Maybe blogs can be a bit like buses.
I’d forgotten to mention something which may amuse, disgust, surprise or not various of you.
Last night I’d gone to have some leftover chicken and leak risotto. Now the chicken had been bought in La Palma and, eventually, frozen ( the freezer may not have been as efficient as I’d hoped even from the Canaries) it had then almost (or possibly more accurately,) completely defrosted a day or so before arrival at St Martin. I had been unable to throw it out as it seemed fine so on Thursday (to be fair to myself I had thrown out some fish and prawns which had ammonia reminiscent smells coming from them) had fried it and subsequently made a risotto with it on Friday evening. This was fine if not gastronomically wonderful. The following night I’d gone out for a meal and had left the leftovers in the pressure cooker.
Last night I went to have the leftover risotto. It smelled a little off. I thought I’d cook it up and over heat it in the pressure cooker. I did this. It still didn’t smell all that good.
Now here’s the surprising part.
This was quite a struggle. I threw it away!
I re-heated some lasagne, Thanks Alastair, and had that then went for a walk etc. as already mentioned. There was something else too but at the moment I can’t think what it was.
Anyway the fridge man cometh today and spent the morning in his van making up new fridgy bits for me and has loosely put them aboard - the evaporators (ie the cold plates) are wobbling about in the fridge with the compressors etc wobbling about on a not very nicely but newly painted platform in the walkaround cockpit locker that becomes surprisingly full when we are sailing, and the system has had a vacuum applied to it to absorb water vapour and to test for leaks. Fridge man was to come back at 0830 tomorrow to finish it off, secure it down and commision it , but this has already been postponed to 1130 on account of him having a more important customer with a charter boat to attend at dawn.
The new fridge system is made up from chinese bits and pieces, he assures me that they are all chinese these days, and this is probably true but I’m now aware that problems down the line may not be so easy to fix without returning to St Martin, hopefully there won’ t be many for decades but…… what one buys in chandleries are also chinese but have standard bits like the electronic box which takes one’s 12 or 24 v supply and converts it to 40v 3 phase. Mine is similar but comes from the funk eee wooo company rather than the Danfoss company. I’ll probably buy a spare electronic box from him for peace of mind and hope for the best. He does seem a nice guy and, realistically, most fridges last for yonks without issue.
Years ago on Blue Leopard I was really familiar with all the fridges, I had gauges, gas, spare electronic boxes and compressors ( never needed to be changed) spare pumps and filter for the water cooling ( often needed changing, my experience says don’t go for water cooling) also a vacuum pump and spare filters (adsorbent things which took water vapour out of the gas) and with that lot there was nothing that could go wrong that I couldn’t fix. The best fridge on Blue leopard was an ‘eski’ - self contained fridge box in the wheelhouse that worked as a fridge or freezer depending on where the thermostat was set, in the 4 years aboard the only time it died it was just the electronic box that needed replacing.
Anyway I believe that we are now fully up to standard for snorkelling with the Havana laugh chaps coming out next week, I’ve also bought another fan for cooling at the chart table/ saloon bunk and, so far this is working well.
I’ve been to around 600 different supermarkets and it appears that Haloumi is not available, in fact cheese seems to be a bit of an issue. One can buy tiny bits of French cheese for about 10 dollars, per microgram, or what is called ‘American Cheese’ and comes in blocks of about 5 kg at about 50 Dollars and won’t taste of anything (apologies to any murcans reading this but I’ve found that american cheese has been de flavoured prior to being put on the shelves) and I’m not keen to splash out on a block of this. Children’s cheese is widely available. It’s also astonishingly expensive. I did have some Lidl's cheese triangles but Stephen reckoned that it looked a little discoloured for his sensibilities and threw it away. (I do wonder if he really did any time in the field with the army or was only ever fed at dinners at the officer’s mess. He reckoned it had grown legs and was wandering around all over the boat I suspect it would struggle to get out of the deep food locker, locked down as it was by rusting tins of tomatoes).
Anyway I’m about to make a Carbonara as the eggs really ought to be eaten before I replenish them with fresher ones.
It’s been really quite windy today, from the South which is unusual.
All the best
Jock
😂😂😂😂