Cooking and Sewing

Here are two areas I am trying to refine my skills, cooking and sewing.

Now that I have been unemployed for over a month, I am feeling more and more freedom and relaxation.  I started making bread without the bread maker, popcorn in the dutch oven, and coffee in an insulated press. I also am staying in my pajamas until afternoon, and taking baths in the middle of the day, oh how wonderful it is.

We sold our microwave, toaster, coffee maker, waffle maker, ice cream maker, magic bullet, blender, rice cooker, and bread machine; this was a huge hurdle. I envision if we are not hooked to shore power, we will have to conserve energy. Instead of waiting until we get on the boat, we will start living life more conservative now (that is with less energy consumption and less space). It was hard to live without the microwave the 1st week, we got so used to using the microwave to quickly melt butter, warm leftovers, make popcorn, and other things. The toaster was not so bad to overcome, I just use the oven to toast bread or frozen waffles. The waffle maker I do miss, but we can have pancakes. The coffee maker was simple to overcome its absence because we love press coffee, it is so rich and bold.  The press is not as insulated as I had hoped, but it does a great job at coffee and tea too.  And the rice cooker and bread maker are somewhat missed, they do make cooking simpler, but more stuff to store and clean. All those other items were just stuff in our kitchen that we hardly used which just sat in the cabinets taking up space.

It is actually simpler to use the oven and less to clean overall. I am enjoying to cook by using basic ingredients and tools, however, I did keep the coffee grinder and food processor - for how long will be determined later.  Our next big decision will be to figure out if we live with or without refrigeration we imagine at times we do not have it and we will have to deal with this.

The sewing skills are not as refined, or exercised, as much as the cooking skills.  I did purchase a new Pfaff somewhat industrial strength sewing machine, in anticipation of making repairs to sails, dodgers and other canvas items, and upholstery stuff for cushions. So far I have used it to sew a few things and it works great, it goes through tough materials and does not stop. User error creates most of its short comings when a job gets too difficult. It is easy to operate, especially once I learned how to do it. I attempted to make cushions for our old boat, we sold that boat, but they looked so funny all crooked, however, the foam was covered which was my ultimate goal. This industrial strength sewing is a work in progress.

Turning point

After Christmas in 2011, we had a house full of family and sick kids. I believe,this pushed us over the edge and we decided to change our lifestyle and sail. Work, family, kids, bills, house, and money, all this stress just made us step back and say why did we end up like this. Unhappy in our work places and paying close to a thousand in day care for our son, whom someone else spent most of the day with him instead of his parents, also made us want to get out of here. Spending weekends running because we only had two days to get stuff done, grocery shopping, cleaning, entertaining, the exhaustion from this lifestyle was enough to say we have to get out of this before we end up sick from all this stress. And our employers could care less that we had so much stress, all they want is for us to be there at their beckon call whether we were sick, tired, or fed up.

Before Christmas we read about a family who left their home and boarded a sailboat, heading out to the world with their three children. We talked about it, I told my husband wouldn't that be great, he said yeah sort of, then we talked a little more and that was it. After the Christmas , my husband said lets do it, and I said ok. So we began our journey in early 2012, researching sailboats, live aboards, simple living, and sailing. We made certain commitments to each other, like our wedding rings, we swapped them for tattoos. Now we have a pirates bounty of jewelry we used to wear that we save for our travels on a boat, like a savings account. We also took a sailing class, learned basics of sailing, bought many books, watched many videos, then bought a small boat to practice on at local fresh water lakes.

Our practice sailboat, was exactly what we needed. It lighted a fire in us that we could not believe, we were hooked as a family. We were tested to the max, learning to dock without chewing each other out, cleaning up lots of vomit from a sea sick family member, and success after mishaps at the boat launch felt great. My husband and I reinforced our team work approach to life, we worked together to get the boat ready, get it in the water, operated it together, and had fun on it. I was sad when we sold it, but I cannot wait to get our next sailboat.