Milk and Butter and other foods

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peter2407

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What do you recommend re Milk and Butter for both longer passages (Transat) and shorter runs (Biscay) and also just general useful storage? Childhood memories suggests butter tasted better than margarine - whereas now 'posh' marge is quite palatable; sterilised milk was awful, but there seems to be a new breed of pasteurised UHT long term storage milk that is better if not good. Plus, any other foods you would have on a longer passage. Thanks as ever.
 
Do you have a fridge or is cold storage in the bilges?

We bulk buy a nice French butter and use it well past the use by date at home (kept in a fridge) and UHT milk is fine; takes a few days to get used to it but 100% better than powdered (we carry both on board).
 
Camelia said:
Do you have a fridge or is cold storage in the bilges?

We bulk buy a nice French butter and use it well past the use by date at home (kept in a fridge) and UHT milk is fine; takes a few days to get used to it but 100% better than powdered (we carry both on board).
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I prefer powdered milk to both UHT and fresh milk. In fact I use powdered (Marvel) at home mostly.

UHT will keep longer, after opening, if you transfer it to bottle with a tight cap which has been sterilised by scalding with boiling water. Un-opened UHT keeps for months.

I don't like butter at all! I was brought up on wartime margarine and still much prefer the modern spreads, eg Flora, to butter.
I don't think the very low fat variety keeps as well as the higher fat ones do.
 
Camelia said:
We bulk buy a nice French butter and use it well past the use by date at home (kept in a fridge) .
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In Devon - lovely dairy country!

What is it about us Brits - so easily do we convince ourselves that foreign is automatically better and we should not support our fellow citizens? Applies in every area from agriculture to industry.

Bought a new bike recently and was looking for some panniers for it. Came across an advert from a British company making their product here in the UK. But to sell it to us Brits, they had had to give the company and its product a very German name. makes the panniers better you see.
 
Don't limit your options to what is available in the UK. Our choices in the shops here are predicated on the fact the vast majority of people having a fridge constantly to hand. Having said that, modern UHT milk is a revelation - the taste is now the same as fresh. The skimmed is really quite palatable on cereal and in drinks. The half litre 'boxes' are really convenient if you are shorthanded. However you need a storage 'box' for them all that is cubic. We use the old cold box and they pack in like bricks and remain undamaged and usable even after the roughest crossings. Putting them in usual wonky shaped boat lockers will result in milky bilges and a stink that will persevere until you try to get rid of the boat, but fail miserably because it smells.

Elsewhere in the world they make things that are quite handy. Nestlé powered milk is 'full fat' not the dry skimmed ****e they sell here. It makes up exactly into fresh milk.

You can also get tinned butter. We carried this, but not so much for everyday use on bread (no real need for anything except marmite / honey / jam) but to use as a treat or in baking. You can also get tinned bacon which was also a treat.

Some of these things are available over the internet. I think Red Feather is a brand of tinned butter in New Zealand.

Going 'fridge free' when long distance cruising takes a bit of adaption. There were times when I wish we had a tiny, highly insulated fridge big enough to take two bottles of beer or a bottle of wine, but most of the time (99.999%), I was glad not to have the power drain or another maintenance demand.
 
Small packets of UHT skimmed are reasonable. Anything left over at the end of the day can be turned into custard as a night time snack!
 
I live on board FT without a fridge & use UHT semi-skimmed, which tastes fine, has a shelf life of 4 or 5 months unopened & is fine for a few days once opened. Real butter isn't massively more expensive than decent non-butter alternative & spreads easily if not refridgerated. Coffee mate is OK in tea or coffee, just use less in tea...
 
We use UHT milk and it lasts all summer unopened. Can taste the difference from fresh only in a glass. No difference in tea, coffee or on cereal.

For butter we find that Lurpak lasts as long as it takes to eat it all, and often 3 months unrefridgerated. But then we're sailing in Scotland
 
Milk replacement

If you like it you can use Sojamilk.
You can buy it in different tastes.
1 ltr in kartonpackage has a shell life of about 1 year.
Besides it is better for your body then milk.
 
Assuming no freezer...

Staples are obvious, its the treats that make the difference.

Tinned butter is worth the search tho with the internet I guess that's hardly an issue now but for day to day you can use olive oil on homemade bread a la Greque which is dead easy and probably there anyway, doubt it works with honey or marmite though...

I second tinned bacon or bacon roll as a treat, tinned sausages are OK but never good. Patum Peperium (Gentleman's Relish) lasts forever even open if you like the stuff. You can get whole chicken and I expect cheese in tins too. Dried mushrooms, chillis, onion, apple, other fruits are very versatile. Biltong is tasty too. Japanese Miso soup in sachets is a delicious change as a sustaining drink, as is apple tea powder if you can find it..
On a long trip ask each crew member to bring along a special personal treat for the whole crew and to keep them secret until they are needed, that can be a huge morale booster. I've done a full english breakfast two weeks out into the African desert - the looks on peoples' faces was a picture!

If you take sugar in your tea/coffee/cocoa you can use condensed milk (the sticky sweet stuff) in tins. Wash out an old squeezee ketchup bottle with a snap-on cap and nozzle and put the sticky milk in that. No spill, no flies, squeeze a dollop into your tea and it's done. Just what you need at 0200 when its chilly.

Couscous is absolutely brilliant as a staple, the easiest one of all to "cook", just add boiling water and wait five minutes.
 
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MASH said:
If you take sugar in your tea/coffee/cocoa you can use condensed milk (the sticky sweet stuff) in tins. Wash out an old squeezee ketchup bottle with a snap-on cap and nozzle and put the sticky milk in that. No spill, no flies, squeeze a dollop into your tea and it's done. Just what you need at 0200 when its chilly.
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Indeed condensed milk is brilliant. But don't bother with tins - Nestlé put it in toothpaste like tubes for sailors (and mountaineers') convenience. I think sold under the Carnation brand in the UK.

Reconstitute dried apple flakes, then crumble digestive biscuits on top and cover with condensed milk. No gale will pass more tastily.

But if it gets really, really crappy, you can suck the milk straight out of the tube. My mate Oedipus says it does more for him that simply providing a lot of calories.
 
MASH said:
cheese in tins too
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Cheese Possessed!

Always strangely gritty, I never figured out why.

MASH said:
On a long trip ask each crew member to bring along a special personal treat for the whole crew and to keep them secret until they are needed, that can be a huge morale booster.
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I like that idea.

MASH said:
Couscous is absolutely brilliant as a staple, the easiest one of all to "cook", just add boiling water and wait five minutes.
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Yep! Only discovered this relatively recently, but it's great. Surprised all the single-burner cavemen don't use it.

Pete
 
I always thought butter was an essential navigational aid for a trans-Atlantic crossing.

'Head south until the butter melts, then turn westwards.'

:D
 
I keep the small portion sizes of UHT milk on board, those little containers that some cafes give with tea or coffee. About £2 for 200. No opened containers to go off. Not so good for the cornflakes.
 
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