How does Chef Mandy provision?
Part of the anticipation of this vacation is the special cuisine! Chef Mandy studies our guests' food preferences then begins meal planning while Captain Joe plans the liquid libations to create a custom culinary experience.
Mandy's menu includes 7 breakfasts, 8 lunches, 7 evening hors d'oeuvres, 7 starters, 7 dinner entrees, 7 desserts, and a week's worth of grabby snacks. Joe plans 7 different speciality cocktails and mocktails while preparing for a week's worth of beverages.
Once the plan is together, our teamwork begins. For each charter, we take a full inventory of all refrigerators, freezer, dry goods, spices, and beverages. We use a large spreadsheet with approximately 360 lines items and a life-saver app called Paprika.
It's now time to create the shopping list, which is a straight forward task in reviewing the planned meals and current inventory. The fun begins when we start shopping.
Grocery shopping (we call it provisioning) in the Caribbean can be an adventure on good days, and an extreme sport on the more challenging days. A local seafood provider, an organic chicken farm, two local produce/herb providers, two major grocery stores, and two alcohol distributors are our standard vendors. There are always a few items left on the list after these eight places, so it's then time to regroup. Chef Mandy re-evaluates the meal plan and adjusts the provisioning list accordingly.
For those wondering, some of these vendors deliver and the rest we dinghy and walk to then carry our insulated grocery bags back to the boat.
Our meal plan is just like our itinerary; we make a plan then go with the flow!
