seaworthy notes from the past....not that long ago....
Fleece
does not do well on the back of a quad in Resolute bay. I found this
out last night. I was going ashore to meet up with a few of the crew
already there. Derm said he would drop me off by the town but first had
to pick up the ol man (skipper) at the oil pump house. I was about to
help skipper and bacon boy (all 300 plus) in to the boat a couple of
quads pulled up. At first I thought this was a couple of locals just
dropping by. Speedy quads are the everyday way to get around these parts
(earlier in Pangnirtung, as I awaited the boys outside the store a quad
pulled up with what looked like mom, baby and grandma crammed aboard).
It turned out to be the boys from the ship. They had rented (for 20 bucks) a couple of quad for an hour. One guy decided to go back to the ship so I waved the rest down and hopped aboard. Man, the dust was something else. Resolute is nothing but gravel, dirt and bald hills that have not seen a tree in a very, very long time, if ever. I dusted off when we came to a laughing stop twenty minutes later I pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Stoney eyed we drove out to a point, looked at old abandoned katimaviks, and those motorized snowmobile buses from a long time ago.
After a quick tour around the town the boys headed off and I could not find one to rent. But this made the day. A great bit of fun.
Rolling
Last Saturday I pinballed down to the galley. Six am and she was rolling quite a bit. Picture looking out a porthole and one minute there is just the lighter blue of the sky filling the glass. The next you are staring at the dark blue ocean.
I quickly picked up the pots and pans that found a way to break free during the night and began getting set up for breakfast. Slant walking becomes second hand after a few trips and I began setting up the stove with the t bar square. It keeps the pots in four separate squares so they roll but stay on the stove. I awaited the first order and as we did not have the proper pans for eggs or omelet’s (more on this later—section on cooking on ship’s with limited gear, each cook’s methods, ordering, etc) I had to cook them in a tilt skillet.
This large piece of equipment is more at home in a hotel kitchen that a ship’s galley. The first order is two eggs over easy. What a laugh as I two large eggs hit the heated skillet and ran with the ship. Two large now elongated into extra long’s! It took a few orders to get the cracking and pouring of eggs down but you never get it completely. Ship’s roll with the sea. So do the eggs. As the sea dictates.
Guy asks “what kind of cheese is this?”
I look over and say “shitty feta”.
He goes “what?”
The thing is that I quickly realized that while it was shitty factory feta-an non descript plastic bag that came in a corrugated brown box from suburban somewhere- it was unknown to him. Old cheddar from Kraft was a wild cheese in his parts.
So I quickly retort, “Just feta”. I wanted to talk about where feta comes from and the different kinds but that was too much. I wanted to tell how I made feta on a farm in Queensland, Australia, along with quark, yogurt, and havarti. How we worked all day with funny nets on our heads that reminded me of my Nan wearing my brother’s underwear on her head while `mixin` a batch of bread. But no, “just feta” was all I could muster.
Sometimes with cooking it is the camaraderie that I miss on ships. It is usually just you. If you are lucky enough to have a second in the galley helping out, quite often food knowledge is not there forte. This is just a job and the culinary aspect is secondary. It kind of reminds me of working in the hotel in Charlottetown.
I had just moved there to get an understanding of how large scale kitchens really worked. I took the advice of an acquaintance in Toronto. He worked across the street from where I lived in Chinatown, in a French bistro. I use to hang out my easy bake oven window (I lived above a restaurant kitchen, and the heat….) and nagged him to let me come over and try out. He suggested that I try a hotel system to learn more. You see they put me to task on a simple culinary school task; turning carrots into roses. I failed miserably but I did take his advice and begun searching out hotel jobs. Later that year I ended up in Canadian Pacific’s Hotel Prince Edward in Charlottetown.
I quickly learned that while I took the job, all gung ho, wanting to improve my culinary skills, there were those that cooked for a living. Just that, a paycheck. There was no passion, no wanting to learn more, just punching a clock, getting paid and bitching about life. Eventually I came to look at hotel jobs as grunt work. Mechanical work, devoid of passion. The more you worked there, the more robotic you became.
