The Quartermistress's Tale

"What’s for Dinner tonight? Chicken? I never eat chicken. "No, neither do I"

My heart sank. It was 11.00pm. The crew had just returned from the pub and I was serving out our meal of chicken casserole. This was my first ever trip on President and I had been asked to organise the catering arrangements. Planning ahead I had pre-cooked our first meal and brought it to the boat ready to serve out. I had asked our Captain originally if there were any fussy eaters and I remember that his reply was to the effect that "if you’ve worked on President all day you’ll eat anything" How wrong could he be!!

After that experience I always make sure that I ask each member of the crew about his or her eating preferences before the trip. Most people reply on the ‘seafood principle’ (see food and eat it) or say "so long as you can scrape it off the bottom of a pan I’ll eat it" . But there is always the exception, the non-fruit eater, the non-curry eater, the non-pasta eater and the person who likes two spoonfuls of sugar on their cold custard.

This is my ninth year of crewing for President and Kildare. I have heard horrendous tales of ’Life before Kildare’, but fortunately I didn’t experience that period. Although Kildare looks like a cargo carrying butty with merely a Boatman’s cabin, she does, in fact, have a basic galley hidden under the black cloths. The small fridge has a freezing compartment that will store a small amount of frozen food very efficiently – particularly iced lollies. Nothing nicer when you’ve worked a flight of locks than a lovely cold iced lolly. Not quite what the old boaters had, but who’s looking? Non-perishable food is usually stored in plastic bin type boxes under the work surface and sink unit. A recent discovery, however, is that fresh vegetables keep beautifully in Kildare’s back cabin under the side bed. No complaints so far that the smell of cabbage or cauliflower has stopped anyone from sleeping!!

There is a neat, full size four-ring gas cooker. The grill is a bit on the slow side. Grilling bacon for ‘breakfast bacon and egg butties’ can sometimes be a lengthy business, but well worth it in the end!! If you do find the oven a little small for cooking a meal for 6 or 7 then big shallow casserole dishes can be used to cook both a main meal and a pudding at the same time. The engine driver may be willing to cook some jacket potatoes in the firebox at the end of the day. This is fine if you have a conscientious engineman – i.e. one who manages to give you the same number of potatoes back again!! If you have one who says "Sorry, I can only find three" when you gave him six, then you are on half rations.

Kildare’s plumbing is not quite up to household standards. The only hot water is in the bathroom (at the fore-end), so we boil kettles for hot water for washing up. We don’t drink the water from the taps and having seen the boat unassembled I can agree with that advice! We use two portable plastic jerrycans for drinking water and three permanently installed water tanks for general purposes. As a result we have two labelled kettles – one for drinking water and one for washing up. It may sound a little complicated and there are those amongst us who maintain that any water is OK to drink once it has been boiled. But I prefer the ‘labelled kettle system’ in the interests of keeping any ‘gremlins’ at bay.

On my first trip it was impressed upon me how important it was to keep up one’s liquid intake. It is very easy to become dehydrated whilst crewing. I usually take a lot of large bottles of pop, mineral water and squash on board initially. It’s so much easier than having to carry them from a distant supermarket during the trip – they’re very heavy. They store very well in the hatches at the back of Kildare.

The catering aspect of the trip is important. I try to take everything with me that I think might be needed. The days can be very long and sometimes, horror of horrors, the pub you plan to visit may be shut or have finished serving food by the time the boats are moored for the night. For this reason it is a good idea to have an ‘emergency meal’ in reserve – such as tinned pie, corned beef for Hash or maybe chilli and rice. Above all make sure that the whole crew takes their share of the culinary activity. We all like to steer and work the locks so the catering should be shared too.

Oh yes, and whatever you do, don’t forget the chocolate Hobnobs!!

Judy Spencer