Before: Plenty of room for whatever we needed. After: Maybe a scoach less room.
One of the big factors of what we bring aboard Cream Puff is space. Where is it going to go? Does it need to be readily accessible? Does it need refrigeration or to be frozen?
When it comes to refrigeration another question becomes important; do we use it often enough for it to take up the space in the refrigerator? Is it worth the power we need to use to keep it cold?
Most home refrigerator doors are full of half empty bottles of various condiments. We might use them once a week or maybe only once a month. I could not see having a lot of half empty, rarely used bottles taking up space on Cream Puff. At the same time, we like to cook and like to have these items available.
Condiment Bar at Chick-Fil-A
One day while downsizing our house back in 2014, I was at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant. I was looking at their array of individually packaged condiments. They have an entire counter of condiments. A light bulb went off. This is what I should do on Cream Puff. At the time, Costco, Amazon and other internet stores were close at hand. I found honey, salad dressing, jams, jellies, relish, mustard, lemon juice….every condiment I needed and all easily accessible by home delivery. All packed in nice little individual servings. And they have long expiration dates too! Hooray!
I keep a small supply of each condiment in the galley (kitchen) and the rest are stored away in bug proof bins. For the condiments that we use more often, like salsa, I buy the regular size containers and then transfer it to a smaller square container. Square containers utilize the space better than round containers and I don’t have to contend with a lot of different size bottles. Everything stacks nicely and uses the available space more efficiently.
A sampling of condiments we use. It is nice to have these small little packets around when we need them
Even though mayonnaise and ketchup are sold in individual packets, we use a fair amount of both. It makes sense to buy the regular size bottles at the grocery store. They do not need to be refrigerated so they live in a cabinet in the galley. You might remember awhile back, Mark wrote a post about mayo not needing refrigeration here is the link: See Mark’s post about mayo not needing refrigeration.
When we were in Florida last summer I was able to refill our supply of individual packets from the internet and through Costco. I used the opportunity to add few more types of individual packets. I found soy sauce at Amazon sold in smaller quantities of 40-50 packets. I knew we did not need a case of 200. That is one of the problems, many of the condiments come in cases of 100-200 packets. The good news is the expiration dates are long. We probably use it all before it expires. If I don’t think we can use it all I will share some of the cases with other cruisers so it will not go to waste.
One of my favorite parts about living on a boat is it creates new was to be creative in our thinking. It is fun to try to figure out how to bring as much of our land life pleasures into our boat life.
