Eat Well, Feel Well

We Eat Really Well on the Boat: Provisioning for Afterglow has become a welcome chore as we move from town to town along the New York and Connecticut shorelines in Long Island Sound. In the East River in Brooklyn, we bought fresh blueberries and bananas ($1.00 for 4 bananas) and apples from a street vendor; we were amazed at the very reasonable prices and the large size and freshness of the fruits. In the Sound, we stayed for a few days each at smaller seaside towns and found larger grocery stores to provide meals on the boat. Prices at larger chains were fairly decent, but the cost of really good cheese has skyrocketed --$11 to $22 for a wedge of camembert or fresh mozzarella or stilton and even gouda. Nevertheless, we eat really well on the boat.

As most friends know, I love to cook, and cooking on the boat has its challenges, especially when we are not in a slip with electricity and I am restricted to using the range. ( I could use the oven….but that may use up a lot of our propane, so I choose to use both the microwave (when we have electricity at a slip) and the two-burner range in the well-stocked galley. My oven is filled with baking/microwave bowls.

Eating Out: Of course, we eat out a lot when sailing or motoring on a trip like this, leisurely taking our time to enjoy long walks throughout most of the little and big towns that we visit. Typically, at home in Seattle, we would go out to eat for lunch or dinner once or twice a week. Here on the boat, we explore each little town, and depending on the sense we get about the kinds of restaurants and cuisines available, we eat out at least three to five times a week. Cape May offered our first taste of lobster off the Atlantic, and Atlantic City some great hamburgers at the Golden Nugget casino, and Port Washington some tasty Greek food on their Main Street. (Leftovers were good enough for two meals on the boat when we were anchored.) Brooklyn had so many diverse and authentic cuisines that I must admit that I can’t recall all of them except for some Mediterranean sandwiches with lamb that made me so happy inside at the first bite. Yummy! And of course the Bagles, whitefish and salmon schmears we took back to the boat. At City Island, we had the very best steamed cherrystones that I have ever had. (Wish we had taken pictures of the huge mound of chewy, buttery and lemony clams we devoured for over an hour last night at Johnny’s Seafood.) But you heard all about them in Allen's last post.

Prior to dinner, we sometimes get appetizers in town. A perfect example is the plate of baked oysters we had at Oyster Bay, NY, home to Teddy Roosevelt. Allen and I both enjoyed that along with scrumptious bread rolls and sips of orange Aperol Spritz.

In truth, we lose more weight and eat more healthily when we have meals on the boat. Tonight we are anchored in Echo Bay just outside of New Rochelle, NY, and Allen really enjoyed heated corn tortillas filled with what he called caraway zucchini, a mixture of sautéed onions, sliced zucchini, with a butter and melted cheese sauce I conjured up for a quick vegetarian meal, well, not quite with cheese and butter, but you know what I mean.... nothing with a face. The week before I made something similar with fresh eggplant, onions, spices and mushrooms. (Allen loves mushrooms.)

My point is that we eat a lot more veggies and fresh fruits here than we do at home. So far my swinging net hammock behind the stairs is filled with butternut squash, onions, oranges, two sweet potatoes and a small bag of small red potatoes (for a potato salad later this weekend), bananas, and apples.

The fridge, however, is crammed with blueberries, blackberries, fresh cold cuts and cheese slices for sandwiches, three kinds of lettuce, celery, carrots, and three kinds of breads—caraway rye with seeds that Allen loves, pita for filling in with tuna fish or chicken salad, and, of course two kinds and sizes of tortillas (huevos rancheros for breakfast, refried beans, cheese and salsa wraps for lunch, and toasted tortillas to sop up whatever we may have for dinner.

Before we left Annapolis,

I bought a tiny new kitchen gadget, a miniature DASH waffle maker. This morning we had fresh little waffles with real maple syrup and fresh blueberries and orange segments. Yesterday morning, we had a mushroom and onion omelet—also yummy.

Pictured at the top of the blog is our dinner meal of freshly caught bluefish (Allen’s next blog will tell you more about this.) with roasted orange slices, a peas and spinach combo with balsamic vinegar dressing, and sautéed potato latkes. Everything was super good and easy to digest with homemade tartar sauce and a glass of chardonnay. That we caught these fish earlier in the day made them even more tasty.

Ah, the sailing life is full of wonderful food. Allen is more relaxed, has lost some weight and his acid reflux has improved 100% from good food and low stress. We have learned that if we eat well on the boat, we feel well. Now off to our dessert of Nutella-covered vanilla wafers and fresh blackberry and cantaloupe fruit salad, a filling and nutritious way to enjoy retirement and sailing.