Provisioning the aCappella Way

by Karen and Jeffrey Siegel on 5 Feb 2015 Karen and Jeffrey Siegel from Castine, Maine, onboard aCappella provide insight on provisioning the aCappella Way:

We often receive questions about provisioning for a cruise. Generally they center around traveling further away and the issues of having limited and/or expensive access to food and other items. We are finishing our provisioning effort prior to heading to the Bahamas, so we thought it might be useful to write about our method. But no matter how far you travel, we think there is relevance since most cruisers have limited access to transportation and must think ahead.

Now we're pretty sure this will result in less of a 'religious war' than 'what's the best anchor?' But we also know that this is a fairly personal thing and that others will have new and different opinions. We have certainly learned much from boaters on this topic over the years. We expect this piece will generate more good ideas. We're happy to hear your ideas and we'll accumulate them.

First, a bit about our style. We do not eat meat, fish, or dairy, and prepare all of our meals from scratch, so our provisioning involves stores of ingredients needed to make our repertoire of recipes. We split these ingredients into two general categories, long term (canned goods, rice, flour, etc) and weekly items (fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, and other perishables).

It probably will not surprise you that we use an app to assist us. In fact, we have used different ones over the years and are now quite happy with Paprika which runs across our iPhones, iPads, and Macs. We've entered hundreds of recipes into the app and can then simply select our meals and it will create a grocery list. Compare that list to what we have on hand and we now have our weekly shopping list on our phones. Our weekly list is typically just the fresh items mentioned
above making for a pretty easy trip if we are walking or taking public transport.

We take special advantage of having access to a car, whether it is a courtesy car or one we have rented, to stock up on those bigger andheavier items including paper goods, laundry soap, and toiletries as well as to fill up on nonperishables for the galley.

There are two methods we use to determine how much to store. Things like rice, flour, nuts, grains, etc. are placed into sealed containers to keep them fresh. It's easy to write the contents, date, and amount on a piece of masking tape placed onto the container. For example, 5lbs of rice on 9/23. When the container is getting empty we do that again with the next refill. We do this until we are able to discern a pattern - 5 lbs of raisins lasts us a little over 2 months. So if we'll be spending 2 months far away, we'll probably want to have about 7 lbs for a cushion.

For our upcoming Bahamas trip we used Paprika to develop a typical set of meals for 4-5 weeks - we called it a prototype. Those meals were entered into the app to create a large grocery list for those weeks. Based on the length of stay, we multiply quantities from the prototype to get a good basic food provisioning list. We'll pick up a bit more when we make our final perishable shopping trip in Miami Beach.

We've gone through similar exercises for things like paper towels and shampoo figuring out our typical usage and then adding a margin for error.

Of course, provisioning would not be complete without taking into consideration our canine crew. We know that 120 pounds of dog food lasts our crew about three months. In addition, they are not served your average Purina variety (does that surprise anyone?). We order all of their stores online. There are several sites but we really like chewy.com. When the food order goes in, there is always a healthy number of treats thrown in as well.

This leads us to our own online finds. We have been using Amazon Prime for our provisioning needs (even food). The prices are typically good, the shipping is free, and they often have larger quantities of some ofthe more unusual items we use. Try finding a 5 lb bag of quinoa at your local supermarket.

We find that whether we are simply cruising through the populated areas of the US, taking a remote side adventure, or heading to other countries, it is a more relaxed and carefree time if we don't have to worry about where our next meal comes from. Of course, for Dylan and Dee Dee, they can't imagine why every possible hold isn't filled with their treats!