The Galley Slave

Day 12 - Good Friday, but not so good in the galley of the good ship Curare, things just seemed to go wrong. For the past 18 hours we had been bashed about in 25 knot winds with 3 to 5 meter swells and I did not have the urge to cook. Knowing that the windy weather was going to be of short duration I had not bothered to pre-cook meals and instead we ate oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, cheese with crackers and beef jerky for lunch and left over beef stew with pasta for dinner. None of these required any culinary feats in the galley, just a little stir of the pot.

Just as predicted the wind died to nothing on Saturday morning, although the swell remained, and we started the engine to get some southing. A perfect time to cook, we were not heeled over and it seemed fairly flat. On my to-make list were corny chowder for lunch (needed to boil some potatoes), peach upside down cake for snacks (a can and a cake mix - easy), and no knead herb bread (no need to knead).

First thing were the potatoes and this is where I discovered that we were in fact heeled over a tiny bit to port (left) and the swell was rolling us from side to side. As usual the potatoes would not stay on a flat surface so I peeled them in the sink bracing myself against the counter which meant I could use both hands. Almost immediately I discovered that wearing socks without shoes was not a good idea as I went skating across the highly varnished teak floor which left me stretched across the cabin, my hands in the sink, my feet braced against the opposite side of the galley. After pulling on a pair of sea boots I finished the potatoes and put them on the stove to simmer while I went to find the cake mix and brown sugar. I know this task took less than 2 minutes, and when I left the potatoes were simmering nicely, but before I returned the potatoes had boiled over onto the stove top and down the back side of the oven. Trying to look on the bright side I remembered the outside of the oven had not been cleaned in a while so it was a task that needed to be done.

Not being satisfied with a mere stove clean the sea imps must have decided that the food locker also needed a little work because as I was removing the brown sugar it's top popped open and it spilled. Sugar attracts bugs so this meant the locker had to be completely emptied and thoroughly cleaned, not just a little wipe out. This is not an easy task, especially on a bouncing boat, there is a lot of food in the locker and very little room to put it while the locker is being cleaned. Food packages are stacked precariously and randomly and it is a puzzle to get them all stored again in the same order so that I can find what I am looking for the next time I need a certain item. This minor task set me back about 50 minutes but there was still time to get the cake baking and put together the chowder for lunch.

Next step was mixing the cake batter and pouring it over the peach and brown sugar mixture, so far so good, but more cleaning was lurking. Although the oven is gimballed and stays level when baking, putting liquidy food into the oven requires perfect timing because for short periods the oven is tilted, first one direction and then the other. I timed it wrong; the cake batter washed over the back edge and then the front edge of the pan, pooling on the heat diffuser plate and coating the window. There was nothing I could do except leave the cake to bake and smell the spillage being burnt to a black, hard, crisp. So now the inside of the oven would get cleaned too, but this was a much more time consuming job and I left it for later.

After lunching on chowder and cake, and while waiting for the oven to cool down, I decided to cook Jessie dog some brown rice to supplement her rapidly dwindling kibble supply. This passage is taking a lot longer than expected and one of the uprights miscalculated the canine companion's food consumption. I poured the brown rice into the pressure cooker, added the water, and was about to clamp on the lid when I noticed a lot of tiny black floaty things on the water - WEEVILS!!!!. Luckily the rice package had been stored inside of a ziplock but I could not take the chance of any weevils getting into the other dry goods, and wouldn't you know it this dry good locker is not the same one as the brown sugar locker. Yet another food locker was cleaned out and all of the dry goods were placed inside of individual ziplocks with clusters of bay leaves (apparently weevils hate bay leaves).

By this time the oven had cooled enough to clean out the crispy cake batter (60 minutes) and the spilled potato water (15 minutes) and then the decision became - bake bread or take a nap? Not wanting to do any more cleaning I opted for the afternoon nap. The bread will wait until tomorrow morning, fresh bread for lunch is the best.