Will Sail for Food

Shortly after we dropped anchor I saw a shrimp trawler pull in. We’d been waiting for this moment. Ever since cruising friends gave us a tip: go with a bucket, they told us, and $20 in small bills. Then after shooting the breeze for a bit—it’s lonely being a fisherman on the remote Queensland coast—ask how much shrimp your money will buy. $5 bought us a generous kilo of enormous prawns. We could have had more—but our fridge was too small for the pre-measured packages that were flash frozen as soon as they were caught.

Maia is becoming a great bread baker

A drinking coconut

And the kilo would be perfect for a celebratory meal at to top of Australia (which coincided with our anniversary). The menu: prawns, risotto Milanese and sautéed broccoli followed by chocolate mousse. Not bad for a meal that came on a trip with a month between grocery stores.

I recall visiting maritime museums as a kid. It was always the food that was displayed in the galley’s of old sailing ships that fascinated and appalled me; tins of butter, potted meat, ships biscuits. Everything was serviceable and simple—as though food was fuel and not sustenance.

Twenty years ago, as we prepared to sail off on little Ceilydh, the books I read that told me how to outfit my galley seemed to take a page from those old ships. They offered up undemanding recipes made from bland ingredients, potted meat, it seemed was universal. Serve it over potatoes (powdered or tinned were both acceptable options) with tinned peas; you could finish with cling peaches or fruit cocktail for dessert. If you wanted to be fancy (or change it up) add curry powder or an onion.

Dutifully I bought a case of canned ham (I couldn’t bring my self to buy spam). We ate one and decided there had to be a better way.

the food should match the extraordinary journey

There are two types of thought when it comes filling the pantry of modern cruising boats: 

1) Food is everywhere, because everyone eats. So don’t over shop.

2) Buy everything you can before you leave because not everyone eats what you want to eat.

Food is everywhere. But often we look for it in the wrong places. The dusty grocery store in Seisia, where green beans cost $12 a kilo and we’ll buy them anyway—because over a lifetime of eating green beans they probably only bring up the overall cost by a fraction, isn’t what we’ll remember when we think about food on this coast. Nor will it be the well-stocked grocery stores in Cairns and Airlie beach.

Percy Island fruit became gorgeous marmalade

What we’ll recall are the foods we’ve stumbled across—the fruit that was piled into my arms by Kate, a homesteader on Middle Percy Island, the coconuts Maia climbed for, the fish given to us by friends on Arjenta, the bush tomato relish we found in Cairns, and those prawns. We sail to experience the riches of the world around us; to find the flavours and textures of each new place. 

We’ll leave the potted meat for someone else.

Finger Licken Rabbit

Maia was building the snare, Mairen was raiding the garden for lettuce and Gracie was racing between the two looking for a job—she wanted to help make dinner.

When you find a book like this:

 It’s hard not to get inspired and begin to dream of dinners like this:

 Actually, unless you’re under twelve, what you do is flip though the book from front to back, laughing, and hoping to find something to make that doesn’t involve a kangaroo tail, skinning a rabbit, or a medium sized camel.

John, our intrepid Woop Woop host, knew this. So he thumbed through the book—double checked the ingredients for damper—then headed into town and picked up flour and baking powder. Meanwhile we amused the kids by sending them to the orchard to see if they could find any sort of fruit that they recognized.

They didn’t.

Buddha's Hand

Tomato Tree

But they did gather eggs, and picked strawberries from the garden, and when John returned they mixed, and kneaded, and wrapped dough around sticks, and cooked, and waited, and savoured.

 They never even missed the rabbit.

Four Colours of Vegetables!

I haven't begrudged a single $4 carrot on this trip.

Well, the $14 lettuce that I bought in Makemo (but hey, it was a three pack of romaine hearts) did cause a moment of marital strife. But for the most part we knew what we were getting into, and when we left Mexico our lockers were filled to bursting with all manner of tinned, dried and heavily processed food-like stuff.

