Hola mi amigas!

I write this from Chile where we’ve been for the past couple of weeks (in all honesty, it may be 3 weeks, I’m not sure. We’ve been a bit in limbo waiting to leave and I have totally lost track of the days!). It’s certainly been a new experience arriving into a country where the President has declared it in a “state of emergency” and there’s a nationwide mandatory curfew… but I’ve enjoyed our stay here nonetheless. Plus, top tip – the curfew is a total non-issue if you make friends with the owner of the bar, stage a lock-in and don’t leave until the curfew is lifted next morning!

However as fun as it has been, it looks like we are finally on track to leave soon which means a LOT of shopping for me. Our upcoming trip is the longest I have done and not far off the limit of what the boat can realistically do. The passage is predicted to take 4 weeks, so allowing for poor winds or bad weather I am looking to provision for 6 weeks…

6 weeks of food for 6 people is a bloomin’ long shopping list!!

To make it easier for myself – both in terms of numbers of trolleys/fitting it in the car and in terms of my mental wellbeing – I try to break the list up into sections and split them across 2 or 3 shops. My separate lists for this trip were:

• Meat/Fish
• Drinks (and emergency water)
• Dry goods/Tins/Ingredients
• Freezer 
• Snacks
• Veg/Fruit
• Dairy/Deli
• Toiletries/Cleaning

In the past couple of weeks I’ve managed to get all those sections done bar Veg/Fruit and Dairy/Deli which I will do absolute last minute. Which is no mean feat! In addition to the usual fun and games of trying to wheel 3 trolleys up to a till on my own, we’ve had the added challenge of being on a floating dock in an area with pretty big tides. Which means that if I get my timing wrong, trying to get a wheelbarrow of shopping bags down a super steep slope can be rather entertaining! 

For the first long passage I did aboard (the Atlantic crossing), I wrote out a menu plan for the whole trip and then did a huuuge spreadsheet calculating how many of each ingredient I would need. It was a pretty over the top method, but I was having sleepless nights and bad dreams about running out of milk halfway through and those workings out helped reassure me. With the subsequent passages I was then able to adjust the numbers after seeing what I over provisioned on (potatoes and onions every time – but god can you imagine running out of onions?!) or under provisioned (snacks – whatever quantities I buy get eaten). I’m now pretty confident with my method and I seem to have a good grip on the numbers needed. Although I still panic every time when I see the sheer quantity of meat laid out on the worktop! 

The meat in Chile is amazing quality. Unlike back home, very little is pre-portioned and prepared for you. Everything is sold in the full cut of beef (it’s really mostly beef with a  small section for pork and chicken). Which is fantastic in terms of being able to choose a nice looking piece and ensure you are getting the right cut for the purpose you want and not just “stewing beef”, however it does require a little more effort before being able to pack it away. As I am on the watch schedule in addition to cooking, I like to make my life as easy as possible, so after buying all the beautiful joints of beef, I set about slicing some into steaks, others into chunks and then vacpacking into portions and labelling before stacking them all in the freezer. After about an hour of this I started to lose my marbles and managed to slice a nice little chunk off my finger too, which although painful, was to be expected I guess!

I am however all stocked up on everything bar the fresh stuff now – so we better leave soon otherwise I’ll have to shop again and I’m not sure my poor brain is up to that! Due to limited storage and fridge space on board, packing away all the vegetables is a mission and a half in itself and one I will most likely dedicate a whole post to, but suffice to say it will take me another couple of hours on top of the time it takes to buy all the stuff. Because of all the riots in Chile the stocks in the supermarkets has been a bit hit and miss lately – god I hope it’s all there when I go for the final shop, I can’t face the idea of cooking for 6 weeks for 6 people, twice a day with no onions or no cheese!! Wish me luck!

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