On the ship it sometimes gets that way but you learn to see small glimpses off pride in the little things; rice becomes a nice rice pilaf; grilled lamb chops are finished with a lemon and rosemary dusting; pan seared scallops are seared just right, a nice crust on each side while the center borders on rare. All in all these small attempts fall by the wayside once the trough has been filled (the hot trays in the mess room) and the squeeze of the ketchup bottle is heard. But you try, and try again.
I think it is Monday……headed out of Pond Inlet yesterday morning as a cruise ship came in. The only other ship we have seen on this trip.
Wednesday morning, at Broughton Island. Spent yesterday morning bouncing through an ice flow and of course I was on polar bear watch. No luck but when Paul walked into the galley at 6 am and said that they had just spotted one, well it was time to suit up and get on deck. Suiting up for me wasn’t coveralls and a hard hat but long johns and a wool cap!
Had planned to get up last night as the skipper told me that the cliffs of this island are a good spot for seeing bears. I looked out the porthole around 10pm and it was very, very dark and foggy. Not much luck at seeing anything. This morning I felt I was at home. The fog was as thick as pea soup and even now at 10 am it is still hard to pick out land.
The food ordering problem.
Picture this; I recently placed a stores order (the marine term for food ordering aboard ship) for Come By Chance our next port of call. I excitedly looked forward to it since it was in getting stores that I stood a chance at honing my craft aboard the ship. I often try to order a few small things that would enable me to enhance not only the meals but my ability to maintain some semblance of culinary integrity.
So I eagerly awaited the arrival of the stores order. Eventually they came and began to help put them away. It is here that your journeys are either a bit of fun or not. This last order was a complete let down. Many of the small items that I had wanted that would afford a simple meal to be something tweaked into a repast where not on the order or the wrong products were shipped.
In these situations two reasons are usually given; one, someone in head office vetoed said items or, and this is usually the case, someone at the ship’s chandlers did not understand the order, the items in question, and either submitted substitutes or did not bother. It is the latter that usually happens. It is here that I blow gaskets and wish I could somehow offer a short course in supplying stores for a ship. A few examples are in order.
A ship’s crew, like all people, have their likes and dislikes when it comes to food. Whether you are talking about why someone has ketchup on fries but not mash, or prefer a particular brand of bologna to another the point is the same. Choice.
On this last ship the crew would not eat any other brand of bologna besides Maple leaf. Some guys would argue that they could taste the difference. Bologna? Well this is the argument. What got under my skin was that the stores where not ordered in Montreal, or Quebec City, two locations that when you order bologna you get a local or regional brand .Rather stores were ordered right here in the heart of Maple Leaf bologna loving country, NL. So it begs the question, who cannot read a simple order that states Maple Leaf Bologna, 4 sticks? The person picking the order I guess
This problem is a regular pain in the ass. Stores are ordered repeatedly from the same couple of companies wherever the ships ports of call are. So why do they continuously mess up the order? I ordered 3 crates of eggs one time (that is 15 dozen per crate) in Sorel, Quebec one time only to receive 3 dozen! The same company for years, How far was a ship going to go on 3 dozen eggs? Or as we planned to head north to the arctic again I ordered 48 cases of bottled water but received only 29.
So a few questions popped into my head; who exactly picked the order? Where did they go to get the order? Sometimes you can tell that they went to a local supermarket by a few tell tale giveaways; the stores own brand name; the 4 squeezable 250 ml salsa products that were suppose to be 4, 4 liter jugs of medium salsa; the 200lb of potatoes come in neat 5 lb bags. That kind of thing. But the blowing of a gasket really happens when inane choices come up and you really wonder if the person picking the order has never shopped before let alone for a ship’s chandler company. This is usually when items are shorted in the following way; a case of biscuits becomes a pack; a case of bacon becomes individual packs of the cheapest brand; fresh dill is rotten chives?????; that kind of thing.
