Time to eat, what’s on the menu?

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

Are you a breakfast, lunch, or dinner person? What does your ideal meal look like?

In the past, I’ve worked some crazy hours. Ships function 24/7, and things always seem to happen in the middle of the night, or at mealtimes. It also has to be raining, but that’s another story.

The longest shift I ever pulled was 72 hours straight. What do you call the meal at the end of that?

As a consequence, meals were often what you could grab at some random hour when you weren’t actually busy for five minutes. In circumstances like this, convention goes out of the window.

If you’ve been working all night, the meal you have before you go to sleep may be known as breakfast, but that’s where the similarity ends. It’s probably your main meal of the day, so you probably want more than fruit and yoghurt. You need to fill your boots, you’ve earned it.

I eat what I like, when I like, which can confuse people, although my wife has got used to it. If I fancy a “dinner” for breakfast, that’s what I’ll have.

As for what makes a good meal, the food onboard varied in quality, depending on the cook, but there was always plenty of it. A lot of the time, if you fancied something out of the ordinary, a word in the Chief Steward’s ear was often enough, especially if you could get agreement from the rest of the crew. Local delicacies could often be obtained by bartering with the stevedores, for example, fresh Salmon in British Columbia or a bucket of prawns in many Indian and Asian ports. The usual currency was a carton of cigarettes, a bottle of whisky or a case of beer.

As an aside, if you paid extra, the fishermen would take the sea-snakes out of that bucket of prawns, although the Chinese crew did like to eat them, too.

Inevitably, there were things that you missed over your four or five-month trip, these had to be enjoyed to excess whilst you were on leave.

Living in Devon, which is a foodie paradise, I’m spoilt for choice when it comes to things like Strong Cheese, Cakes, Fish and Chips, and (Cornish) Pasties.

The things I like most are the ones I make myself. You can find a few of my recipes here,

The things that are currently on my favourites list.

Onion Rings.

They have to be made with sliced, NOT MINCED onion. I make my own.

Sourdough Bread.

It takes up to five days to make a loaf, but the actual work involved is minimal (less than an hour in total). With only three ingredients (flour, water and salt), the taste is something else.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know by leaving me a comment.

While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.

I’ll be back with another post on Thursday, see you then. Meanwhile, have a great week.

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