As we adapt to cruising life, a few things happen. One is the trash situation from the previous blog post. Another is food. In sailing terms, one provisions. One does not stop by the grocery store to pick up things for dinner. We left La Paz on April 27 with our final provisioning run being April 25. We won’t be where there is a grocery store again until Loreto. That’s easily 2-3 weeks away.
How do we do this?
Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas
Departed Ensenada: March 12.
Arrived Cabo San Lucas: April 3.
Duration: 21 days.
That’s our longest run between major provisioning yet. I say major because Mag Bay had a tienda where we were able to replenish eggs and snacks. There were fisherman that sold us shrimp. There was a restaurant in Mag Bay where we ate once.
Think about your food world…when was the last time you went three weeks without going to the grocery store or out to eat? And you weren’t on a cruise ship with AYCE.
During this run, the only fresh food item that we stocked and ran out of was milk. We had shelf-stable milk, which since I don’t drink it plain, tastes just as good as the fresh stuff. You might ask, what about verduras y frutas? The list of veggies that one of us doesn’t eat is long. Strictly speaking, we had potatoes, cabbage, peppers, and onions onboard. All of which lasted the three weeks. In the fruit department, we consumed the limes and lemons. I think we entered Cabo with one sketchy looking orange. We don’t carry bananas (bad luck on boats). We had a pineapple that went off. No apples because they are out of season. No melons because neither of us eat those. BTW, I stock dried and canned fruits in addition to fresh.
Proteins and breads were fine during the time period. I consumed all store-bought tortillas and bread, and had started baking our own from scratch! We would have to be out a much longer time for us to run out of pastas, sides, and sauces.
La Paz to Loreto
We’re currently living this. It’s been 4 days since we provisioned. We are down milk, oranges, eggs, and bread/tortillas but nothing is gone.
How do I know how much to buy? In some ways, it still feels a bit like a dark art. But cruisers who have gone before me have developed spreadsheets. One starts by creating a meal plan–not a Tuesday means tacos, but more we will have chicken tacos twice and carnitas once. From there, one needs to list the ingredients down to spices and oils. This is not picking up a chicken taco kit from the ready-made meals or freezer section. This is cooking raw chicken in a blend of spices and maybe making tortillas from scratch. Oh yeah, and you need to grate cheese and chop veggies. The spreadsheet better drill down to list that fresh garlic or garlic powder are needed. I’ve included a screenshot of the provisioning spreadsheet. I’ve built it with formulas so one can easily change numbers of people eating and weeks away which will then recalculate quantity of foods needed.
It starts to become a bit of a dark art in two ways:
- Planning what you will eat for a month.
- Knowing how much you have on hand and what exactly makes a portion.
Committing to eating spaghetti once a week for four weeks wasn’t hard to grasp. But then, how much pasta does one cook and need? Does one need different noodle types? I’ve never really been a pasta measuring kind of gal. It’s more, grab a handful of spaghetti, dump in a pot. For other noodles, pour some or all of the box in the pot! Therefore, I can’t really say how many meals I get out of a box. This is where the dark art of wild ass guesses comes in!
Looking at the line item for Pasta in the example below, I decided 1/8 of a box is a serving. We’re talking spaghetti here. Both of us eat it. So over four weeks, one of us would eat 5 servings or 5/8’s of a box. Therefore, for two of us, that’s 10 servings or 10/8’s of a box. Therefore, I’d buy 2 boxes because partial box purchases aren’t a thing. That said, in Ensenada or San Diego, I bought 3 boxes of spaghetti noodles and we still have 2 full boxes. As in, for 5 months, we’ve consumed 1 box. This is the dark arts part again.
Once I have a quantity to purchase, the shopping list is written like: Pasta – 2 boxes of spaghetti noodles; 1 box of macaroni noodles. We use MS To-Do for our grocery list and inventory list.
Then there’s the shopping, which sometimes makes you look like a hoarder. Why does one have a cart with 5 boxes of cereal, 24 bottles of Coke, and no veggies.
Then discard as much packaging as possible. See previous post on trash.
Repackage in servings. Store items away. Update inventory. Cook! Eat!
I don’t know when we will get to Loreto or if any of the anchorages have tiendas. We left La Paz with the following proteins:
- Eggs – 16
- Thin steak – 1
- Ground beef 7oz – 1
- Ground beef blocks – 2
- Ribeyes – 2
- Chicken thighs – 4 packs of 4 thighs each
- Chicken breast canned (yes, canned) – 3 cans of 12oz each
- Leftover Chinese food
- Frozen General Tsao’s (one of the last things from Trader Joe’s in San Diego)
- Deli turkey, salami, and pepperoni
- Kirkland beef hot dogs (all hot dogs in Mexico are poultry)
- Ground pork – 1lb
- Pork loin chops – 3
- Pork shoulder – 2
- Bacon
- Brats
One of us prefers all meals to contain animal protein but we also have legumes and cheeses onboard. We’ll see what we roll into Loreto with!
Update from Agua Verde
We have run out of fresh fruits and veggies (only canned remain). No more fresh milk or store-bought bread. We ate all forms of hot dogs or brats. We are low, but not out of frozen meat, flour, and butter. Mark ran out of Coke and I have only two naranjadas (mineral water with orange) left.
In Agua Verde, there are two tiendas. We visited one so far which makes the Turtle Bay one, pictured above, look big! However, they have more things tucked away in the small space. I was able to get fresh veggies but no fruit, three boxes of milk, a bag of Bimbo white bread, Coke, chips, and tortilla flour. We are doing fine. With about 4 weeks remaining in the season, we are looking forward to some USA land foods.
Loreto shopping is about a week away still.