Potluck 3: Sourdough Starter and French Bread

Back on the boat for 4 days now and nothing is working (batteries are crapped out and the alternator is likewise) but this always works as long as you feed it and pamper it as prescribed. This makes a very hard crusty bread but delicious when you break through, kind of like the cap’n. Just mixed this up yesterday so it should be ready to bake by Thanksgiving, in time for the potluck we have planned here at Hope Town Marina. This is from the cookbook Cruising Cuisine by Kay Pastorius. I have been doing this sourdough since we moved aboard the boat.



SOURDOUGH STARTER

1 pkg. active dry yeast
2 cups tepid water
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1.In a clean, rigid-covered container, dissolve the yeast in the water and stir in the flour. Don’t use a metal spoon--use a wooden spoon or chopstick.

2. Leave uncovered in a warm place (80 F to 90 F) for four days to a week, or until mixture bubbles and has developed a sour odor. Stir the mixture daily. If it smells bad or becomes discolored, discard and start again (also pertains to the cap’n)

3. You can begin using the starter or store it in the refrigerator. If stored in the refrigerator, allow it to come to room temperature before using.

4. You should feed you starter every week. Always save 2 cups of this mixture for an ongoing starter. If you have your original 4 cups of starter, either give half away or use it in baking. To the remaining 2 cups of starter, add 1 cup of unbleached, all-purpose flour and 1 cup of tepid water. Allow the starter to ferment and bubble overnight at room temperature, then use or place in the refrigerator.

5. You can also freeze the starter for 2-3 months. Thaw at room temperature for 24 hours, feed it some flour and water and it should start to bubble. If it doesn’t add a teaspoon of active dry yeast and let it ferment overnight.

6. If a gray liquid accumulates on top of the starter, pour it off. Wash your starter container every week with soap and water, then rinse and dry it. (also pertains to cap’n)

7. To use the starter in any bread recipe: 2 cups of starter equals 1 pkg of dry yeast and dissolving liquids in the recipe.



SOURDOUGH FRENCH BREAD

1 ½ cups room temperature starter
1 cup warm water
2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of sugar
4 cups flour

1. Mix together all the ingredients. Knead on a floured board until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Add more flour if dough is sticky. ( I usually have to add quite a bit more)
2. In a warm draft-free area, allow the dough to rise in a greased bowl covered with a cloth until doubled in bulk. Punch down and allow to rise another 45 minutes.

3. Shape the dough and place in a greased loaf pan. (I usually just shape it and cook it on a cookie sheet) Allow to rise again.

4. Bake in a preheated 375 F oven for 45 minutes (usually takes my oven on the boat longer) until crusty and brown.

Lots more sourdough recipes to follow! The capn says to write something funny so I guess I’ll have to invite Kary May over. Thank God the liquor order is coming over on the afternoon freight boat.

An Island Anthem

I must be getting homesick but at least I 'll be on a plane heading that way tomorrow morning. I'm a huge Jerry Jeff Walker fan and just found this song by him that made me think of down there. For those that don't know, Jerry Jeff is the person that wrote Mr. Bojangles. I just saw him a month or so ago at Red Rocks. Of course, he had that tag-a-long Willie Nelson with him. Click on this.
http://www.intothesouth.com/media_h-i-j/JerryJeffWalker-CowboyBootsAndBathinSuits For some reason this won't come up as a link tonight but I'm tired and have a flight to catch in the am. But please check out the song because to me it is what the islands are all about. I'm going to listen to it one more time. Goodnight!

I freakin' give up!! Just google Jerry Jeff Walker "Cowboy boots and Bathin' suits. It will be worth it. At this point don't make me come after you!


Okay, I tried it again this morning and it decided to work. I don't know why, maybe Blogger was drinking to much Merlot last night.