You take it in stride of course but still the idea lingers that it would be great to meet the person picking the order.
Many days later and I am at home. Nothing new about this spot though. My trip was great and the return south was one filled with anxiety as you know you are getting near the end. I hope that all on this list got all 3 emails…let me know…fred
It turned out to be the boys from the ship. They had rented (for 20 bucks) a couple of quad for an hour. One guy decided to go back to the ship so I waved the rest down and hopped aboard. Man, the dust was something else. Resolute is nothing but gravel, dirt and bald hills that have not seen a tree in a very, very long time, if ever. I dusted off when we came to a laughing stop twenty minutes later I pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Stoney eyed we drove out to a point, looked at old abandoned katimaviks, and those motorized snowmobile buses from a long time ago.
After a quick tour around the town the boys headed off and I could not find one to rent. But this made the day. A great bit of fun.
Rolling
Last Saturday I pinballed down to the galley. Six am and she was rolling quite a bit. Picture looking out a porthole and one minute there is just the lighter blue of the sky filling the glass. The next you are staring at the dark blue ocean.
I quickly picked up the pots and pans that found a way to break free during the night and began getting set up for breakfast. Slant walking becomes second hand after a few trips and I began setting up the stove with the t bar square. It keeps the pots in four separate squares so they roll but stay on the stove. I awaited the first order and as we did not have the proper pans for eggs or omelet’s (more on this later—section on cooking on ship’s with limited gear, each cook’s methods, ordering, etc) I had to cook them in a tilt skillet.
This large piece of equipment is more at home in a hotel kitchen that a ship’s galley. The first order is two eggs over easy. What a laugh as I two large eggs hit the heated skillet and ran with the ship. Two large now elongated into extra long’s! It took a few orders to get the cracking and pouring of eggs down but you never get it completely. Ship’s roll with the sea. So do the eggs. As the sea dictates.
Guy asks “what kind of cheese is this?”
I look over and say “shitty feta”.
He goes “what?”
The thing is that I quickly realized that while it was shitty factory feta-an non descript plastic bag that came in a corrugated brown box from suburban somewhere- it was unknown to him. Old cheddar from Kraft was a wild cheese in his parts.
So I quickly retort, “Just feta”. I wanted to talk about where feta comes from and the different kinds but that was too much. I wanted to tell how I made feta on a farm in Queensland, Australia, along with quark, yogurt, and havarti. How we worked all day with funny nets on our heads that reminded me of my Nan wearing my brother’s underwear on her head while `mixin` a batch of bread. But no, “just feta” was all I could muster.
Sometimes with cooking it is the camaraderie that I miss on ships. It is usually just you. If you are lucky enough to have a second in the galley helping out, quite often food knowledge is not there forte. This is just a job and the culinary aspect is secondary. It kind of reminds me of working in the hotel in Charlottetown.
I had just moved there to get an understanding of how large scale kitchens really worked. I took the advice of an acquaintance in Toronto. He worked across the street from where I lived in Chinatown, in a French bistro. I use to hang out my easy bake oven window (I lived above a restaurant kitchen, and the heat….) and nagged him to let me come over and try out. He suggested that I try a hotel system to learn more. You see they put me to task on a simple culinary school task; turning carrots into roses. I failed miserably but I did take his advice and begun searching out hotel jobs. Later that year I ended up in Canadian Pacific’s Hotel Prince Edward in Charlottetown.
I quickly learned that while I took the job, all gung ho, wanting to improve my culinary skills, there were those that cooked for a living. Just that, a paycheck. There was no passion, no wanting to learn more, just punching a clock, getting paid and bitching about life. Eventually I came to look at hotel jobs as grunt work. Mechanical work, devoid of passion. The more you worked there, the more robotic you became.
