July 26, 2002 - TREATS & TREATMENTS
(written June 1 in Chagos)

	This photo shows me putting Vaseline on the 12 and 1/2 doz eggs I bought in Thailand. A TOTAL SUCCESS! Now that we are back in Thailand it is 6 months since I bought these eggs and I used one yesterday in the pancakes!

Big day - it's SUNFLOWER's Birthday! She was launched 26 years ago. What did we do to celebrate? Well, this all sounds pretty mundane: Al cleaned out the bilge; he changed the oil the other day and there is always some oil escaping into the bilge during the filter exchange. I scrubbed the waterline -- yet again; there is some really tenacious black stuff that grows on the blue boot stripe. It's been particularly bad this time because our boot stripe has been under water so much: first with the overloading of gear and supplies for the trip, and then with the nearly constant roll we lived with over in Peros Banhos.

However, there were birthday treats for us. We had pancakes for breakfast, grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches with our last green apple for lunch, hamburgers and potato salad for dinner! Maybe that doesn't sound like anything special to you, but food plays a major part of the good life here in Chagos. By this time in the scheme of things -- we've been here four months now -- nothing is as easy as it sounds. Take the pancakes, for instance. I made my usual recipe. Al started eating his first cake and said, "There's something wrong with these pancakes. They taste all peppery." Turns out the baking powder had gone off. I threw those pancakes all away and made up another batch with a newly opened can of baking powder. But it meant a loss of the flour, milk and egg from the dwindling supplies. We had been saving our last slices of sandwich cheese for the next time Al baked bread, and used the second to last packet (4 slices) of bacon from the freezer. Likewise, the hamburger is nearly all gone. I used 2 of the last 6 potatoes for the salad, and miracle of miracles -- took a chance on hard boiling one of my 4-month-old eggs -- and it worked! The eggs have been the outstanding success story of all my fresh provisioning. Rowdy insisted I buy eggs from his egg man in Phuket as they were "the freshest on the market." A good ploy for selling eggs I thought, but I truly believe it now. I bought 12 dozen, coated them in Vaseline, stored them in the hanging locker forward, and have turned the flats and cartons over about twice a week. I crack each egg separately -- just in case -- but have had to throw out less than a half dozen bad ones. At this point I have about 3 dozen eggs on hand and enough room in the fridge for them all.

The Last Apple

It had been hoarded for just such an occasion. We had both red and green apples when we left Phuket in January. I put half of each type in the refrigerator, and the other half in the day basket for immediate use. We bought a few fresh vegetables in Adduto fill in the gaps from the 12-day passage, and Al wanted more apples, red and green. I was reluctant, as there was absolutely NO refrigerator space right then, and the apples had all been refrigerated and were expensive. We ate the red ones first, then little by little I was able to tuck the green ones into the refrigerator. We've had a nice crunchy "treat" to eat now and then over these last few weeks, so I am glad I listened to him. Here are some other items of note about my fresh provisioning.

Limes

Two years ago (2YA) I had very poor luck with limes. They went off quickly, and I thought it was just the poor quality of the limes available in Langkawi. I knew you could extend the life of lemons and oranges by wrapping them in foil, so I thought -- why not limes as well? Last October I did this test: in a string bag I put 1 foil-wrapped lime, 1 newspaper-wrapped lime, and 1 plain lime. Three weeks later the plain lime had gone hard and was starting to rot on the inside. The paper-wrapped lime had rubbery discolored skin, but the juice would have been usable in a pinch. The foil-wrapped lime was perfect. Ah-hah!

In Phuket, Al and I picked out 60 green, perfect limes and wrapped them in foil. They lived with the oranges (more on those later) in a basket up forward and in a mesh bag hanging in the shower. About a week into the crossing there were evil smells coming from the bag in the shower. How to find the "baddie" in all those little foil balls? Well, it had gone soft enough that I could tell which one to eject just by feeling each lime. That was the beginning of the end. From then on I did the "feel" inspection every few days, and soon began to unwrap them as well. They were starting to go off. I reckon I lost about a third of the limes in the first 6 weeks -- a very poor showing, I thought. Especially since I had such good luck with the foil-wrapped "test" lime. I had to monitor the rest of the limes quite closely and use up the "suspects" right away. It was really disappointing.

Now here's the thing. When I bought these "perfect" limes, I already had a few others on board. There were 4 of them living in a regular plastic bag (not even a greenie!) in the back of the refrigerator. I just left them there while I used up the specially treated, highly monitored yet rapidly spoiling limes. It is now 4 months (or more?) and I still have 2 of those 4 limes. They are yellowed, but are still perfect for the gin and tonics. What's the answer? Who knows? I told Al, that if there is another Chagos visit in our future, we ought to buy a portable refrigerator unit for limes.

Oranges

The story here is not quite as disappointing as with the limes. We eat a lot of oranges, usually one each every morning, alternating between local mandarin types and the imported navel oranges. We have found surprisingly little difference in price, depending on the season. We couldn't find any navel oranges in the open market in Phuket. The ones at the supermarket were already suspect as to quality, so I didn't buy too many. I wrapped half of these oranges in foil and monitored them all closely. Lost a few. When we ate the last 3 or 4, I kept the peelings and put them in the freezer. I used the chopped orange rind for baking and in sauces. Bought about 40 mandarin oranges at the open market -- again top quality, very fresh -- and wrapped them in foil. Too soon I was into the same drill as with the limes, and lost more than I expected. Finally unwrapped all of the mandarins, and they seemed to do better.

Other Fruit

We took only a few bananas and 3 green papayas -- just what we could comfortably deal with -- on the passage (2 weeks) to Addu. Bananas are fine on cereal, but I'm not an avid banana eater. Replaced our supply of bananas and papaya in Addu. We had far too many overripe bananas on arrival in Chagos, and that's only a 2-day trip. We couldn't even give them away. All the other yachts were newly arrived too; everyone was eating overripe bananas: banana pancakes, banana nut bread, banana smoothies and banana everything else!

Because we arrived in Chagos quite early in the season, we were lucky enough to be the recipients of more bananas and papayas coming down from Addu with cruising friends of ours who arrived later. A real treat, but we still had too many ripe bananas. So I put 2 packages of peeled bananas in the freezer; I made a banana nut bread midway through our stay here, and I will bake another just prior to leaving Chagos for the return trip to Thailand.

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