When provisioning for a trip, don't make the same mistake we made. We went out to the grocery store and purchased a massive amount of food!
We had two full carts of food with everything stuffed into them. We had cases of waters, chips, fruits, vegetables, and canned foods, as well as everything else you can think of.
We ate what we normally do, and all this extra food simply began to rot! What's worse is the canned vegetables were disgusting, so aweful that they are still in the back of a locker, just waiting to be thrown out. All the money we spent on wasted food could have been used towards anything else on the boat, but instead was thrown out as rotten lettuce.
Thinking that we learned our lesson from this fiasco, we decided not to go overboard with food provisioning on our future trips. When we set off for a 2 week cruise, we once again bought what we thought would be an adequate amount of food for the trip. Once again, the extra food we purchased began to rot and had to be thrown out.
The moral of the story is, only buy the normal amount of food that you would consume on a regular basis. If you buy extra food, it will go bad and you will have wasted that money. Instead of "provisioning" for a trip, what we do now is cast off. If we find that we need more of something, we will pull into a port and pick it up.
This is an easy approach for us since we liveaboard. Our regular grocery shopping is what we consume in a regular amount of time. We typically go shopping every other week, so we know that we have around two weeks worth of food on board at any given moment. Instead of wasting money on extra food, we simply shove off and provision along the way.
Another word of warning: Canned vegetables are disgusting and there is nothing you can do to make them better. I have tried everything like adding them to delicious dishes, but all they do is ruin everything. Canned string beans are the worst offenders, followed by canned carrots and canned peas. Canned corn isn't that bad, and can be hidden in chili, but fresh corn is a million times better. Canned beans on the other hand are wonderful and they will keep for years!
While we don't stock up on extra fresh foods or foods that need refrigerating, we do stock up on rice, beans, and canned meats (Vienna Sausages are amazing) as these foods won't go bad and make a great meal that can be eaten while on watch.