On the ship it sometimes gets that way but you learn to see small glimpses off pride in the little things; rice becomes a nice rice pilaf; grilled lamb chops are finished with a lemon and rosemary dusting; pan seared scallops are seared just right, a nice crust on each side while the center borders on rare. All in all these small attempts fall by the wayside once the trough has been filled (the hot trays in the mess room) and the squeeze of the ketchup bottle is heard. But you try, and try again.
I think it is Monday……headed out of Pond Inlet yesterday morning as a cruise ship came in. The only other ship we have seen on this trip.
Wednesday morning, at Broughton Island. Spent yesterday morning bouncing through an ice flow and of course I was on polar bear watch. No luck but when Paul walked into the galley at 6 am and said that they had just spotted one, well it was time to suit up and get on deck. Suiting up for me wasn’t coveralls and a hard hat but long johns and a wool cap!
Had planned to get up last night as the skipper told me that the cliffs of this island are a good spot for seeing bears. I looked out the porthole around 10pm and it was very, very dark and foggy. Not much luck at seeing anything. This morning I felt I was at home. The fog was as thick as pea soup and even now at 10 am it is still hard to pick out land.
The food ordering problem.
Picture this; I recently placed a stores order (the marine term for food ordering aboard ship) for Come By Chance our next port of call. I excitedly looked forward to it since it was in getting stores that I stood a chance at honing my craft aboard the ship. I often try to order a few small things that would enable me to enhance not only the meals but my ability to maintain some semblance of culinary integrity.
So I eagerly awaited the arrival of the stores order. Eventually they came and began to help put them away. It is here that your journeys are either a bit of fun or not. This last order was a complete let down. Many of the small items that I had wanted that would afford a simple meal to be something tweaked into a repast where not on the order or the wrong products were shipped.
In these situations two reasons are usually given; one, someone in head office vetoed said items or, and this is usually the case, someone at the ship’s chandlers did not understand the order, the items in question, and either submitted substitutes or did not bother. It is the latter that usually happens. It is here that I blow gaskets and wish I could somehow offer a short course in supplying stores for a ship. A few examples are in order.
A ship’s crew, like all people, have their likes and dislikes when it comes to food. Whether you are talking about why someone has ketchup on fries but not mash, or prefer a particular brand of bologna to another the point is the same. Choice.
On this last ship the crew would not eat any other brand of bologna besides Maple leaf. Some guys would argue that they could taste the difference. Bologna? Well this is the argument. What got under my skin was that the stores where not ordered in Montreal, or Quebec City, two locations that when you order bologna you get a local or regional brand .Rather stores were ordered right here in the heart of Maple Leaf bologna loving country, NL. So it begs the question, who cannot read a simple order that states Maple Leaf Bologna, 4 sticks? The person picking the order I guess
This problem is a regular pain in the ass. Stores are ordered repeatedly from the same couple of companies wherever the ships ports of call are. So why do they continuously mess up the order? I ordered 3 crates of eggs one time (that is 15 dozen per crate) in Sorel, Quebec one time only to receive 3 dozen! The same company for years, How far was a ship going to go on 3 dozen eggs? Or as we planned to head north to the arctic again I ordered 48 cases of bottled water but received only 29.
So a few questions popped into my head; who exactly picked the order? Where did they go to get the order? Sometimes you can tell that they went to a local supermarket by a few tell tale giveaways; the stores own brand name; the 4 squeezable 250 ml salsa products that were suppose to be 4, 4 liter jugs of medium salsa; the 200lb of potatoes come in neat 5 lb bags. That kind of thing. But the blowing of a gasket really happens when inane choices come up and you really wonder if the person picking the order has never shopped before let alone for a ship’s chandler company. This is usually when items are shorted in the following way; a case of biscuits becomes a pack; a case of bacon becomes individual packs of the cheapest brand; fresh dill is rotten chives?????; that kind of thing.
You take it in stride of course but still the idea lingers that it would be great to meet the person picking the order.
Many days later and I am at home. Nothing new about this spot though. My trip was great and the return south was one filled with anxiety as you know you are getting near the end. I hope that all on this list got all 3 emails…let me know…fred
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