That $4 carrot (and in its defense it was sort of biggish...)? Well, it wasn't really a necessity, at least not according to the lore of old-school sailors who live off of potted meats, mushy tinned peas and rum (and clearly even they stocked up before reaching the South Pacific...).

But before we left Vancouver I spent two years penning a natural living column and came to the conclusion that what we eat is sort of important. My guru, Michael Pollan (eat food, not to much, mostly vegetables), would be rendered speechless (appetiteless?) by a diet that consists of white bread, white rice, white fish, spam, taro, cassava, breadfruit, coconut, banana and the occasional sweet potato. And so we made the decision to supplement the local menu and our heavily processed stores with fresh fruits and veggies—at any cost. After all—we've dragged a growing child into the hinterlands and away from our organic farmer’s market, the least we can do is make sure she ingests something green now and again.

The cost, it turned out, was mostly palatable. What was lacking was variety.

 Actually what was lacking was having a clue what to do with the few local veggies that were available—because, you see, we had no idea what half the stuff was. And even less idea how to make them edible. And seriously, this is an important detail. Taro leaves for example (which we recently discovered are really delicious and we should have been eating from day one) can make you sick if you don't cook them enough. And who knows what that large, lumpy, reddish root(?) with spines would have tasted like if we got it wrong.

Fiji has made up for four months of high-priced (and often wilted) produce. We still don't always know what things are. But now, rather than getting the name of a new veggie in a language we only have a basic grasp of, we get the name in English and almost always we get cooking directions and a recipe or two. In a few cases I've received cooking lessons and a taste of the finished dish.

$1 Fijian worth of a yam thing...

And stuff is cheap. I spent $20 Fijian (around $12) and got 7 coconuts, a pile of eggplant, 6 bok choy, taro leaves for a lifetime, a huge yam thing, cooking bananas, green beans, tomatoes, cilantro, carrots, 8 cucumbers, a squash-like pumpkin, ginger, pineapple and a shiny, spiny thing.

And tonight—dinner included fresh veggies in four colours. Four!!

What we’ve been eating:

Dalo (also known as taro): A dry starchy rootcrop which is boiled and often served cold and sliced like bread with dinner.

Dalo leaves: The young leaves (look for ones with green stems) taste like spinach when cooked—unlike the green leafy stuff that the locals call spinach… It has to be well cooked though. Our two favourite dishes are rourou and palusami.

Tavikoa (tapioka or cassava): Also a rootcrop with a bland taste that's lot starchier than dalo. You get given huge piles of this stuff—it does grate up nicely and works well in desserts.

Miti: Thick coconut cream combined with onions, chillies, lemon juice, salt and pepper. We have a coconut grater and have learned to make our own cream. Maia can make enough cream for dinner from one coconut in about 20 minutes.

Yams: We’ve been getting yams and sweet potatoes that look like the ones from home (orange, red and white) as well as giant real yams which are very gooey to work with but really tasty.

Rourou

1 litre water

15 mls baking soda

20 young taro leaves (washed stems removed and chopped up)

Coconut oil

1 chopped onion

5 cloves garlic

2 cups coconut cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Add taro leaves to boiling water with soda and cook for 10 minutes with the lid on.

Drain and set aside.

Heat the oil and fry the onion for one minute add garlic and chilies if you like.

Add the taro back in and sauté 5 minutes

Add the cream and bring to a boil (the leaves should be nearly dissolved)

Serve on rice

Palusami

Stuffed Leaves:

Wash and stack 3-4 leaves for each bundle. Cook 2 diced onions in oil until tender. Add meat (the locals use corned beef or fish but we’re trying to use up our tinned beef and chicken), garlic, lemon and a cup or two of coconut cream. Put the mixture on your leaves and fold into a bundle then wrap with tinfoil. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Casserole:

Line the bottom of a pan with 1/3 your taro leaves. Cook up your mixture. Pour ½ the mixture over the leaves, and top with the next 1/3 and repeat. Cover pan tightly with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 60 minutes.

