How do you plan your meals when cruising?

[Miniyot]

Do you plan on how many calories per day?

OR

do you just continue with what you'd normally get for a week at home and multiply that by however many weeks you will be gone?

OR

Is there anything special, or suggested that you do?

[44'cruisingcat]

I don't even know how many calories I eat in a "normal" day! We just load up the fridge, freezer and pantry.

[DoubleWhisky]

We do not count calories at home and we do not count calories on boat.
On the other hand - when sailing in warm climate our average rate of exercise is definitely lower than at home, so we really try to eat light.
Less meat (and mainly turkey and chicken), less fat (and mainly olive oil and palm oil), more fish, and much more vegetables. I can tell we are going half-vegetarian on boat
What we really look at is glycemic index for our food. It is incredibly easy to catch weight living on boat if You do not remember of all this traitorious sugars...

Cheers

Tomasz

[oceannavigator]

Originally Posted by Miniyot

Do you plan on how many calories per day?

OR

do you just continue with what you'd normally get for a week at home and multiply that by however many weeks you will be gone?

OR

Is there anything special, or suggested that you do?

We make the best possible food we can. We provision the same as we do on land. But, we buy multiples of everything so it lasts longer. You need to go find vegetables every week if not on a passage though.

[oldragbaggers]

At the present time we are still weekend/vacation warriors and only have to provision for short trips. I do a lot of advance prep at home so I only have to assemble things, or heat them up. So I am very interested in seeing the responses to this one, and I would particularly like to see feedback from cruising vegans if there are any out there.

We no longer fantasize about long ocean passages,. Our intended cruising ground will be the east coast of the U.S., Gulf of Mexico, Florida Keys, Bahamas to start and then we'll see from there. With aspirations to go farther south in the Caribbean if the life agrees with us. At any rate we won't be provisioning for long periods at sea. And while we're coastal U.S. I imagine it will be mostly like being at home. But wondering about the islands.

Our main staples are oatmeal, beans, brown rice, hummus, tempeh, and whole grain pasta. Those won't be hard to carry. But really the bulk of our diet consists of fresh fruits and veggies. We hardly eat processed foods at all, so foods that come in a box, bag or can rarely find their way into our house. I know from reading that cruisers seem to rely on those types rations. I guess it will be beans, beans, and more beans when the fresh stuff isn't readily available.

Anyone else out there cruising in our proposed cruising area and eating a similar diet? If so, how is it working out for you?

[Navicula]

when we are on our way 6 to 12 hours....we try to have wraps and hard boiled eggs on hand if the weather is bad (6 to 8 footers close together) that way nobody is down below cooking...it can get tricky to start a pot of boiling water so that you can boil some pasta.....we eat everything in moderation and we watch the portion size

[oldragbaggers]

My favorite lunch is a whole wheat pita pocket stuffed with a scoop of hummus and as many spinach leaves as I can cram in there. Great portable meal for underway.

[oceannavigator]

We eat exactly a like. Brent Swain has tons of good tips regarding keeping these sorts of quality foods.

Originally Posted by oldragbaggers

At the present time we are still weekend/vacation warriors and only have to provision for short trips. I do a lot of advance prep at home so I only have to assemble things, or heat them up. So I am very interested in seeing the responses to this one, and I would particularly like to see feedback from cruising vegans if there are any out there.

We no longer fantasize about long ocean passages,. Our intended cruising ground will be the east coast of the U.S., Gulf of Mexico, Florida Keys, Bahamas to start and then we'll see from there. With aspirations to go farther south in the Caribbean if the life agrees with us. At any rate we won't be provisioning for long periods at sea. And while we're coastal U.S. I imagine it will be mostly like being at home. But wondering about the islands.

Our main staples are oatmeal, beans, brown rice, hummus, tempeh, and whole grain pasta. Those won't be hard to carry. But really the bulk of our diet consists of fresh fruits and veggies. We hardly eat processed foods at all, so foods that come in a box, bag or can rarely find their way into our house. I know from reading that cruisers seem to rely on those types rations. I guess it will be beans, beans, and more beans when the fresh stuff isn't readily available.

Anyone else out there cruising in our proposed cruising area and eating a similar diet? If so, how is it working out for you?

[oldragbaggers]

Thank you, oceannavigator.

[bobconnie]

We don't worry about calories, or amounts of food per day! As most on here know by now we can almost all our veggies and fish, have freezer space with meat both tame and wild. We carry lots of rice, beans, flour,corn meal,and as much coffee beans as we can afford!! Connie lays in those late watch snacks,and bakes cake and cookies at sea ! So we eat what we feel like, but after all these years we have found that overall we eat less at sea then we do ashore ! At least we weigh less at sea!!

[Stu Jackson]

What do you like to eat?

Why wouldn't you do anything different..other than Burger King?

[valhalla360]

We eat pretty much the same as when we lived in a dirt dwelling. Even doing a turkey for thanksgiving (well a turkey breast as there are only two of us).

Two exceptions:
- We do go to more potlucks.
- We often incorporate local foods (ie: if there are shrimpboats nearby, we eat more shrimp because we can get very fresh, very cheap)

[skippy]

Interested in what you can do for "canned food" replacement. Looking for ways to lighten up the weight in the galley. Taking out a lot of not needed pots, stuff. Just wondering how else to get rid of weight but have food for longer periods. Am using plastic bags n plastic lock n lock containers. Any advice is welcomed!

[MarkJ]

Cruisng and passage making are two different menus.

Cruising is basically what I eat at home with some local flavours, veges etc.

A long passage is different... I have never had a freezer so after a week its just long term veges, cans and pasta, dry goods.

What I do there is work out the staples and then ensure I have different flavours to alter them.

For exapmle, if a staple dinner is fresh onion, can of tomatoes, and a can of meat that might be the basic meal many times on a passage. So to alter that each time I have it would be curry one day, chilli the next, herbs, or added soup packet or can, some wierdo asian flavouring etc etc. so one can go a bit wild buying some flavours you would never normally eat and experiment with them.
The whole idea is nutrition as best you can, and variety.

I do have multi vitamin tablets on passage because I think canning food rips a lot of the good stuff out.

Then after a month on tinned diet one needs a fresh produce diet!!


Mark

[oldragbaggers]

Originally Posted by skippy

Interested in what you can do for "canned food" replacement. Looking for ways to lighten up the weight in the galley. Taking out a lot of not needed pots, stuff. Just wondering how else to get rid of weight but have food for longer periods. Am using plastic bags n plastic lock n lock containers. Any advice is welcomed!

I personally can't speak highly enough of my Food Saver. It vacuum seals things in nice heavy clear bags. There's no comparison between stuff sealed with a Food Saver opposed to just a Ziplock bag. Stuff sealed with the Food Saver stays much fresher for much longer. And the sealed bags take up much less storage space than plastic containers, and can fit into more irregular spaces. I buy my brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal and such in large containers from Costco, then after open I break it into smaller packages with my Food Saver. I found the Food Saver was awesome for storing other stuff on our boat that we wanted to keep dry like spare parts or gear that we needed to protect from moisture, things that might be aboard for a long time before we need it, but when the time comes that we do need it we don't want it to be rusted and corroded. Of course you'll need access to electricity to do your initial sealing, but I usually do that kind of shopping once a month or so, come home and bag everything all at once.