Homemade lasagna

When planning the meals for a weekend at boat I try to include in the menu something elaborated and nice, whenever time allows. All familly's favourite is homemade lasagne. Since the oven in our boat is not the best and overall space there is limited, I always prepare this dish at home on the day prior to departure. It makes an easy meal then, as it only needs warming up. What is more, it tastes better on the next day :)  

As said above, it is rather elaborated dish and preparing it takes some 2 hours. Usually we have it in meat version, but you can set your fantasy free and pick almost anyting for the filling. This time I used the following:

Lasagna pasta (homemade or ready)

500 g minced meat

1 onion

3 carrots

salt

pepper

1 aubergine

about 200g of ricotta cheese

about 200g of Grana Padano cheese (can be replaced by parmiggiano or pecorino)

Basilico leaves

Sauce:

2 tbs olive oil

1 clove of garlic

1,5 l canned chopped tomatos ( can be replaced by loads of fresh ones, of course)

Preparation:

Normally I start with the sauce and meat. In one large pan put the olive oil and garlic, add the chopped tomatoes, diluted with water. Let it boil for some 30 mins, making sure it  remains rather liquid (adding more water whenever it getts thick is necessary) and stirring frequently. Add salt according to taste. Add some basilico leaves when ready, but still boiling hot.

In a frying pan put some oil, add chopped carrots and onion and let them soften. Add minced meat and fry untill ready. Add spices and salt  and some 3 spoons of the boiled tomato sauce. It will make the meat juicier.

Once ready, leave minced meat aside. In the same pan put the aubergines and fry till soft. At the end add a couple of spoons of the tomato sauce. Add salt/ pepper according to taste.

 In a deep flat dish start making layers:

some sauce at the bottom, a layer of pasta, than meat, aubegines, some ricotta cheese and some grana padano, cover all by the sauce. Repeat untill run out of ingredients.

Hint: make sure you cover all layers very well with the tomao sauce, otherwise lasagne will be dry. And don't worry if the sauce seems too liquid, it will get thicker in the oven.

Normally on top I put more grana padano cheese and lots of basilico leaves, as you can see above.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Bake for some 50 mins. 

Hint: Served best after a couple of hours (or even the day after), to let the ingredients and flavours settle.  

Summer night in the home harbour - night shift

Last night it was our turn to have the night shift in the yacht club. In practice this means a lot of walking around the island and very little sleep, the idea is to make sure there are no issues at boats or no strangers on the island. Luckily there are enough club members to keep this shifts down to one per year. In worst cases it could be a dark autumn stormy night, when you have to tighten the ropes in many boats, get wet in the rain and cold in the wind.... But we were lucky to have a wonderful warm and light summer night. My inner "guardian" and "photographer" had a fight, I could not walk around without the camera! :D

At night the home harbour island seems to be a different place. Normally this terrace is full of life: lots of people, even more seagulls and other birds, many boats in the sea right in front of it...

      

This sailing  boat has been in the yard for ever, I think I have never seen it moving anywhere from this spot, actually I hardly ever noticed it. The magic light of the night did its job: this abandoned boat suddenly turned into the main actress on the stage.

Eira by night was also spectacular, normally crowded café Carusel was very quiet, empty quay had its own charm in the soft lights... somehow I could not have enough of these views.  

It was a pleasure to walk around the island and make sure the boats are sleeping tight :) And by the way, the picture below is the only one that was modified, I had to make it a bit lighter, otherwise you could not distinguish the boats. All the other ones are just as they were shot.   

Between 4 and 5 am the sun was rising. The night shift was coming to an end. Lacking many hours of sleep we had to head to work, but it did not feel bad at all. Normally I would not go walking around the island at those hours, which means I would have never seen the transformation. Hope you also enjoyed the little bits and pieces of it that I could capture :)

Sail and learn

It might be a nice thing to be irreplaceable in some situations - like in private life :) - but at boat it is sort of a risk. I heard and read many times, that all the crew members should be equally good at different must-do duties at boat. Though currently it is not our case. 

So far on board of our boat the duties were sort of split between the 2 of us: for example, normally my hubby would drive the boat to the pier, while it would be me who would take care of attaching the ropes. In an extreme situation it is a must for both to be able of doing any of the tasks, and if attaching the ropes is not an issue for my better half, driving the boat to the pier is a big deal for me!

This summer we decided to change this and started practicing immediately. So during this weekend not only we had a great sailing, as you can see in the pictures below, but also switched the roles. As a result, I did 2 fairly good "parkings" in 2 different places. Needless to say that the ropes attaching went fine :)

The wind direction took us to our yacht club island, which is located close to Bodö. There is a great sauna with awesome views to the sunset and stairs to swim in the sea. Yes, I dared to do it in the +10 degrees water! :) and here comes the sunset:

 

Gone with the wind

The weather forecast was not very promissing for the last weekend, and indeed it has been raining for the whole Friday evening. My hubby was still recovering from the flu, so we stayed home, reading and watching TV. Saturday morning was also not really great, clowdy and very cold, but I had to go to the boat to do the regular yearly fire extinguishers check. After the lunch the rest of the crew joined me and at 15:00 the ropes were released :)

Destination choice was based on the wind direction: Lähteelä this time!