Eating Like the Locals

The last of our Mexican produce is running out—we still have cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and apples (and even one tomato) but anything green and leafy is long gone.

Green and leafy isn’t a huge part of the culture here but for about $4.50 each I’ve been buying huge lovely lettuce, and $2.50 got me a big bunch of long green beans. The true bounty here though is the fruit.

mangos

 We can buy breadfruit, bananas, pamplemousse and mangoes--but the traditional way to get them is to forage in the jungle and collect them ourselves (or get gifted them). There really is nothing quite like eating a starfruit fresh from the tree (once you’ve knocked the ants off), or trying to figure out how to get that breadfruit, right there.

just one variety of breadfruit

manioc and roasted breadfruit

 Breadfruit, for the uninitiated, is starchy like a potato, but slightly nutty in flavour. It can be eaten raw, or fermented, or roasted, or mashed, or dried and used as flour. And the leaves are used for cooking while the sticky latex sap was used to caulk canoes. My favourite way to eat it is to bake it like French fries—brushes with oil and dusted with spices then baked at 400 for 30 minutes it comes out crispy with a soft centre and makes a great side dish. I’m guessing with gravy and cheese I could call it Marquesan poutine.

Something to Wine About

 I’ve mentioned (okay whined about) the lack of good wine available in Mexico a few times on this blog. While I’m not a serious oenophile—I do love wine with dinner. The problem with the vino in Mexico is multifaceted and goes back to the beginnings of its life as a country. 

Wine making began here when the Spanish first showed up. They planted European grapes in the 16th century, technically making Mexico the oldest wine-growing region in the Americas. But in 1699, King Charles of Spain noticed the colony wasn’t importing Spanish wines anymore, so he prohibited all personal wine making in Mexico and effectively shut down the industry.

 So from 1700 until Mexico’s Independence (which we all now know was 200 years ago), the only wine produced in Mexico was nasty church stuff. After Independence wine production rose again. But then just when the vino was getting good the Mexican Revolution came along and the farmlands and vineyards were destroyed in the uprisings. Everyone gave up on grapes again and ended up knocking back cerveza and tequila.

 But then in the 1980’s wine started to get trendy, and middle class Mexicans started to get interested. Wineries began popping up (about 2,500 ha. are planted to grapes in Mexico) and production increased. While waiting for the quantity and quality to come on line with demand, Mexican stores began importing foreign wines—mainly from South America. But the problem is, wine is still unaffordable to typical Mexicans—it’s taxed at a rate of 40%. So mostly only really cheap wine tends to be imported. And when all you can get is plonk, it’s hard to win over new fans.

A visit to the local supermercado (things improve in big cities) will typically yield a selection of 15-20 wines (compared to 20+ tequila options). And the number of those where the price is inline with our cruising budget (120 pesos or less) is about five or six. And of those only a couple will be local. At home a $10 wine can be pretty decent. Here it’s a bit of a risk.

But the way I look at it is I’m helping Mexico by taking this risk. Only 2 glasses of wine per person are consumed in Mexico each year—so by going through a few bottles a week I’m no doubt bringing up the national average, perhaps significantly. And by helping support the burgeoning wine industry I’m also helping future cruisers, by making wine more affordable and available. And if you’d like to thank me for this altruistic sacrifice—send wine.

Living la Vida Local

 In my life before living aboard Ceilydh I was a bit fanatical about eating local. Part of it was as a writer for local foodie and eco mags—it was my job. But local eating is also something I’m passionate about. Stuff simply tastes better when it’s fresh and in season.

Living in Mexico tends to be a lesson in eating local to the extreme—and not always in a positive way. The food that's available in the regular tiendas comes from here. The big mercados do have imported goods—but you pay dearly for everything from cheese, to chocolate, to crackers. About the only import that seems readily available and affordable are Washington State apples—go figure.

The problem with a local diet in a country of endless summer is there’s not much seasonality to the food. You get tomatoes, onions, cucumber, carrots, iceberg lettuce and limes everywhere. All year round. And if you come from a place where there is more diversity, lots of craft farmers growing wacky stuff, and you can get just about anything anytime—the short mango, strawberry and asparagus seasons in Mexico can seem oh so brief.

