I heard about this company today and thought I would give the freeze dried and dehydrated foods some major thought. Harmony House Foods, Inc.

Has anyone bought from them and how good is the quality?

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There you go, David!

That's what I was getting at in my last post. You just need things that have a shelf life. These dehydrated foods are a great idea for you, as are canned, smoked, jerkied, etc...

You can get by just fine without refrigeration on a temporary cruise.

Yes, that would be a problem. How about a thermos of liquid nitrogen?

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Regards,

Maren

The sea is always beautiful, sometimes mysterious and, on occasions, frighteningly powerful.

Also, I am a big fan of UHT milk (if you drink milk). It's very good for when you can't get ashore and want something like cereal or a glass of milk with your food. Requires no refrigeration and tastes... ok.

We always have a large box of powered milk on board. Many do not like it but if you experiment with the mixture a little it's no different than regular milk in taste and you can cook with it. There are a lot of dehydrated products that will work in these situations. Try powered eggs, or potatoes as well as things like stove top stuffing, replace butter in reciepe with a small amount of cooking oil or margrine which never melts.
Fresh eggs will keep for a long time if they have never been refrigerated you just have to turn them over every couple of days. We buy eggs from a farmers market and they are fresh and never refrigerated and we have keep them on the counter for over two weeks by turning them. So far we have only lost one egg. Remember refrigeration is a farily recent invention.

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What the hell did I just do

Yup... we do the same thing, Shu. None of our recipes that call for milk get fresh milk or even Parmalat. We always mix up a batch of powdered milk for them. I nearly forgot that one. We drink it if we're out of all other milk and you're right... if it's mixed well, it's just like regular milk. Chill it a little bit and it's damn good.

We get our eggs from my mother's farm now that we're up in New England. We see her once a month or so and she loads us up with 2 dozen eggs. They come fresh from the hens and they are never refrigerated. We just leave them on the counter for a month. We've never lost a single egg at all, and we have even made mayonnaise with these eggs (still gotta get the ratios right on that! Didn't taste so great! ha ha)

It becomes a game to figure out how to not go to the grocery store for as many weeks as possible. It's a fun game.

In Canada we only get powdered skim milk, nowhere near as good as the whole milk powder we get in the outside world.In fact its kinda crappy stuff. I stock up on the good stuff when in Mexico or the South Pacific.
Buy a copy of "The Bean Book, " by Rose Elliot.
It's amazing to hear yachties debate over wheter it is possible to live on $1,000 a month while living amoung people who live on a dollar a day. Learn from what they eat and how they prepare it. I can buy a year's worth of beans or split peas for about $25. Now its cheaper than rice and better for you.
Instead of complaining about the lack of varierty in cans, learn to can, then you can can whatever you like.
Tough old laying hens when canned , practicaly fall apart under your fork and can be bought very cheap, or obtained free sometimes.
A good days hunting can fill a lot of canning jars.
Learn to make bannock.
The book " In Defense of Food " by Michael Pollan has a lot of warnings about the dangers of industrial, food like substances.
Brent

I'm with you on this.
There is so much "Food" out there that is just industrial crap and slightly less than poision. Yet through the magic of advertising we are made to believe we cannot do without this stuff.
I have also found many who argue with me as you say, that you cannot cruise on less than several thousand dollars a month. When you look at their expenses list they are spending $400/$500 a mo. just on communications with the people they just saw last week when they left. Maybe a few hundred for mail forwarding as well as top restaurants for dinner several nights a week.
Most people will spend whatever they can afford and that's ok, but it doesn't mean others cannot live much cheaper. After all as you stated, look at what the locals live on and they do it year around.

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What the hell did I just do

OK, at the risk of baiting a political response (Not the goal here), our economy is targeting the general public. Try shopping for healthy meals. If you go to the local chain grocery, you can not buy food for two people. You can buy for 5, and sometimes you can buy for 3. So, you end up buying multiple duplicate meals, and spending more than you would need to spend for a single meal. But the time you leave the store, a very basic healthy meal costs about $10-$15 per person.
OTOH, you can drop into McD's and pick up dinner for two for about $7. You can go to Subway and pick up a footlong to split for $5 and a couple drinks for another $4. Even Subway is not as healthy as we would cook for ourselves, but it is less than half the price.
Beans, and split pea is great, but I can not live on it. Dehydrated food is the same.
Our society is being forced financially into a situation where if you are short on money, you have little choice but eat unhealthy. On a boat, where a freezer is not a practical option, stocking up on fresh meat is difficult, and in the US, you can not buy a practical amount.
I am not saying it can not be done, but the corporate monsters are making it far more difficult to eat healthy on a budget.
On a related note, we are building a freezer into the trimaran, and an ice box. Based on our experience over the years, you can freeze a block of ice for the few things that need refridgeration, and most of those things will not last an offshore passage anyway. If you want fresh meat, a freezer is a must. The freezer will make the ice for the ice box, and is a far more efficient way to handle food storage on a boat. I have never understood why boat manufacturers build such large refridgeraters, and small freezers.

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There is no better bilge pump than a scared sailor with a bucket.

The Pardys built an ice chest on their boat which is extra thick and super insulated and rather large then they store foods which need to be frozen in this chest with a good quanity of dry ice and it keeps for several weeks. Just plan ahead and take out what you need before hand to thaw. They can and do find dry ice most places they cruise and they go way out of the way sometimes.
The ice chest is a plywood box with several inches of styrofoam inside and it is glassed over on the outside then always kept in the interior of their boat where it gets no sun.

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What the hell did I just do