight reduction tables.

 

Fair winds and bon apétit!

PS My thanks to my dear friend Janette Watson, who drew the pictures that I use in pages in the blog.  I wish I had a quarter of her talents.