Happily it’s autumn here (well sort of, it’s as autumny as it’s going to get anyway) and this means that for a few weeks, at least, there are new things available—including spinach, swiss chard, yams, thin-skinned fall oranges, green beans and shrimp. Yup it’s shrimp season.

Guaymas is a huge shrimping port and when the boats come in, fresh prawns as big as chicken legs go for about 100 pesos a kilo (or $4.50 per lb), while the little ones are 70 pesos. It’s not cheaper than chicken—but it’s affordable enough that we’ve been indulging.

To celebrate the season I made a killer roasted broccoli and shrimp dish (you know it’s fall when you can actually use the oven again…)—and in an effort to embrace the Eating la Vida Local lifestyle I served it with a Mexican Sparkling wine. I was pleasantly surprised by my 74 peso ($6.50) Vino Blanco Chambrule from Baja California—it was crisp and slightly tart. Veuve Clicquot it's not, but it is drinkable.

 

Roasted Shrimp and Veggies

500 ml diced yam

1 kilo broccoli, cut into bite-size florets

1 pepper

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

15 ml mixed warms spices (cumin, coriander etc)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

salt

hot chili sauce to taste.

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, toss yams with tablespoons oil, coriander, cumin, salt, pepper and chili powder.

2. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast for 10 minutes.

3. Add broccoli and peppers to the oil mixture, toss and add to baking pan. Roast 10 more minutes.

4. Toss shrimp in the oil (add more oil if needed. Add shrimp to baking sheet. Roast, mixing once halfway through, until shrimp are just opaque and broccoli and yams are tender and golden around edges, about 10 minutes more.

Tonight it's Shrimp Etouffee. Mmmmmm.

Mexico: Another Day, Another Fiesta

 

  We’ve been celebrating Heróica Ciudad de Guaymas’s 200^th birthday over the past three days.

Pancho Villa?  Emiliano Zapata? Not sure, but this is one of the heroes of the 1910 revolution.

 While Mexico will celebrating 200 years as an independent nation all year—the bulk of the celebration happened on September 16^th. This weekend Guaymas joined the party with a cultural festival. I’m pretty sure the town has been around for more than 200-years and I know they had quite the party on the 16^th—so we’re not actually sure which significant date we’re actually commemorating. My guess is they still had all the decorations from the bicentennial and decided to get good use out of them. But who are we to look a gift fiesta in the mouth—especially when it occurs about 100 metres from our boat…

The main draw for Maia was the bouncy play section—for a small donation she’d be let loose for 40 minutes in a playground of bouncy slides, bouncy walls, bouncy castles and trampolines all set over concrete (which always seemed more amusing in its casualness before it was my child who could launch to her death). She was pretty thrilled to discover her Spanish lessons are having an effect and quickly invited a few local girls to be her friends. From there we headed to the clowns—you know you’re pretty much the only tourists at an event when a clown can scan a crowd of 200+ and pick you out as the English speakers…

mmmm... churros

Maia watches as her corn is slathered in mayo and cheese

From the clowns we hit the food. There were all the high-fat favs: churros, elote (corn cobs brushed with mayonnaise and coated in cheese) and nachos (a heart murdering concoction topped with mayo, cheese sauce and corn) as well as wheelbarrows of dulces (sweets) and cotton candy. There were a few stands selling jewellery and handicrafts, as well as ones selling small toys and balloons--but there were none of the typical event souvenirs (t-shirts, caps or coffee mugs) we’d find at home. A testament to the fact that Mexico hasn’t totally embraced mindless consumerism yet, and that nobody really has money for stuff they don’t need (as evidenced by the fact that the place we got our pumpkin still has them for sale—at full price…)

The culture part of the festival occurred on the main stage—where a mix of plays, dance and music represented, “the birth of Mexico as an independent nation, with all its possibilities, vices and virtues.” We could sort out some of what went on (the revolutions were always easy to pick out) and enjoyed the skilled dancing, but the more sophisticated plays were lost on us.

