Banana Shopping

I told you all a giant fib. I won't be writing my next hotly-anticipated Moving the Boat segment this week. We're off to the PNG Mask Festival, so the thrilling tale of our wavy trip from Noumea to Brisbane will just have to wait a little bit longer.

In the meantime, I present the following educational piece:

How to Buy Bananas in the Tropics

Step 1: Look off the porch. Notice bananas growing behind your house are ripe.

Step 2: Grab a machete.

Peanut, Peanut Butter

This morning I fulfilled the usual family breakfast orders. A bowl of Sultana Bran for Indy (Raisin Bran to those of you ten time zones away), cheesy scrambled eggs for Stylish, and a slice of peanut butter toast for me. I noticed the peanut butter was getting pretty low, so I looked in the pantry for another jar. No peanut butter. I started to hyperventilate, then I had a heart attack and died.

Not really. But I could have. This is a disaster; I was sure I had one more jar. In fact, I'm going to go check again right now.

I'm back. No peanut butter. "Amy," I hear you saying, "stop being so dramatic. Get off your keister and go buy some more." Well, smarty pants, I can't. Because there isn't any. There is no more peanut butter on this island. And who knows when more will arrive?

Game Called on Account of Snow

Can't talk - too busy watching kids make snowballs.

Meanwhile, back in PNG, Erik has admitted to eating an entire box of chocolates meant for me. I no longer feel bad about eating all of my Grandmother's shortbread cookies without him.

Enjoy your week, everyone. I will post again when I'm not hiding under a fur hat or fighting food battles against my nearest and dearest.

Curse of the Dried Beans

I'm a fan of tinned beans. If I had to guess, I'd say I've mentioned tinned beans on this blog more than any other food. Mostly because dried beans hate me. That's life. But I have a two-part problem: a) they don't sell tinned beans here, and b) I like to cook with beans. This leaves me with the dried bean option.

I like hummus, and they don't sell that here, either. So I broke down and bought a bag of chickpeas. Every few days I would think about making hummus. I'd look at the chickpeas in their plastic package, and recall they had to be soaked overnight. "Oh, well, it is only one o'clock; I'll do that later." And then forget.

Not All Ovens Are Created Equal

It's that magical time of year again when birthday madness reigns supreme in our household. Indy, Erik, and Stylish all have their birthdays within a three week period, and so when the end of August rolls around, I feel like I do nothing but wrap presents and bake cakes.

I took care of the present-acquisition in Canada back in May, and dutifully toted my partially-depackaged goods (the kids haven't seen a board game arrive in its box since 2010) from Toronto through Vancouver, Seattle, Auckland, Noumea, and now Brisbane. Step one: complete.

But baked goods are more of a just-in-time sort of product. So what to do about a cake? A year ago, I heroically baked a birthday cake for Indy en route to New Caledonia, while Papillon was heeled over 20 degrees. Sounds dramatic, I know, but I was in my own home with all of my ingredients and tools at the ready. Practically perfect conditions in the cruising game.

Trick-or-Treating on the High Seas

I'll admit it - I'm a sucker for Hallowe’en.  Oh, Christmas has its charms – lots of family, lots of presents.  Easter is a chocolate-lover’s dream.  But nothing celebrates a combination of excess and rule-breaking like the 31^st of October.  “Wear whatever you want!”  “Sure, you can go for a walk in the dark and take candy from strangers!”  “Imagination is a good thing!  Believe in ghosts and fairies all you like!”  Hallowe’en is ironically, for all of its scary trappings, a day when members of the community agree to trust each other and take a one-day break from fear.

I am fully aware that I fly the Hallowe’en flag alone on this boat.  Indy and Stylish like it, of course, but since our Hallowe’en activities change from year to year, they haven’t built up a sense of tradition-through-repetition the way I did.  Erik finds the entire urban trick-or-treating formula mystifying.  As best I can tell, he travelled back to the rural 1880s for his Hallowe’ens.  On Hallowe’en night, he and a friend rode on horseback between a handful of farms.  They clopped down lanes lit with candled sheep skulls, and were invited into dim kitchens to sip hot cider and eat home-made treats while gammers and gaffers told them terrifying stories of local murders and haunted inns.  What a show-off.  I’m sure I had just as much fun strolling from house to house dressed as a punk rocker and collecting tiny Mars bars in a pillowcase.

Beer Tomorrow, Beer Yesterday, But Never Beer Today

We've got company coming - it's time to buy some food.  (Didn't we just go grocery shopping a month ago?  My goodness, these chores are relentless.)  Off to the store!

