No sugar, no wheat, no sleep...

I’m utterly exhausted – but hanging in. The guests are giving the stewardess and me a run for our money. Particular about their food, they are very health conscious but also have a lot of sensitiveness to what they eat; no dairy, no flour, no rice, no sugar (of any kind), but I don’t seem to be having any problems since my preference is to cook fairly healthy and I much prefer the use of herbs, spices, lemons, good olive oil and sea salt to butter and cream (not that I don’t love those things too). The guests preferences weren’t over my head, but for the fact that none of this was listed on the preference sheets and therefore I didn’t provision expecting guests that ate semi-vegetarian and now that we were out at sea, in the middle of nowhere (well, sort of) and there were requests for pureed green soups, sugar free - wheat free muffins, and salads, salads, salads – I knew my provisions were not enough!

I expected challenging requests going onto a charter yacht – I love the challenges. That is why I do this, and the preference sheets usually go out the window once you speak to the guests anyway. Just my luck, having grown up in the “granola crunchy” capital of the world (Northern California) and gone through my own periods of vegan and vegetarian dieting, many of the requests were really not a stretch for me, and I think I’m fortunate in that sense. I know some chefs that would be tearing their hair out at the thought of no dairy products, flour or sugar – and believe me, I’m definitely being challenged…

On the first day, I prepared a vegetarian Mediterranean buffet – grape leaves stuffed with brown rice and chick peas, lemon-tahini sauce, grilled eggplant salad with mint and lemon, white bean salad with oregano vinaigrette, cucumber and tomato salad and whole grain pita bread. The guests raved and decided that they wanted the “multi-salad” spread every day for lunch. This works out to about 34 salads by the end of charter and would definitely ensure a dilemma since the guests want everything buffet style and therefore I cannot exercise quantity control over my quickly diminishing fresh vegetables provisions… Day 6 and I’ve made 22 salads thus far – and that’s only lunch…

The guests absolutely love my food – and I mean LOVE. They have been raving to the captain and raving to me, to the point of it getting embarrassing! It’s great that they love my food – but this also means that they haven’t and will not be getting off of the yacht for any meals out and I haven’t seen the light of day in, jeez, I can’t even recall the last time I was above deck…

I look out my galley porthole every day and observe that the palm trees have changed or that the water is a different shade of blue from the last location we were in – and that is the extent of my out door observations. For entertainment, I’ve taken to flinging my organic food scraps out the porthole window in the galley – it’s great fun. I throw them out the window and within seconds I can hear the fish splashing around outside going after the scraps of whatever I’ve tossed. There could be a 12 foot tiger shark waiting out there for my scraps, or a killer whale for that matter. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t had time to look…


Day 6 of the charter - only three days left – and my first chance to write…

The guests are not vegetarians, but do they love their veggies and after the first day I knew it was going to be a difficult task to meet their demands. Fresh veggies are scarce in the Caribbean because absolutely everything has to be imported and most islands only receive produce deliveries once a week. So, good produce is not easy to come by and there are very, very few decent places to provision in the BVI’s. I thought I’d stocked up well before we left St. Martin, but the guests asked for crudités twice a day, pureed vegetable soups, lots of salads, etc. and even with the ample refrigeration – their demands were going to deplete what I had within a few days.

We are doing some serious cruising too – picking up anchor and moving locations two, three times a day – no time to shop! I told the captain after the first day that I would need to find somewhere to provision along the way since the guests were such veggie maniacs. Once I put together a new provisions list for fruit and vegetables, the captain made a call to a provisioner in the Virgin Islands – and amazingly, and for an astronomical fee I’m sure, the order was delivered straight to the yacht, in the middle of nowhere! Just goes to show, with enough money you can have anything you want in this world. I want sleep – but apparently I can’t afford it.



My day starts around 6am baking muffins and slicing fruit for a fruit platter, preparing eggs, making a bread starter and prepping for lunch. Our stewardess makes fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juice, tea and coffee.

The guests finish up breakfast sometime around 9:30 am and by 10am we’re getting ready to set sail. I’m usually preparing lunch while we’re sailing so I’m cooking in the galley at a 45 degree angle. Apparently I’ve conquered my sea sickness. A year ago, I’d be on the floor green with seasickness and ready to die. Today, I just lean into the upward side of the boat for balance and try to keep the olive oil or the knives from flying across the galley and landing on my foot. The worst part I find now about cooking under way is that I can’t wash up my dishes in the sink because the drains don’t work when we’re healing to our port side. And, I can’t open my portholes so it gets really, really hot and if I open up the top hatch, my herbs, garlic and onion peels start blowing everywhere! It’s a really pain in the arse…

I lay out yards of non-skid on the counter tops so things don’t roll away as I’m cooking. Today, the guests took a reprieve from their non-dairy eating and asked me to make a dessert – so, at a 45 degree angle and in 22 knots of wind I made individual bittersweet molten chocolate cakes wrapped like parcels in filo dough, and with crème englaise and a raspberry coulis to accompany it. I also managed to steam off three lobsters, sear some tuna, blanch snow peas and make a couple of salads. Lunch had to be served the moment we dropped anchor…



By 1:30pm lunch is served. The guests take their time so lunch extends until about 2:45. Meanwhile, I’m in the galley prepping for dinner and the stewardess is ironing and taking care of the guests. By 3pm, the galley is cleaned up and lunch is put away. I crawl into bed and catch an hour or two of rest. 10 hours down, 5 to go… Horsd’ouvres go out by 7pm – some days it’s something as simple as crudités, other days it’s summer rolls filled with lobster and mango, or zucchini cups filled with an Asian slaw, or hummus and spelt pita chips. 7:30pm, the first course goes out. Dinner is done by 8:45 and the galley clean. By 9:30 I’m washing the sweat and grease off of me and getting ready to climb into bed. 10:15pm, I set my alarm – in a mere 8 hours it starts all over again…