David sleeping in the main saloon while off-watch during our recent trip up the coast. Our friend, Monica, knitted us the lovely afghan that he’s cocooned in. It is warm and soft and pretty–who could ask for more?
Category Archives: living aboard
Asleep
Beryl On How To Be A Highly Successful Ship’s Cat
Over the next few weeks, Beryl will share her secrets for the highly successful life of a ship’s cat. Today, she will start with the easy stuff. Don’t ever forget, though, when you’re the ship’s cat, you are the most important entity on the ship and your life is full of duty. Things to do? First, making sure to roll around on the cockpit sole and get enough sun on your belly. The task must be completed in the cutest way possible for the ship’s company to see.
After getting enough sun, supervising the skipper and crew are important tasks for the ship’s cat. When the designated watch-stander human is looking at something, it’s always important to immediately find out if you can sit on it. If you can’t, then look at it too.
Non-dairy Tapioca
Pudding anyone?
About a decade ago, we learned that David has a food sensitivity to milk and milk products. So all of those comfort foods involving milk? I stopped making them. I really like tapioca pudding but haven’t made it in…oh, 10 years. One day last week, I saw a bag of small pearl tapioca at the grocer and thought “humm…why not make it with almond or coconut milk?” So I did. Here’s the recipe. It turned out great.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup small pearl tapioca (do not use instant tapioca)
3 cups “fake” milk of choice (e.g. almond, rice, coconut, soy)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (or extract of choice)
Method
0 Pre-soak the tapioca pearls for at least 3 hours, but preferably overnight. If you don’t do this, it will take a long, long, long time for the pearls to become translucent as they should.
1 Combine tapioca, milk (I used Trader Joe’s unsweetened coconut milk), and salt in 1 1/2 quart pan on medium high heat. Stir until boiling. Simmer 5 minutes, uncovered at very low heat, adding sugar gradually.
2 Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Mix in some of the hot tapioca very slowly to equalize the temperature of the two mixtures.
3 Return egg mixture to the pan with tapioca. Slowly bring mixture barely to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and stir several minutes at a low simmer, stirring constantly until you get a nice thick pudding consistency. Cool at least 15 minutes. Add vanilla. Serve either warm or chilled.
Makes 4-6 servings.
