I don’t know about anyone else on here, but I’d love Grandma Linahan’s recipe for Mac salad, if you’re willing to share, and when you’re not busy @Auspicious.
I have lots of relatives I don’t know, through food, and Goodwill shopping. Careful kids, we’re using granny’s special heirloom platter tonight. Haha!
Grandma Linahan’s Macaroni Salad
2/3 cup minced/diced green bell pepper
1/3 cup minced/diced onion
2/3 cup minced/diced celery
2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp powdered mustard
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp butter melted and warm
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
Prep veg, measure spices, and cook macaroni. Mise en place.
Drain macaroni but don’t rinse. Mix everything else except the veg down to the butter. When smooth stir in the butter and then the macaroni and then the veg. Refrigerate overnight. Green onions are garnish.
Published as six to eight servings. I can eat the whole batch in an afternoon in front of the TV or computer. Scales well. I’ve done up to about five-x. I’ll likely prep two-x for this trip.
I use Hellmans or Dukes mayo. I’ve used prepared mustard when I didn’t have powdered.
I don’t have a favorite potato salad recipe. I tend toward red potatoes for salad. Open to input for something new to try.
Thanks very much - look forward to trying it @Auspicious! I’ll think on some potato salad ideas for you.
Update.
I have input from all the crew about allergies, likes, and dislikes. We pretty much have unanimity on a few things: no lima beans, no okra. A strong undercurrent of no sauerkraut.
I’m starting cooking ahead. At four weeks out this is early for me. COVID-19 is making availability of some things (boneless skinless chicken breasts for example) problematic. In addition, since the boat is only fifteen minutes from home I can stage finished, vacuum-packed, and frozen meals on the boat and not take up freezer space at home. This is good.
I spend customer money like it is my own, so shopping is a combination of Sam’s Club warehouse store and Giant Food grocery with coupons and sales. I have a Sam’s Club curbside pickup today and a Giant Food curbside pickup tomorrow.
I already took lasagna (I make it in big batches and price it) and pasta sauce (really really big batches) to the boat. Cooking this week will be chicken curry, beef enchiladas, and meadle (the Beef-a-Roni thing I’ve talked about before. I may make some kind of stew - haven’t decided yet.
Desk work includes double-checking that all the planned meals have ingredients, and all the ingredients contribute to a meal. When that task is complete I’ll update the PDF I linked to for y’all to see.
Also going on is a daily crew email. There is a topic of the day each morning. These convey information, set expectations, and keep the crew engaged and maintain enthusiasm. Topics: food, safety, packing, COVID-19, Watchstanding and sleeping arrangements, personal electronics, light discipline, navigation/piloting/logging, communication, failures and failure cascades, watchstanding II, back to food, tides and currents, sail trim, and C&I. I have a document with these daily subjects but every one gets tailored to the boat, the trip, and the crew. I bang through several topics at a time and then set them up to go out automatically one each morning. I don’t want to overwhelm anyone and retention is better by spreading material out.
Not food related at all, but weather is always a priority. It’s way too early to forecast anything. There are patterns to weather and I’m watching the tropical waves off Africa which is where most hurricanes are born. I’m watching the cold fronts off the Great Lakes and Arctic Canada which is where winter storms are born.
My wife is working on care packages for her Dad and a brother so we’re scheduling kitchen time. We certainly help each other but trying to make stuffed shells for my father-in-law and chicken curry for the trip is more simultaneous activity than need be. I buy disposable foil 9x13s and 8x8s in quantity for boat trips and my wife has become a huge advocate. Yes there is waste, but the whole “get that casserole back and we’ll fill it again” simply doesn’t work with her brother.
When I first looked at your menu planning, I thought WTF? How’s he going to prepare so much food on a boat. Then I saw the boat. A cat. Ah ha. I’m a monohull sailer. Everything suddenly made sense. Would never have tried to prepare anything like what is being planned while underway on my boat. Trying to use the stove is complicate enough. Would never dream of using the oven. I guess the stability of a cat makes all the difference. Fair winds.
Actually a monohull is easier to cook on. Most cats have fixed stovetops and ovens. sigh Gimballed is much easier. Cats are more stable at the dock and in very light conditions. In weather they don’t roll as much but they pound a lot. For galley-up cats there generally isn’t anywhere to to wedge yourself in. There are light discipline issues when making dinner. I’d much rather sail a monohull for cooking. Five private cabins en suite are nice though. grin
On a gimballed cooker you can put your cutting board on the cooker for mise en place and go faster.
sail fast and eat well, dave
I cooked and baked on a gimballed stove. Crew did laugh when I got captain/husband to put a big reef in the sail so I could bake a cake😊
Crew weren’t laughing when cake was served.
