Cooking on Catalpa

Who does most of the cooking on Catalpa well mostly me (Sara) but Bella does some too. Bella likes to bake muffins, cakes and treats etc.

I make sourdough bread most days we eat a lot of fish and rice and love to create yummy meals for the crew. Living on a boat travelling means you have to get creative sometimes as trips to the shops can be weeks even months apart.

When we provision we stock the boat with food for 3-4 months and fresh food for 2-3 weeks. We store all fresh vegetables in the fridge. We have a big chest fridge with plenty of room which I love and freeze most of our fruit.

We provisioned our boat this week and other then fresh feel like we have enough food for 5-6 months.

Everywhere you go is different when provisioning so you have to adapt and be prepared to use what is available when travelling to new countries. I miss being able to get some of our favourite things from Australia but mostly we find everything we need. This life is all about compromise and maybe something to consider if choosing a life on the sea.

Staples aboard Catalpa are home made baked muesli, sourdough bread, rice, pasta, homemade sushi, smoothies, fish, potatoes and coleslaw.

We make most things from scratch as snack foods run out pretty quick so stocking up on flour, cooking oils, butter, herbs/spices and sugar is important.

We have tinned food for when fresh and frozen fruit and veg run out but we try and not let that happen too often.

A good fruits to freeze if you have the room are bananas, papaya, berries, pineapple and dragon fruit. We are currently in the tropics and this is what fruit mostly we have in our freezer.

We also have fresh coconut, chicken, meat, cheese, bread, and peas.

We substitute coconut milk for actual milk. Our fridge is packed with butter and cheese as they are only found in big supermarkets in Indonesia.

The way I provision is to fill the boat with as much as possible its never enough and the longer you can last between shops the longer you have in remote islands exploring and they are our favourite places to be.