Practical info about Lähteelä:

2 piers, shore power,  outhouse (outdoor toilet with no water closet system), can host up to 50 boats, 2 grilling places, small kiosk, sauna, rowing boats for rent, tent places for rent.

We were lucky to sail for the most part of the trip with the side/headwind, but I must admit I was freezing... 4 layers of clothes (+ scarf, hat, thick woolen socks and gloves) were not enough. There you know that the sea water is really ice-cold yet...

In those moments when the sun tried to shine, the scenery was magic: light fog, grey sky and shiny sparks on the water...

@ Lähteelä there were some 10-ish boats, so it was not crowded at all. Apart from openeng the sailing season, it was a must to open the grilling season too, the harbour is well equipped for it :)  

After a rainy night we were lucky to have some sun on the way back, enjoying the tailwind and sailing for almost the whole distance. At certain point, sitting on the deck, eyes closed, I felt so pieceful and relaxed and priviledged at the same time, as I could enjoy, here and now, the warm rays of the sun, the soothing noice of the splashing water, light rocking of the boat on the waves and yelling of the seagulls... The feeling was awesome, boundering between the dream and reality...  

New AGM Batteries

Finally they are replaced! We had issues with the old batteries last summer, as their charge did not last even 24 hours. And  we have basic electricity needs: compressor fridge, heater, pressure water, lights. Now we decided to opt for what was best in the battery market for boats: AGM ones. 

Thanks to the special technologies with which they are produced, there is no risk of damaging them by having them heavily discharged, or spilling them. To know more of all the advantages you can check this webpage.

  

It was not so easy to find this couple, as the space where they fit in our boat is rather limited and they had to be the same size as the old ones. We found what we needed  at Monitec, good product and good service.

Now they are installed and running :) 

And again asparagus :)

Asparagus season is so short, that it is a must to invent different ways to prepare it. So this time I opted for the pie. The choice was also based on the idea that it would be easy to take with us to the boat tomorrow (if ever we happen to go there, since my hubby is down with the flu).

As to the ingredients of the filling, it could basically be almost anything: cheese, mushrooms, bacon, ham, salmon.. or whatever you can invent. This time I had in the fridge some feta cheese, which was a good match to rather tasteless asparagus. 

So you would need:

500 g of frozen ready-made puff pastry

500 g of asparagus 

6 eggs

200 ml of cream 

1 pack of feta cheese 

any other ingredients of your choice  

It is also rather easy to make:

1. Peal and boil for some minutes asparagus.

2. Chop all the other ingredients

3. Mix well eggs and cream (add salt/pepper according to taste)

4. Put the pastry in the baking shape

5. Put the filling in and pour egg&cream for last.

It took some 45 min at 200 C oven and some 20 minutes to let it cool.

Voilá! :)

Asparagus with chicken and avocado-spread cheese paté

Here it finally comes, the first post on cooking :) Somehow at boat I am inspired to make slightly better food than what we normally have at home. In addition last Saturday we had a good reason to have something nice: boat was in the sea + my hubby had his birthday.

So the menu was: 

• Bacon-wrapped asparagus
• Curry chicken
• Avocado&spread cheese paté

In the glass:

• Val d'Oca Millesimato Prosecco Extra Dry
• Rawson's Retreat, Shiraz - Sauvignon

Inspiration for asparagus came from Kipparin morsian post, and was slighlty modified and adopted to available ingredients. I can share the recipie by reqest in comments.

A glass of sparking wine was a propoer aperetif :)

And later in the evening some dessert: prosciutto crudo, pecorino romano and parmiggiano reggiano with a glass of red wine.

Life is good, no matter nice cheese board is still at home ;)

Weekend in the home harbour (or "almost there - Part 2")

No matter the weather forecast did not look good, we still had hopes to release the ropes and go with the wind... Well, it did not happen. We were still missing the sails: genua was in place already on Friday night (not without challenges), but to have the main sail up we had to wait until Sunday due to the wind. Overall weather this weekend was totally unstable, many times per day sun would show up, then it would get windy, cloudy, it would start raining and even snowing and showering hail.

Having avoided the cold and the snow out in the sea was a very comforting thought :) Besides we still had several "projects" ongoing: I took care of the inside, while my hubby tried to do some techy fixing. One easy thing turned out to be a weekend long project: changing the batteries (separate post will follow). That's how it often goes with any "small" jobs: you believe it will take you 1 hour, but later you realize you are missing some tools and shops are closed or no more ferries scheduled (boat is located on an island).... 

Since we were not in a hurry, we went "exploring" our home harbor island and found out that some 20 swans are staying on the shore for already a couple of days. Would be so awesome if they decided to make nests here!

Coming back to work, we finally got the main sail up too :) 

And as soon as it happened the flag found its place :)

Independent of weather, sunset time is always awesome at the sea, both evenings were beautiful and enjoyable. Obviously we could not enjoy being outdoors, the temperatures were around 0 and we had the heater on for the whole weekend non-stop. 

Still views were stunning:

Now (again!) I believe we are almost there! :) Hoping for a better weather during next weekend and looking forward to have the first sailing this season!