I would have been really impressed if you’d made a souffle. grin
Last week we again had to fly commercial and thought everyone in concourses and aircraft (passengers included) was comfortably with the program. An improvement since the last trip two months ago was onboard with distilled spirits added to wine and beer adult beverage choices to open on your own.
Seawinds are very nice boats although quite different from Fontaine Pajot. Downsides: no handholds on TOP of the hardtop in case you have a sail problem, no fiddles on galley countertop, no fiddles in fridge, cabin arrangement is awkward for equals, same stupid latching arrangements as most other cats for sliding door and windows, all the ports in the hull can become a problem for fendering, the usual poor lighting arrangements for light discipline, huge line friction with the leads to the cockpit. Good seating at the nav station.
Here is a similar piece for the FP Saba 50 I’ll be sailing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdC0h4npGRQ . Visibility port aft is poor, same problem with fiddles on countertops. Fridge drawers solve the problem there. All those nifty outside cushions get stowed offshore. Handholds on the hardtop! Seating at the nav station absolutely awful.
Someday someone will put the obligatory bathing suit clad woman behind the wheel instead of just perched decoratively. sigh
Dolphins not included. You have to find your own.
I don’t trust the creatures. The conventional wisdom in Texas is they eat gamefish, fish get spooky and swim away, not to be caught.
For whatever reason I am apparently charmed. The times I venture out on the water and don’t see a dolphin are the exception
Some years back, husband and I were walking on a beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Dolphins were swimming close to shore.
The dolphins started following us. Made eye contact. When we stopped walking, they stopped. When we changed direction, so did they. So cool!
I usually do see dolphins. Sea turtles are cause for excitement.
One of the pluses in living in a coastal area is the ability to see dolphins when I’m on the road…I’ve seen dolphins from most of the causeways in the Tampa Bay area.
One notable evening I caught the green flash from the top of the Skyway Bridge.
Update. Good bit of projects done, one redone. Still waiting for 500 hr maintenance on the engines (scheduled today, shifted to tomorrow) and two new halyards (chafe damage).
On the food front, a service tech bumped the freezer breaker off. Fortunately I hadn’t started shifting much food from the chest freezer at home so loss was one of my lasagnas sob and a whole pork loin. Not a tenderloin - the whole freaking loin. sigh
Cooking ahead is done. The updated provisioning list is at https://AuspiciousWorks.com/SWprov.pdf . Things struck through are purchased and on the boat. Curbside pickup at Giant Food (midatlantic states) and Sam’s Club have been great and I’ve managed not to drop anything in the water getting it all on board. The owner arrives today with his own list of projects. Next two crew next Wednesday and final crew late on Friday.
The grocery shopping cart for curbside pickup is loaded for Thursday pickup. That’s almost all produce. Thursday is a little early for Sunday departure. It gives time for supplemental shops to deal with out-of-stock, inventory drops, and other shortages without panic.
The freezer is turning out to be a real pain. It’s small, about the size of a bar refrigerator. It has five shelves and is front load so efficient use of space is darn near impossible. For a top-load of the volume I could get twice as much food in there. Also on the chore list for Thursday is to remove the little internal doors over each shelf space and take out two or three of the shelves.
I think that’s it for the food side of things. Monday I’ll be on board to finish up the HF/SSB installation, check up on the project list the owner is working on, and together commission the watermaker. The water maker is a 65 l/hr reverse osmosis device that turns sea water into potable water. Tankage aboard is plenty for consumption and cleaning for the trip. The watermaker means the difference between showers and baby wipes.
Monday is also the day to lean on the rigger to get back to the boat and replace two halyards that show signs of chafe.
Tactics for Sun 1 Nov are to get out of the slip early - certainly by 6a - and across the river to the nearest fuel dock which opens at 8a. We’ll have coffee and breakfast there while we wait for it to open. Fuel up and head down the South River to Chesapeake Bay and South. We’ll stop again for fuel in Cape Charles. We won’t have burned much fuel by then but enough to calibrate the fuel management spreadsheet I’ve built. Fuel gauges are notoriously inaccurate and by logging all engine run time I can make much better decisions about the speed threshold between sailing and motoring.
Cape Charles is also our last staging point for favorable weather.
Wishing you fair winds and following seas!
Again, your crew is fortunate to have a diligent skipper who is also a fine cook.
