galley

Countdown to cruising: 1 day to go

That’s it. Our final full day in town is done. Last items have been put into our 5’x5′ storage unit, trip to Trader Joes complete (I had no idea you could even haul $400 worth of food in one of those tiny carts! Must be all the chocolate I stocked up on). We also picked up a netbook to use for navigation so our main laptop won’t have to carry all the computing duties. Leah and I got haircuts, we visited some treasured friends in our old neighborhood, made one last trip to West Marine, hauled home a 15 lb. bag of cat food (that should last our 8 lb. cat a while at least), ran through the car wash, unloaded the car one last time, delivered our dear old Subaru to her new owner, visited with some dock neighbors, tucked our exhausted girls into bed, and I headed out for one final Mom’s Night Out at our favorite pub.

I came home to this:

I’ll get on it in the morning.

We have sprouted!

May 25th, 2011

by Sara.

1 comment

We have finally done it! The crew of Wondertime has grown something edible! I am excited to announce that our sprouting experiment was a complete success. Not only did we produce crunchy, fresh sprouts on our first try, they were also delicious. We will definitely be keeping our sprout garden growing as we sail; we are all looking forward to having fresh crisp greens whenever we want, especially when land-based greens are in short (or non-existent) supply.

For simplicity’s sake, I went ahead and bought a sprouting kit online which included a quart-sized Ball jar, sprouting lid and organic alfalfa seeds and instructions. When the kit arrived we set about sprouting by:

soaking a few tablespoons of the alfalfa seeds in the jar in a dark place overnight (or about 8 hours)
draining the seeds and placing jar back in their dark cupboard with the green lid down and the jar at a 45 degree angle
rinsing and draining the sproutlings twice a day
four days later our little sprouts were ready for….

Guest posting on Foodista.com

Mar 1st, 2011

by Sara.

3 comments

I was invited recently to write a guest blog on Foodista.com, a unique food and cooking website created and edited by users, and my first article has been posted this morning! It’s about the fun and (mostly) challenge of galley cooking, but these ideas can be applied to cooking in any small space (my first apartment after college had less counter space than Wondertime’s galley). Read it here!

Coffee Afloat

Feb 16th, 2011

by Sara.

5 comments

We’ve been trying to cut back on our coffee consumption, we really have. There have been a few too many trips through the Starbucks drive-though lately (and Starbucks for four is totally not in the Budget). We also have a habit of drinking a little too much coffee on the weekends which ends up with Michael and I snarling and sniping at each other for no real reason other than over-caffeinated nerves. We are also thinking ahead: unless things have changed the only coffee available in Mexico is typically Folgers and that just is not going to do. During our last cruise in Mexico we stopped drinking coffee altogether; truthfully I can’t remember if it’s that all the extra sunshine helped get us off the caffeine habit or if it’s just that we couldn’t stomach the taste of the “coffee” sold pre-ground in cans.

But anyway, we are here in the Northwest and coffee is just a necessity. We can’t even get out of bed in the dark damp mornings without downing at least one cup of thick, black brew. However, for the reasons above we’ve been doing our best to cut back. For quite a long time now we’ve been mixing regular and decaf beans to reduce our caffeine intake. But this doesn’t really help with the mid-day lattes when we are out and about.

Wondertime's Coffee Shop

Recently, we found the perfect solution: we purchased a Capresso frothPRO with some gift cards leftover from Christmas. We grind our beans fresh, then use our AeroPress to make up to 4 shots of perfectly rich and smooth espresso. [A quick note on the AeroPress: this is the best coffee maker ever invented. Just add some additional hot water to your espresso shots and you’ll have the smoothest, richest, best tasting cup of coffee you’ve ever had. I mean it.] The frothPRO heats and froths our soymilk up just perfectly; with a few squirts of chocolate or caramel sauce, or, my favorite, vanilla syrup we now drink lattes regularly that rival any from one of our local coffee shops. Now we are able to drink even MORE coffee, with delicious creamy lattes right on the boat!

Hmm.

Well, if nothing else our trips through the Starbucks drive-though have been noticeably reduced now that I know that if I can just wait to get home after running errands I can whip up a latte myself for just pennies. Now, the only problem is that we will almost certainly have to fill the bilges with beans from Trader Joes because it appears the frothPRO is happy frothing up cold lattes too. On second thought, I think the coffee is still winning, but I can live with that:

A Rainy Day in August

Sep 8th, 2010

by Sara.

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We had a little preview of the season(s) to come last week. We awoke to rain drops pitter-pattering on Wondertime’s decks and decided to just have a snuggly day below. How did we like being cooped up on a rainy day? Very much, indeed. (Ask me again in December though….)