Diet Ads

I don't understand why all these diet ads are showing up. I guess the google crawlers are trying to tell me something. I wish I could click on the ads myself (against the blogspot rules) and maybe I could figure out how to lose this last 25 lbs before I get to the boat in 3 days. Could somebody just email me how Rachel Ray's diet works or those 2 steps to a flat stomach or put it in the comments. And why are my before and after pictures in the wrong order? I'll talk to you when we get there.

Communications: Skype

I am busy trying to tie up loose ends before we get to the boat and I just wanted to mention Skype. I know most boaters already know about this wonderful service but for those not in the know skype is a voice over internet protocol phone and messaging system. The service is free if you are using computer to computer calling or text messaging and it only cost $.02 per minute if you are making a computer to traditional phone call. Go to skype.com and check it out. The days of getting away from it all are over and I know it because I see all these sailors with laptops in hand searching for hotspots everywhere. I would love to have all of you fellow skype usernames so we could chat or if we're in the same harbour we could call each other without those curious VHF listeners knowing our dastardly plans. The way this website works is that I review every comment before it is posted, so if you want to share your skype username with me post it to comments and I will respond with my username but nothing will be published to the www. or this website. Looking forward to chatting with you!

Potluck 2: Stromboli Recipe

Stromboli Recipe

Stromboli
This is so easy but looks great and is always a hit at potlucks. Plus you can make it ahead and heat it up and it's finger food so it's easy to eat during passages. For my dough I usually use my own sourdough bread recipe but I don't have the recipe here, since trying to bake bread at 10,600 is usually disastrous. I will post the sourdough recipe next week when I'm back on "da boat". I brought this to the big potluck that Grabbers(on Great Guana Cay, Abacos, Bahamas) has every Wednesday and Jimmy the manager ordered 100 for the next day. Of course I didn't deliver, I was too hungover.

Stromboli

1 Pillsbury French Loaf or home-made bread dough

2.Whatever fillings you want or whatever you have on "da boat". It's a great way to get rid of veggies that are going south faster than you are.

Instructions:

Find the seam in the Pillsbury French Loaf and unroll dough (this is easier to do if the dough is well chilled) or roll bread dough to a 11"x13" rectangle. Do not roll dough too thin.

Then just layer desired ingredients. Your are going to flip this over so make sure that the ingredients you want at the top, like cheese, should be the first layer. Place ingredients in the middle of the dough with enough dough on edges to fold over ingredients. Don't over stuff. Fold over sides and ends and flip the stromboli over. Brush top with olive oil or butter and sprinkle with grated Parmesan, maybe some rosemary...it's all up to you. Cut ventilation slits in top of stromboli and bake at 350F until crust is brown and cheese is bubbling through slits. Slice and serve Here are some examples with ingredients in the order I layer them:

Italian Stromboli
Cheese (Parmesan, Cheddar, Mozarella)
Vegetables (Mushroom, Onion, Green Pepper, Olives)
Meat (Pepperoni, cooked ground beef or italian sausage or both in your favorite sauce)

Chicken Alfredo

Cheese(Mozzarella, Parmesan)
Vegetables (Broccoli or Asparagus),
Meat (Chicken or Shrimp in Alfredo Sauce)

The possibilities are endless, Mexican, Vegetarian....

Personal Orifices or What the Heck Do Personal Orifices and the Kindle Ebook Have In Common

It’s my secret spot. One that I don’t dare tell anyone about. A mysterious niche undiscovered. A treasure cave unplundered. I must guard it. Protect it. Man will fight to claim it. He would fill it with his tools of manhood. I must be strong! I must withstand his persuasive ways. I must hold on to the final thing that is mine and mine alone.

It’s the last empty drawer on the boat and I’ll be damned if he’s going to put his socket wrenches in it.

I can recall a time when our boat was new and the storage seemed endless. Two hanging lockers for clothes, an extra cabin for guests, deep wells of storage behind the salon cushions and cavernous cockpit lockers would be darn near impossible for us to fill. We carefully planned where everything would go. We even made diagrams and lists of what was where. We divied up our personal space. The galley, of course, was for galley stuff. Pots and pans, dishes, and, hopefully, edible things would reside there. The nav-station was for navigation stuff. Although I thought it was tacky to have a radar screen, numerous radios, and fathoms of cords in my salon, I held my peace as long as they stayed where they belonged. A place for everything and everything in its place.

