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Janet's
Favorite Galley Gadgets
9/27/02
Janet Parks
After cruising for more
than two years, I have found many items to be invaluable in
the galley . We’ve completed numerous offshore trips, ranging from 10
hours to 3 days, and a few items have made eating on these trips
much easier. Some galley
items are used daily and have made cooking and cleaning aboard a much
simpler task. And then there are the galley items that are fun to use and
are a luxury to have aboard. Those
items are aboard because we decided we would be ‘living’ aboard, not
camping aboard. This isn't a
comprehensive list of items I use, just some of my favorites.
Some
of my favorite galley gadgets allow me to easily prepare or serve food
offshore or in rough seas, which can even occur on inland waters such as
the Chesapeake Bay. I have a hot
water dispenser that keeps water hot enough to make coffee for up to
48 hours. Before we leave the
inlet to go offshore, I pour steaming hot water in the dispenser and it
allows us to make hot drinks or ramen noodles quickly any time, day or
night. Often the conditions
are not too rough to make a nice meal or bake bread, but they are rough
enough to make chasing a bowl around the galley the sport of the day.
To eliminate this challenging sport, I have a set of plastic
bowls with rubber bottoms and plastic lids.
The rubber bottom allows the bowl to stay in one place even when
sailing on a 15-20 degree heel! No
more bowl chasing. The
plastic lids also make this a great serving bowl when taking food to
another boat or to shore for a potluck dinner.
When
it comes to serving a meal offshore or in rough seas, I’ve found two
items to be really helpful. The
first item is a set of wide, shallow
bowls. These bowls
substitute for plates, when a plate is inappropriate for the conditions.
I learned to serve pita pizzas in a bowl when Blaine almost lost
his pizza off his plate one day. We were only in Tampa Bay, but the sea conditions were rough
enough to make balancing pizza on a plate a bit challenging.
The second item is a set of Tupperware
soup bowls . They have a
lid with a vent to aid in microwaving soup or stew and they have a nice
handle to make eating soup much easier in rough conditions.
There
are some items that I use every day and I wouldn’t want to go cruising
without them. My cookware is T-Fal
Ingenio stacking non-stick cookware.
I have two frying pans and four saucepans of varying sizes that all
nest inside each other; therefore they take up very little space.
There are two detachable handles included.
Since the cookware is non-stick, I have cut thin non-skid circles
that fit inside the bottom of each pan, so it will not be scratched by the
pan that is nested inside it. This
has worked fantastic, even with all of our offshore sailing.
My ‘canister set’ consists of varying sizes of Snapware
containers. They are
rectangular in shape, so they fit nicely together without wasting space.
They have a rubber gasket inside the lid which provides an airtight
seal to keep foods fresh. The
large size is perfect for flour and pasta, the medium for rice, sugar and
oatmeal, and the small size is great for baking soda, coffee and tea.
I
use the Amazing Absorber cloths for multiple uses
in the galley. I cut an
Absorber into quarters and use this smaller piece as a dishcloth to wipe
the counters. It doesn’t
smell moldy after a day’s use like a normal dishcloth does.
A whole Absorber is used under the dish rack. This one catches the water that is dripped off of dishes as
they are being placed into the dish rack, thereby keeping the counter dry.
The last item that I use daily is my set of Tupperware
ice trays. They are
plastic ice trays with lids. The
lids provide a watertight seal on the ice tray, but they have a flip-up
lid for a fill hole, which is not watertight.
Therefore, if you turn the filled tray upside down it will leak,
but it will not leak at a 45-degree angle.
I always find a flat place in the freezer to store my ice trays and
I have never had a problem with leaking from the trays.
We like cold drinks and these ice trays provide us with ice daily.
One
of my most unexpectedly useful items is a Tempreserve
Hot/Cold Food Keeper. We
debated on taking this item cruising with us.
It was a wedding gift that we never used while living on land.
We never seemed to have the time to attend potluck dinners where
this item would prove useful. On the boat it is a completely different story.
We use this item all the time to keep appetizers or side dishes hot
as we bring them to other cruising boats or onshore for potluck
get-togethers. What a
fantastic gadget to have aboard!
Two
money saving items I have aboard are a Food Saver and a pressure cooker.
The Food Saver is a vacuum
sealer which I use to package meats, cheeses, nuts, spare parts, etc.
It allows me to buy foods in bulk and then seal them in individual
packages to store. Vacuum-sealed
foods stay fresh 2-5 times longer. The
Sealer works great for spare parts as well; sealed parts will survive
longer if you can keep the salt air away from them.
The pressure cooker saves money, as
well as time. By using the
pressure cooker, foods can be prepared in 1/3 the cooking time, thus
saving propane and time. I searched for a long time before deciding
on my pressure cooker. I've only found them sold at the boat
shows. While somewhat more expensive, I love the quality and safety
devices on this unit.
I
have two items that I use as a substitute for normal kitchen appliances.
A Zyliss Food Chopper from the
Pampered Chef allows me to easily chop food.
It takes up ¼ of the space that a small food processor would.
I use a French Press to brew coffee.
I found a coffee maker aboard to be very messy and space consuming. I even have a small coffee bean
grinder to allow me to grind coffee beans to the correct consistency
for the French Press. I have
fresh, flavorful coffee and the French Press and coffee grinder combined
does not take up as much space as a small coffee maker would.
My
last few favorite galley gadgets are pure luxury.
They make it fun to live aboard.
The first item is a rechargeable battery
operated can opener, by Black & Decker. Its battery lasts a long time on one charge and it makes
opening cans so much easier than cranking one of those manual openers.
Another fun item is our CorkPops wine opener.
Just push the needle into a wine cork, press the button and out
pops the cork, like a champagne bottle.
It uses a CO2 cartridge to create the pressure to pop the cork out
of the bottle. Quick, easy
and fun! These two items were
gifts and are some of my favorite gadgets!
The
final set of luxury items are things that we brought from our house or
bought along the way to give us that decadent feeling.
We brought our crystal liquor
decanters along with us. We
store them behind our fold-up dining table with non-skid underneath and a
fiddle on top to keep them in place.
Even after crashing down 20-foot seas, these decanters stayed in
place and intact. Another
decadent item we brought with us from our house is a four-piece place
setting of our fine china and stainless flatware.
We use it to celebrate special occasions, such as Thanksgiving,
Easter and Christmas, where we would use our formal dining room if we
still lived in a house. I
store these pieces in a Rubbermaid container with bubble wrap between or
around each piece and the container is stored under the aft berth.
The last item is a set of pewter
serving trays/bowls. The
pewter pieces were bought as my birthday presents the last couple of years
and allows me to serve appetizers in luxury versus plastic bowls.
Another way to splurge and make the boat feel like a home!
These are my favorite galley gadgets!
They are all items that I enjoy using and most of them make galley
life a little easier. I would
recommend very few of them as a must-have item for every cruiser, but they
are nice to have if you have the room to take them.
One thing I would recommend to every cruiser is to bring at least
one luxury item aboard; it doesn’t have to be a galley item.
It makes living aboard fun! Hopefully
my list of galley gadgets will inspire you to collect your own gadgets and
take pleasure in your time as a galley slave.
Enjoy!
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