Breakfast! (and garbage)

Tasty Thursday, edition 12

Detritus, galley style

YOU SEE: an empty container and some trash

I SEE: It’s granola-making time!

***

Breakfast is one of those meals many of us prepare almost on autopilot. Toast and a cup of coffee, maybe, or scrambled eggs and bacon. Yogurt and fresh fruit. There’s there’s the occasional shift - waffle Sunday, maybe, or even a full on brunch extravaganza of some kind. Point being, other than making sure you always have that stuff on hand, there’s not a lot of thinking that’s involved with the morning meal.

For us, this standard is granola and yogurt. I’ve got a huge airtight container (I think it once housed peanut butter pretzels from Costco - repurposing for the win!) that holds a little over a month’s supply of our breakfast of choice. So it’s a “make it once and you’re good for a while” kind of recipe.

This does mean making sure I’ve got the ingredients aboard. I was caught short when rolled oats proved almost impossible to find (or outrageously expensive) here in French Polynesia, so when family flew in at Christmastime you can bet there was some luggage space devoted to rolled oats as well as the nuts. Let’s not forget that maple syrup either . . .

I have since learned of a rolled oats source in Papeete. They’re on the list so we stay in granola until New Zealand!

Granola pan ready for the oven

***

This morning, I needed to resupply the walnuts as my on-the-go bag was almost out. This meant going into the area we call the deep pantry, the below-the-flat space (accessed through a clever cut out) where a lot of our daily use things live. The coffee setup, the baking supplies, the hand mixer and the crackers and the container of rice. You get the idea. But underneath that depth-optimized layer is the deep pantry. This is where the longer term supplies go. Excess coffee, or canning lids. The chocolate chips. A lot of the nuts.

counter. Pantry and deep pantry under

Getting access to this space is not all that difficult, but it does mean removing a few items so I can get at the locker lid. Which means making sure there’s floor space to put all the stuff that normally lives there. It’s also worth thinking ahead about what else I might need to get out of there, or any reorganization that is required.

pantry. A few organizational iterations ago!

As an example. When everyone came at Christmas, the goodies they brought in moved into overflow status, so I shoved stuff into any locker where there was space, not doing a good job of using that deep pantry. In the past 3 months, there has been some eating down, so there’s room in the deep pantry plus I’ve got a little more head space to think about how to organize it.

deep pantry access

Of course, this morning Jeremy got into a project that was all in the galley - he was rewiring electronics and moving things around - so my timing was off a bit. This meant that my initial plan for lunch (chickpea salad, kind of like tuna salad except with chickpeas) got morphed into the second plan for lunch (lentil salad) and then, as time went on and cooking the beans from scratch and giving them time to cool off became less and less appealing as lunchtime approached and Jeremy was still working in the galley - well, it became lunch option 3. Cheese and crackers with carrot sticks! The challenges when there are no leftovers to serve . . .

***

The nuts we carry come in plastic bags. Once one is emptied, there’s a trash management issue. Out here garbage facilities are few and far between, and even if there is a place to get rid of the trash it’s not like there are good ways for communities to deal with it. One way we do our best to help is to minimize the garbage, especially plastics - and this means stuffing it into a plastic container that would otherwise be taking up space.

empty nut bags. lots of volume

Take this empty ketchup bottle. Left to its own devices, it would be taking up that space in the garbage can. But when seen as a trash receptacle, that space suddenly grows. Those bags from this afternoon’s granola batch have joined the ham packaging, the chicken bag, the I-forget-what-else already in the bottle - and there is room for a lot more. It’s astounding how much plastic waste, cut up or squished or twisted and then packed down, can fit in a plastic bottle.

All in here, with room to spare

Give it a try.

***

Granola (adapted from a recipe from a friend in Charlottesville)

• ½ cup pure maple syrup

• 1/2 cup coconut oil

• ⅓ cup packed brown sugar

• (optional) 1 tsp vanilla

• 7 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

• 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds

• 1 cup chopped walnuts

• 1 cup raw almonds, chopped coarsely or left whole

• 1 1/4 cups raw pecans, left whole or coarsely chopped

• 1 scant tsp salt

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1 cup dried cranberries

• 1 cup unsweetened large flake coconut chips (optional)

1. Dissolve the sugar in the coconut oil and maple syrup (and vanilla, if using) over low heat

2. Heat oven to 300°F.

3. Mix dry ingredients (minus cranberries and coconut) together in a large bowl or pot

4. Stir in wet ingredients well, until oatmeal looks shiny

5. Pour into a deep pan (or 2 baking sheets) and bake, stirring every 20 minutes, for an hour. Turn off oven.

6. Stir in the coconut chips and cranberries, then put pan back in turned-off oven.

7. Let cool completely.

8. Store in an airtight container for up to 6 weeks, or until all eaten!

At anchor, Hao (Tuamotus), April 8, 2026