Imagine you're on a long passage, (5 days or more) and food becomes one of those things that break up the boredom. What, food wise would brighten your day? ========================================== Wow, Paige, great question? We cannot answer this by providing a simple list for on our boat as our tastes change summer to winter, along the coast or off-shore, 2 days out vs weeks out, even Monday to Friday.   We stock with rice, flour, a variety of beans, can goods and produce. We can our own meats.  Fruits and vegetables are replaced when possible. A slab of cured bacon often finds its way onto our boat. Fresh fish and lobster, when Jill catches them, we enjoy. Also, there's that "100 ways" to enjoy conch.   But then, we don't have a microwave or freezer and seldom use ice. What we do have is a stove, oven, pressure cooker, canner, stove top waffle maker, bread & cake pans, cookie sheets, cast iron skillets and best of all, a coffee maker.   What really makes our meals pleasurable though are spices and herbs; lots of them and a wide variety. These coupled with a variety of cookbooks keeps Jill happily puttering about the kitchen- oops- galley and Jill's husband happily eating. If the passage is rough, Jill dons her foul weather gear, puts an apron on top of everything else and goes to cooking, braced in place with a strap across her butt, and the crash board in place in front of her. How she does it I'll never know.   We tried a side of cured ham one year, but just couldn't get past the smell, so we tossed it to the fish. Come to think about it, I don't think the fish enjoyed it either.   When we get to civilization, that's when we enjoy some of the treats that we didn't have on the passage or when away from where they are available. No, we don't feel deprived, just the opposite. Plus, when we get those few treats, we seem to enjoy them better than if we had them all along. Also it gives us something to do. When bored, we'll go searching for that special treat. You'll often find us sitting on the curb outside an ice cream parlor, a spoon in our hands sharing a quart of ice cream. We're easy to spot because I'm usually yelling at Jill to share it with me.   The biggest plus is not having a freezer that stops working, x amount of dollars in food go bad and the time wasted waiting for someone to show up to fix the freezer, even if we had the money, just for it to go bad again. On the other hand, we're glad that everyone else has a freezer, because it isn't unusal to find someone in the anchorage whose freezer stopped working, a benefit for all. First few days, the freezer stays shut. Then, the following few days the freezer owners eat like crazy. Then they start handing out the food to whoever wants it... better to be given away, than to be thrown away and we're always happy to oblige.   No, not the way someone else might want to do it, but then, for us, it has its pluses.   Rudy Briney Bug, Panama City, Fl