Mary Heckrotte S/V Camryka - Coastal Cruiser and Island Hopper

Mary's Galley aboard Camryka About Mary Heckrotte

What advice/tips would you give women in setting up their galleys, in preparing to cook aboard?

Flexibility and adaptability are key characteristics of a happy cruising cook.

The most helpful cooking book I've come across is How to Cook Without a Book by Pam Anderson. This book provides all the lessons Mom could have/would have/should have taught. With basic cooking procedures down pat and a sense of what goes with what, it's easy to adapt and modify to accommodate available supplies and conditions.

An exciting part of cruising is trying local products. Vendors are the best source for information.

Cruising cooks must be hoarders. When you see what you want, buy all you can stow/use as the product may not be available at the next island or even at the same store tomorrow.

Hoarding recipes is a helpful habit, too, but not cookbooks as each one generally has only a few recipes of interest. The rest of the book is filled with recipes that include hard-to-find or store ingredients or ingredients you don't eat. It's easy to copy recipes that look promising on index cards and stow them in small boxes. Cookbooks can be borrowed from friends and libraries or purchased at thrift stores and passed along when you have copied what you want.

Mary's Famous Cheesecake

Some of the best recipes are the ones you beg from fellow cruisers and even from restaurants. The Internet, magazines, and newspapers are excellent sources. If I prepare the recipe, I note the date and location, any variations I've made, mention any guests, and make comments about the dish. My cards are a travel log of memories. Computerized cookbook programs are a godsend when you don't know what to do with what you have on hand. List the ingredients and the program will pull up dozens of recipes using those particular ingredients.

You probably won't use as many electrical gadgets onboard, but for the most part, meal preparation isn't any different than it is in a house since most cooking is done at a marina or at anchor.

We all tend to worry about how we will cook at sea but
1) we aren't at sea as much as we had imagined,
2) we don't eat much when we're underway.
For crossing the Atlantic, we prepared and froze ordinary meals ahead of time in foil pans that could be heated in the oven. For a 5 or 6 day passage, we prepare in advance and refrigerate meals that don't require additional cooking such as Chinese Chicken Salad or Steak and Green Bean Vinaigrette. Underway we tend to eat more snack foods than anything else.

For lunch, my husband prepares and eats leftovers or a sandwich. I often skip lunch or find odds and ends for a snack. We share a proper sit-down dinner at the cockpit table when weather permits or otherwise at the main salon table.

Ordinarily we work hard to maintain a healthy low-fat and low-sodium diet with fresh meats and veggies. When underway, though, we tend to eat much more junk and snack foods. We each keep preferred snack foods stored onboard and help ourselves as the notion strikes. I rarely make desserts except for company.

We have service for 8 Correlle dinner ware and plenty of glass glasses. We mostly use cloth napkins (bandanas are perfect) and get out the place mats for guests

Sponge Cake Deluxe		My lovely salad

Before cruising, when there was always a Dominoes or Pizza Hut only a phone call away, I never would have imagined making my own pizza. But my husband and our guests have been pleased with my efforts.

It's all thanks to Barb Maness on s/v Homeward Bound who kindly shared her recipe for “Garden Patch Pizza.”

The nicest thing is that the dough doesn't have to sit for hours to rise. Although the instructions are for making the dough by hand, I usually put the ingredients in the bread maker and let it do the work, not even a floury mess to clean up.

As soon as the dough is ready, I spread it on the pizza stone, a very handy item to have aboard. By the time I have all the toppings chopped, the crust has risen to perfection. Toppings are always “what we got in the fridge today.”

The recipe calls for a cup of very warm water. Another cruising woman taught me that if I mix 1/2 cup boiling water with 1/2 cup cold water, the temperature will be just right.