The final night included a beautiful display of folkloric ballet. For the most part it’s kids who dance the old dances, and the only adults who dance typically perform at kitschy tourist shows. But seeing the familiar choreography, with specific costumes and dance styles representing each region of Mexico, performed by skilled adults to a crowd of Mexicans on a weekend when they were celebrating their homeland gave the dances a new poignancy.

And we learned that they really do dance the Mexican Hat Dance in Mexico.

Yogurt and Granola Bars

I've mentioned before that one of my regular writing gigs is a green living column for a Canadian magazine. The ironic thing about the column is I rarely write about life on the boat. The main reason is it's a hyper-local urban magazine, so I'm sort of pretending to be in Vancouver for most of my columns (my editor knows though;). Another reason is when you live in a city, or anywhere near civilization, you have access to all sorts of fancy products that help you to be a more eco-aware consumer. Just try to find a pen made out of compostable cellulose that writes with soy ink in BLA…
The funny thing, when you don't live in a place that lets you purchase a green-conscious, is you simply have to make due. I don't recall the last time I was able to buy an organic anything, let alone a hand-made, net-zero impact toy… But, despite this, I think we're probably as green as we've ever been.
The reason goes beyond the fact there is nothing to buy (although that does help…) Cruising gives us time to experiment a bit. I'm learning to make things I've never tried before. Some of it is out of simple necessity: We all had stomach aches and were missing our daily yogurt. BLA only has yogurt drinks for sale, which are not only high in sugar, but come in small plastic bottles (something we really try to avoid). So I pulled out a yogurt recipe (got to love my Laurel's Kitchen cookbook-it's our favourite out here) and discovered I could take one bottle of that nasty sugary stuff, mix it with three cups of powdered milk (heated to 110 F), leave it in a glass container kept at about 90 F (really not hard to do in the desert) for about 5 hours and voila: yogurt. (After that initial yogurt I've just saved a ¼ cup from each batch as starter for the next one.) It may not be organic, but it's free of added chemicals and doesn't come in a container we end up tossing away.
We also stumbled across the world's easiest granola bar recipe when I couldn't find anydecent looking ones  to buy. Again, not organic, but they are easy to make from the ingredients available here: One can of sweetened condensed milk, 3 cups of oatmeal and 4 cups of assorted trail-mix stuff all mixed together and smooshed into the bottom of a 9x11 pan and baked at 350F for 20 minutes. No wrappers to toss and we get to use up all the bits of stuff hanging out in the cupboard…
I love that I'm part of a community where making due is a skill we all take pride in. When it comes to birthdays we all make each other little gifts from the items we have aboard. When it comes to potlucks, there's no running to Costco for a fancy tray, instead it's perfectly okay to experiment, and even imperfect hors d'oeuvres are always appreciated.
There are moments when I miss being able to visit my favourite organic grocery store and stock up on fair trade chocolate (especially when I'm contemplating the Mexican option) or organic wine (see previous comment) but the satisfaction that comes with doing it ourselves is pretty amazing.
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Life at Baja Speed

Maia demonstrating how to get through the Baja summer

When the water is 32 C (that's 90F for those who speak American…) and the air temp is hovering around 39 C (102F), and the humidity is high, and there is no wind, it's best to take life at a languid pace. This means, at most, you should only ever try to accomplish one task a day.
We know this. Mostly we embrace it. But today seemed like a good day to get stuff done. There was a boat to clean, garbage to burn, our stinky clothes were piling up and we're virtually out of beer and fresh food.
So after a beach run to burn stuff (Maia never even asked for a marshmallow to roast, oddly enough), we upped anchor and headed deeper into Bahia Conception. We had a vague plan of hitching a ride into Mulege, where there are stores. But after toiling over our mound of laundry (although the darks can wait, who wants to wear dark right now anyway…) we revised our plan. Standing beside a hot highway in the vain hope someone might take pity on us and drive us to Mulege, then reversing the trip, just so we could have food, seemed foolish.

