Back to Basics

Living on a sailboat is about exchanging convenience for simplicity.

One thing about traveling in the Bahamas is I’m learning how to go back to basics. The few grocery stores that exist are tiny markets with limited selection. They generally have some canned goods, maybe eggs, rice and flour. If there is a loaf of bread it is old and refrigerated. But since I can find flour and I have yeast on board, I started baking our own loaves. As a bonus I can use the same dough to make the pizza crust for homemade pizzas.

Generally one loaf makes enough sandwiches for a meal, the other we will use as sliced bread warmed on the pan with butter and served with eggs for breakfast or alongside our dinner. I also have found a recipe for Bahamian bread (which is sweet) that is delicious, and that dough makes excellent homemade donut/ pancake type pastries. It took a little bit of experimenting as the only recipes I could find were in units of metric weight instead of standard volume. Just how many cups of flour are in 2 kg?

After making our own bread I started experimenting with homemade flour tortillas. My first few batches ended up being more the consistency of a pie crust, but after some adjustments they have gotten more tortilla-like. (Although we found you can put almost anything in a pie crust and it will be delicious). Add some grated cheese, a can of rotel tomatoes with green chilies and we are rockin’ some quesadillas!

I even made homemade pierogies one night. After letting the dough sit for hours, Kim and I spent the afternoon rolling, cutting, and folding each pierogie and then cooked them for dinner that night. We don’t have sour cream on board, so we had to use canned media crema with some vinegar, and we only have a limited amount of boxed milk so I substitute any recipe that requires milk with powdered milk. Fortunately no one on board is picky and they remain willing to taste all my cooking experiments.

The other ongoing issue is laundry. Laundromats are few and far between, and often expensive. Our first opportunity to do laundry since arriving in the Bahamas was in Staniel Cay. After weeks of no access to a laundromat I was so excited! I went to the laundromat just to find out that the washers were $10 or $15 each depending on size of load and $5 to dry. I returned to the boat with my dirty laundry and went to work. I set up a wash bucket, then would wring the clothes, put them in the rinse bucket, wring the clothes again, and then hang clothes on the line to dry. I felt like I was channeling my great-grandmother who had to wash her 10 childrens’ denim overalls in the creek. Although she probably did that using lye soap, I can’t even imagine. On the boat I could only do a load at a time and then had to take breaks because I was getting blisters on my hands from wringing the clothes. Bathing suits are the easiest, cotton the hardest, and I didn’t even bother trying to wash sheets or towels. But we would have clean underwear, shorts, and quick dry shirts to last us until we could go to a more affordable laundromat.

I think my great-grandmother would be proud.