We trundled the cart up and down the aisle, restocking cookies and corn, pasta and peppers, while the girls tested how far they could slide on the tile floors without hitting anybody.

Erik stopped short and started cursing.
"What's wrong?"
He looked at his watch and swore again.  "It's after twelve o'clock.  And today is Wednesday."
I swore, too.  Because everyone knows you can't buy alcohol after noon on a Wednesday in New Caledonia.  Or after noon on Friday, Saturday or public holidays.  Or the day before or after public holidays.  But, good news!  Monday, Tuesday and Thursday?  No problem.  Get your drink on.  And as for Sunday?  Well, my friend.  You aren't just out of luck for alcohol on Sunday.  You're out of luck on everything.  The whole city is closed.

Fish My Wish

"Who wants fish?"
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Yes, please!"

Fishing, like most cruising pastimes, is easier than it looks.  Every morning on passage, Stylish tours the decks and clears the scuppers of the unfortunate tiny squid and flying fish that have landed overnight.  We don't eat these morsels, but the message is clear: for the most part, the fish come to us.

The Art Of Making It All Fit (with helpful how-to video)

One of the more common questions I get about life aboard is, "How do you make it all fit?"  That's easy.  Step one: prioritize.  We follow a simple space allocation formula on Papillon.  I'll draw you a pie chart.

A place for everything, and everything in its place.  Provided it is boat related, otherwise it's out.

As I am (loudly) reminded every time we run out of something, I am the Provisioning Officer aboard.  We have lots of locker space so dry goods don't present an issue, but I did used to think my fridge and freezer were too small.  But when we were in Cartagena, Erik ripped them out and made them even smaller!  Ha ha, what a fool I was.

What's Cookin'?

 

The trouble with feeding a family is that it is relentless.  It can be fun to prepare a good meal - chopping vegetables, sniffing at the pot bubbling on the stove, watching everyone's smiling face as they dig in.  And then, zip! it's gone, you have a stack of dirty dishes in the sink and, four hours later, everyone is hungry again.  But the fact is, whether cooking is satisying or not, we all need to eat.  Even I can't survive on crackers and cheese forever.

I have run the gamut on kitchens from Well-Equipped Western World Standard to Fire On Beach.  And you might be surprised how they stack up against each other.

The Best Laid Plans

I spent yesterday day reading Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop, for those interested). And while I enjoy the gentlemen and his humour, he does produce the effect of making one´s prose rather more florid than is usual. So, small doses. Also, not to spoil the book for those who haven´t read it, but the author resorts to his all-to-familiar plot points of killing off the villain by usual way of the Thames (which I don´t really object to), and killing off an innocent child beloved by all (which I do, as this occurs 96% of the way through the book, just before her dear friends find her after a book-long search. Ripoff.)

Shallow literary criticism aside, how did I find the time to read this book all day? Friends, I can´t recommend my methods. Wednesday evening I was decanting pasta from the pot into a colander, and the hot water splashed back on me from the sink and scalded my belly.

It was agony. Erik ran to help me, we iced the area and I lay down, but it was grim. Definite second degree burns over an eight inch by two inch area. I was feeling better with the ice, but as my skin warmed again, the pain returned in force. Out came the first aid kit and the burn dressings. The gel on the dressing helped, but there was a good half hour of teary eyes to endure first.

Before leaving home, Erik and I took a marine medicine course from St John Ambulance. And while you always hope you won´t need that sort of thing, you do. I broke my finger - we used it. Stylish sliced open her chin - we used it. Thankfully we were within spitting distance of a clinic in that case, so a proper doctor did the stitches. But right now, we´re in the middle of nowhere, with not even another boat to call on. Now we have the responsibility to determine whether the burn is bad enough to warrant a return to Panama City. In a few weeks, we won´t even have that option - we´ll be mid-Pacific. But I´m taking my antibiotics and resting as best I can. The medical staff among you may be tut-tutting, but what else can we do?

Oh, and did I mention Erik came down with a high fever Wednesday night and slept all of yesterday? Young Stylish has been my hero, feeding her sister and keeping the pair of them entertained.

In any case, we haven´t moved on today as planned. Soon, I hope. Soon.

Do not try this at home.  Ever.

Postscript: Just in case you are ever feeling blase about dealing with hot water, I can tell you that it took almost two months for the burn to seal up.  It stayed angry for months, and a year later I still have purple scars.  And I still think I got off lucky.