It was almost unnoticeable at first. The intertwined cords of the nav-station seemed to reproduce overnight and before I knew it they were tumbling with wild abandon out of their cubby holes and onto the shelves of the salon. The tools started to metastasize into the galley. The fenders found their way down the companionway into the aft cabin. The solar panels, dock lines, and boom vang soon followed. I mistakenly let our bread bin go empty one day and returned from the store to find if full of spare oil filters. .

So now the aft cabin has become the garage, whose contents have to be transferred to the salon when any of our guests insist on sleeping there. After three nights of sleeping in the cockpit, they’ve seen enough stars! The wet locker is the storage shed and the hanging lockers have so much junk, excuse me, “crucial boat equipment” in them we can’t get to our clothes. Our cockpit lockers are still cavernous but it takes a major excavation to find anything you need in them.

When I approached the captain about this problem, he agreed wholeheartedly that there is definitely a shortage of storage space. His solution? Get rid of the food! Make sure and keep just enough galley space available for rum and beer. Then get us some good multi-vitamins. They don’t take up much room. Oh yeah, get rid of all the clothes too, he leared.

So much for seeking logical advice from a boat addled mind.

You would think after twelve years, there would be nothing left to take to the boat but it seems year after year we find more offerings that she would appreciate. And of course, my lockers there mirror my closets here in our dirt dwelling. Both of them are full of clothes that I’m going to get back into next year. This year however, I’m being selfish. Don’t worry, I’m planning on doing my part to pay homage to the boat. I’ve bought a sewing machine and bolts of material to recover her salon cushions. The only problem is, I’m going to have to teach myself to sew. I’m sure by the time I’m done with this project it will qualify as a sacrificial bloodletting and when you drive by the boat the person speaking in tongues will be me as I try to wind a bobbin or something as equally perverse to me.
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But back to being selfish. I’ve just got to share with you other feverish readers the treasure I’ve found. It is the Amazon Kindle. It is an ebook device that does so much more. It operates wirelessly through Sprint’s Whispertel network. When you are located in the Whispertel service area you can purchase and download books from the Amazon Kindle store to your Kindle within minutes if not seconds. Best of all, if you are not in an area where Whispertel is available you can download the books to your computer and then transfer it to your Kindle using an USB cord. You do not have to subscribe to Sprint and the wireless delivery is free. You do have to register your Kindle with Amazon and set up an account. You can even subscribe to newspapers and magazines. Best sellers usually go for about half price and, of course, you can shop for less expensive books or go to the internet’s various free ebook sites such as http://www.freekindlebooks.org/ or http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page The books must be in mobi format.

You can also download audio books and music. If you are in a Whispertel location you are able surf the net and send email which is experimental and free at this time.

The device holds about 200 books and once you have purchased a book from Amazon it is always there in your account if you decide you want to download it again. You can save any non-amazon books to a separate memory chip to save storage room on your device

There’s always a downside so… The initial purchase is an expensive $360.00 but I figure it pays for itself in my enjoyment and the amount of time I won’t waste reading books from book swaps that I never would have read unless I was desperate. The backside of that is you can’t share or swap books you like.
Also, you can’t take advantage of free ebooks from your public library because of the format.

I now have about 80 books downloaded and free shelfspace on the boat. I have had no problems with it and a friend on another boat dropped his and they actually sent him on free of charge. The bad thing is that another friend tried to order one and there was a 13 week wait.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with all that book space I’ve freed up. Of course, I’ll have to guard it from the cap’n but the good news is Nigel Calder’s books are also in the Kindle format too. Imagine all the space that will provide.Check it out at http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=afimasruofthr-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000FI73MA&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr14 days until the boat