I didn’t want gas on the boat. That was a decision I made early on in the refit since I’m not satisfied it is safe enough for life afloat.  Instead, I bought an Origo 1500 meths burner. This is without doubt the best stove for any sailing boat, in my humble opinion. It’s not pressurised, and the flame is controllable. If the flame get blown out, you food doesn’t get cooked until you light it again, that is the only mal effect you will suffer. No explosions, and no passing out from carbon monoxide.

Origo do a twin burner model, the Origo 3000, and I think that even if I one day own a bigger boat, this will be fitted in place of the oven.

The Origo isn’t perfect though, if heating a kettle, the smell of the meths is quite potent. This doesn’t tend to happen when heating food in a pan or frying etc, so I’m lead to presume that it’s caused by unburned meths condensing on the cold water filled kettle. That’s my theory anyway.

Of course, if you can get meths from Europe, you wont have the smell problem, since they don’t put the dye in it to stop alcoholics downing the stuff…. I mean really, what a pointless effort. I read in the Lancashire evening news once that a man had been barred form petrol stations because he was drinking unleaded (and presumably, not paying for it). If people will go to those lengths to escape from the world, then bloody well let them. Why do the rest of us have to suffer because of a few meth’s drinking nutters?

Food consists mainly of tins of chopped tomatoes, mushrooms, peas, carrots etc. I keep a few tins of ready made curry and similar onboard for times when I’m tired and/or lazy, but I usually prefer to cook something up from scratch since I enjoy it. Curry, chili, pasta, all sorts. I even managed to cook myself mashed potato garlic mushrooms and rump steak, all on my single burner stove!

When I expect to be staying somewhere that won’t lend itself to careful food preparation, I tend to cook up a culinary delight the day before, eat half of it, then put the other half in a seal tupperware box. The following day, at sea or anchor, I can just cook some rice or pasta, add my sauce, then heat it all up. Easy peasy. I once kept adding new ingredients to a tupperwared vindaloo and made it last a further three days… I suffered for it though.

Kudu has one small pan, a kettle and a frying pan onboard. I have two plates, but never use them, instead preferring to eat directly from the pan since it saves on the washing up.