Yacht? Not! Easy Meals for Small Boats

Here's Janet Groene, 10-year nomad, whose  liveaboard sloop/winter home had a two-burner Primus stove and no oven. Her 21-foot RV/summer home had a three-burner stove with small oven. Her books include The Galley Book, Cooking on the Go for sailors and campers with no oven nor refrigeration, How to Live Aboard a Boat and Survival Food Handbook.

 

The Groenes on board their 29-foot sloop

 

Galley Recipe of the Week

Dilly Beef with Carrot Gravy

Boneless beef chuck roast, 3 to 4 pounds
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon each salt, pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Medium onion, diced
1 pound carrots, peeled and diced
2 teaspoons dillweed
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 cup water
Gravy:
Heaping tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup water

   Trim beef roast of excess fat. Mix flour, salt and pepper on a paper plate and  and dredge in a mixture of the flour, salt and pepper. Brown in hot oil. Add onion, carrots,  dillweed, vinegar and water. Cover and cook over reduced heat until beef is tender.
    Stir cornstarch into ½ cup water. Remove roast to rest on a cutting board. Increase heat and stir cornstarch mixture into pan juices until bubbly and thickened.. If gravy is too thick, thin with water or red wine.  Slice roast and serve with carrot gravy and a starch such as mashed potatoes, instant grits, rice, etc. Serves 4 to 6.  

 

Farley Halladay is a 50-ish widow now, salt-cured when she was a charterboat host with her late husband. Now she’s beached, bereaved and bedeviled, surviving as a charterboat booking agent, caregiver, cook and crime solver.  Read kicky, poignant cozy mystery ebooks in the Yacht Yenta series, January through June.  March Malice is available for Kindle, Nook, Google Play and other e-book formats.    https://amzn.to/3GXjSxA

   
Pantry Recipe of the Week
    These recipes are not meant to be gourmet quality. They are made entirely from stowed food supplies. Use them as a guide to provisioning your stand-by pantry for temporary emergencies such as a fridge failure or weather delays.

Moroccan Chicken
2 cups canned chunk chicken
Medium onion diced, or 1/4 cup dried onion bits
1 teaspoon dried parsley
 1teaspoon each ground ginger, cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon garlic granules
2  cups water (including any juice from the chicken)
8 pitted dried plums (aka prunes), cut up
1/4 cup honey
½ cup sliced almonds
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Cooked rice or other starch

 

    Break up canned chicken with a fork. Use any juices from the chicken as part of the water measure. Combine everything but almonds and oil in a saucepan or pressure cooker. Bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes under pressure or 20 minutes at a low simmer until prunes are plump. In a small, nonstick skillet cook almonds in hot oil until golden brown.
    Serve over a starch such as rice, mashed potatoes, noodles, etc. and sprinkle with almonds. Makes four portions.
    

 

Tips, provision lists and emergency recipes for pantry shelf foods when fresh foods are gone....

Survival Food Handbook is a "prepper" guide for sailors and campers who have  limited storage space. Using familiar,  affordable supermarket foods you can have a stand-by pantry for temporary emergencies and save those expensive, deeply stowed survival rations for another time. Kindle or paperback

https://amzn.to/3mIfryC
 

 LIFE-SAVER SAUCE OF THE WEEK
    It’s said that doctors bury their mistakes and bad cooks cover theirs with mayonnaise. Here’s a better idea

Janet Groene’s Curried Fruit Sauce
    
    This saucy, generous  side dish is perfect to spoon over ham slices or chicken quarters cooked on the stern grill. Complete the plate with steamed jasmine rice.

1 stick butter
1 tablespoon curry powder
½ cup brown sugar
3  cans, 15 ounces each, fruit* 

 

Drain fruit, saving one cup for the sauce. Use the rest in rum punch. In a saucepan melt butter. Stir in curry powder over low heat until it’s fragrant. Stir in brown sugar.  Add fruit and cup of fruit juice. t.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer to blend flavors. Serve as a sauce over ham, pork, chicken or turkey and rice. Makes about 6 cups.

*Fruit cocktail, diced peaches or pears, diced mango, pineapple tidbits, preferably canned in their own juices, not syrup. Good idea: through in some seedless grapes.

BONUS RECIPE
Loafer’s Lemon Chicken
    
    Akin to beer can  chicken,  this bird is crammed into a bread loaf pan and cooked cozy in its own juices.  Bake it in the oven or a closed grill. Just make sure it reads 180 degrees for food safety.

 

1 whole chicken, about 3 ½ pounds
 About 1/3 cup of your favorite dry rub for chicken
Zest and juice of one lemon
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

 
    Start the grill or set the oven for 325 degrees. Generously grease or spray a loaf pan. Pat the chicken dry and rub it well inside and out with the dry rub. Press the chicken in the loaf pan. Whisk lemon zest, juice and Worcestershire sauce and drizzle evenly over chicken.
    Wrap the entire pan in aluminum foil. Bake two hours in a covered grill on Medium or 2 hours in a 325-degree oven. Test for doneness*.  Let stand 10 minutes. Cut and serve.
* The new, instant reading food thermometers have a probe that can be applied through the foil.

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