Provisioning Lesson

It’s been a quiet week, boat-work wise.

Well, quiet in terms of physical progress made on the BOAT. Cruising prep? Going gangbusters, thanks.

• Sold 2 cars, 1 generator, and took a load of junk to the dump.

Jeremy with his beloved Miata, handing it over to its new owner, Shane.

• The garage is looking more and more like a place to store cars as opposed to an overstuffed burrito.

• About to put a deposit down on 2 new sails from Jamie at Sailing Totem/Zoom Sails.

• Hired (WHAT???) a landscaping company to come out to trim trees and spread mulch. In one day the front of the house looks amazing.

This COVID-19/coronavirus thing has us a little spooked, to be honest. Our MO for the last couple of months or so has been to eat down all the food in the house so we don’t have to move it when we sell. No freezer stash, no pantry stash. This also flexes my creativity muscle in the kitchen; we’ve been eating a lot like we will when we’re cruising. The downside to this plan? There was exactly ONE can of diced tomatoes in the pantry in Charlottesville when we got back to the house last week.

This may not be alarming to you. Since I can create dinner with nothing more than onions, garlic, and a can of tomatoes as a base, not having a stash of tomatoes makes general fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants cooking a little more challenging. Canned tomatoes are one of the products we stock a LOT of when we provision.

With all the worry about the possibility of a pandemic, we’ve been discussing our own strategy. Part of that means sticking close to home (not hard to do) and being very careful with exposure to whatever. If we’re told to quarantine for 2-3 weeks for whatever reason, we’d like to be very prepared.

Preparation is not unlike getting ready to go cruising, especially when it comes to food and stocking up. Our fridge on board is tiny. We’re adept at improvising with good spice selection and a solid array of basics. My solution is to think about the next few months as a staycation to the Bahamas, complete with a trip to Costco making sure we have it all covered. If we don’t need the long-lasting pantry stores between now and then, we can just schlep them to the boat as the start of our provisioning for heading out cruising.

I made a tactical mistake yesterday, though.

It’s not that 25 pounds of rice is a problem. We eat a lot of rice; this is probably just shy of a year’s worth of rice for us; yes, I have no issue taking close to a year’s worth of some staples with us even though YES you can find this anywhere! No, the problem is not the quantity of rice but the SIZE of the container. Storing a 25 pound bag of rice in the house? Challenging but doable. I will fill a container that sits in a very accessible spot and store the rest somewhere in the bowels of the pantry, dipping in when the “every day size” container is empty. Storing a 25 pound bag of rice on the boat? Oooh. Yikes.

My storage spots on board are relatively small; at least two of them (the forward-most settee spots) couldn’t hold this whole bag period. It’s way easier to store 8 3-lb bags of rice than it is to store this big thing.

Sure, I spent less on this huge bag than I would on smaller bags. Still, the hassle involved with re-packaging and even figuring out what I’ll use Ziploc bags? Borrow a vacuum sealer? Jars? Buy special containers?) is not insignificant. If I figured out the time to re-pack as well as the additional storage (containers or bags) needed, I wonder if I’ve even saved anything at all.

Luckily, rice is a staple that is easily repackaged into smaller containers, ones that can be stored in various places on the boat. As a provisioning mistake to make, this one is not fatal or wasteful; if it was something like an industrial size can of beans, the contents of which need to be refrigerated after opening, the lesson would sting deeper in the pocketbook. It reminds me, though, that it’s easy enough for me (experienced at buying for the boat) to get excited about saving money on something we use all the time, even if it’s in a size container we can’t easily store.

Way better to buy lots of smaller containers than one big one!!!