Evan demonstrates the wrong way to spend a Baja day...

 We decided to see if the local tienda had much in stock. And after dropping $10 we are now reprovisioned to the tune of a dozen eggs, three onions, two tomatoes, a long life milk and beer. The rest of our shopping list was probably superfluous anyhow.
After shopping, we stopped in at Bertha's restaurant--the only one in the area and the first restaurant we've been in since our visit to Vancouver. We decided after all our hard work (basically laundry, garbage and shopping) that we best take the rest of the day off and eat our meals there. Especially because we only have a dozen eggs, three onions and two tomatoes to keep us going until we give in and go to town.
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One of Those (Perfect) Days

They should all be like this. And in the imaginings of people who dream of going cruising, but haven't quite made it out yet, they probably are. I don't normally write this blog in diary format. I'll give the rough details of where we are and what we are up to—but I find the moment by moment, blow by blow account that some bloggers give at best boastful and at worst boring. But because yesterday was one of those days, so rare in its goodness and the fact that nothing broke, well...
7:00am (or there abouts) I woke to a sound. Sharp and close to the boat, it pulled me out of a dream and startled me awake. In the half-light of the rising sun I heard it again, then again—an echoing bang. I slid past Ev and headed out on deck where I watched the big manta rays leap free from the sea.
Their sun salutations reminded me of my long neglected goal for regular morning yoga. So I rolled out my mat and with the manta rays leaping and the sun rising, I woke up my body. My view was of blue-green water ahead and the red volcano and white sand beaches of Isla Coronados behind. Once it was too warm to keep going (do I need to admit only 20 minutes had passed?) I jumped in the water and swam until I cooled off.
By now Evan and Maia were up. It was 8am and the day had started. We had breakfast and tidied the boat—then did a Spanish podcast together. Then Maia went to play over on Hotspur and Evan and I organized our dive gear. We have a compressor and all our gear aboard, but we're still novice divers. So we went through each step carefully, checking each other's gear, then weheaded by dingy to an easy dive spot.
Once in the water we descended to a magic world. Diving seems different than snorkeling in that when you snorkel you're clearly foreign and often spook the fish. But when you're under the water it doesn't take long for the fish to accept you as one of their own (although a bit ugly and clumsy, perhaps...). And within a few minutes we had a school of curious fish around us—escorting us as we checked out crevices and boulders, looking for the beautiful and strange.
A perfect day on a sailboat also needs a good sail. And we had one of those too. An 18 mile beam reach to our next anchorage of La Ramada. Our lousy La Paz bottom paint job couldn't even take the fun out of the sail—despite the fact that a heavy crop of barnacles is currently costing us boat speed. We even caught a couple of fish—one Skipjack which we threw back, and the another (a pretty little mystery fish) which became part of an excellent curry.
Tucked into the cozy anchorage we knew the best way to end the day would be dinner with friends. So we convened on Hotspur and were joined by two singlehanders who were also in the anchorage. We watched the moonrise, while swamping stories and enjoying the potluck fare and then headed back to Ceilydh—where we spent a quiet night.
It's funny to think of how hard we worked to get yesterday—years of planning, saving and scheming just to experience a simple day on the water where nothing at all went wrong. The payout for the simple days is so much more than most people ever expect—hours of work and frustration and loads of money mostly.
But when the days do come, we savour.
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Preserving Summer

Mango season, the tomato harvest—both so luscious and so brief…

5 kg of small yellow mangoes straight from the orchard costs 40 pesos, about $3.5. Add the ingredients for chutney—ginger, garlic, cider vinegar, sugar, onions…

Cook for a while. Adding steam to a steamy day. 

Seal into jars.

Meanwhile cut ripe plum tomatoes into thick slices. Sprinkle with stolen sea salt. If you have it.

Put out on a screen in the sun.

One day.

 Two days.

On the third day (or the forth if you're not in a desert) pack in bags. If you haven’t eaten them all, already.