Hmmmm…. Do I have enough rice? Better get a few more bags just in case.

Surveying the varieties of rice on the shelf: carribbean rice, dirty rice, yellow rice, wild rice, gumbo, risotto,long grain, short gain, pearl…I just swipe the entire shelf with my forearm into my already overflowing cart.

We are preparing for our 3 or 4 months-long sailing trip to the Bahamas, and I understand that food costs, like, 300 times more there than here in the USA. And beer- at $75.00 a case for gnat’s piss, well, forget about it.

I purchased a pressure-cooker for the trip. That way, I can simply whip up a delicious meal in 3.5 seconds. So I scan the aisle for dried beans-the base of many such meals. Red beans, black beans, white beans, pinto beans, mixed beans, split peas, black-eyed peas… Again, one swipe and my cart spills its contents onto the middle of the aisle as disgruntled shoppers grunt and make a HUGE deal of having to actually divert around me.

Truth be told, I don’t care for rice. Beans, either. They give me horrendous gas, and a 200 sq. foot boat is no place for expelled methane. Boats can catch fire and blow up easily, I hear. Which makes me extremely nervous about this whole pressure-cooker business.

Purveying the meat department, I fill my second cart up with chicken legs, thighs, breasts, pork loins, chops, and salmon.

Since household and paper products are really expensive in the Bahamas, I load up on paper towels, toilet paper, aluminum foil, saran wrap, baby wipes, tissues. When I get back to the boat, I have a mini panic attack. Where in the hell am I going to put all this stuff? Carrying a bag at a time down the steep companionway steps, I unload stuff where ever there is room. Which, ‘natch, leaves no room for me, Jeff, or the dogs.

Fortunately, and just in time, our boat buddies call from their marina just up the road and invite us over. Perfect timing! I shove the perishables in the fridge and freezer and abandon ship for the night. This can wait until tomorrow.

After spending a stress-free night on our friends boat, we return to the mess we call home. After filling every cubby-hole, we shove the rest of the bags and boxes in the “guest quarters”, the only true berth on Kismet.

Since childhood, I’ve known that under-the-bed storage was preferable to being organized . Since the four of us (dogs, remember?) all sleep on the pushed-together salon sofas, there is room for five medium-sized Sterilite containers underneath. Perfect! Although now we’ve sacrificed a proper salon. 

Sigh. It’s just going to have to do.

A few days have passed, and we are getting used to digging in the fridge to look for stuff. Unfortunately, every time I open the heavy top-loader fridge to pull stuff out, the freezer gains another quarter-inch of frost. I’m sure my homemade Brunswick stew is somewhere in there- did the frost devour it?

I’ve saved some room for truly perishables like cheese, sandwich meat and mayo. But what is that smell eminating from the rear berth?? No, I haven’t cooked beans yet, so…. Ohmygod. My veggies have gone to mush! I read that you can wrap carrots and celery and squash and stuff in foil and not refrigerate them, but I guess that doesn’t really work in the tropics. Better clean that up. Nothing like rotten tomato stink below decks.

This morning I got an email from our friends that are coming to visit in two weeks. Two WEEKS???? What are we going to do with all those groceries and things we have stuffed back there?? Guess we’d better start eating. Maybe we can find room in the anchor locker or something. Or maybe they’ll want to sleep in the cockpit out under the stars. Wouldn’t that be nice? For them? For me?

In the end, everything will workout as it should.

I’m banking on that.

Now, where’s that pressure-cooker?