Livin' The Dream - Friday Night

Our sailing compadres, Joe and Karin of Flyin' Sideways introduced us to the phrase "livin' the dream" as irony. As we recall their story, they were carrying 5-gallon jerry jugs of diesel down a hot, dusty road in the Baja when one of them, exhausted and dripping with gritty sweat looked at the other (in similar condition) and said "Hey, livin' the dream!"

Their story resonates with most cruisers because, well - our daily life is not always consistent with the vision that drove our plans. Nor is it the life some of our friends and relatives think we are living. So, for readers who appreciate "truthiness" in blogging, here's our latest "Livin' The Dream" story:  

We spent last Friday doing boat projects in 90 degree heat and god-only-knows-what-percentage humidity. Not all of the projects were successfully completed, but when the bug hour approached (4:30 - 7:00 ish the mosquitoes come out) we quit work, drew the screens, cranked up the fans and took our boat showers (what others may call "spit baths"). It was time for dinner.

Molly was feeling pretty clever because she had an idea for a dinner that could be made from the few food items remaining on board.  

As an aside: There are wonderful, well stocked "American style" grocery stores in San Salvador - but the city is an hour and a half car journey away. Shopping trips to San Salvador are infrequent and expensive. There is a small, marginally well stocked "super market" in a small town (La Herradura) that is close to the marina by dinghy (4 km) but far by bus. And as of Friday our dinghy motor was still dead (see above re: unsuccessful projects . . . ). Our last shopping trip had been nine days earlier.

Molly began to put together a gourmet feast (more irony) of onions, canned corned beef (a remaining "emergency supply" staple), eggs and cheese. The onions went well. Then we opened the can of corned beef and found that it was much more suspect looking than we had anticipated. What had we expected? Not much, actually - but something slightly more appealing than the suspiciously pink lump that oozed from the can. Our readers with pets will know what we're talking about.

We assured ourselves that if we fried it up enough, it would be edible. We applied heat.

Then we began to crack the eggs. Food bloggers warn that in Central America one should open each egg into a separate container before joining it with the other eggs in a dish in case one egg in a pack has "gone off". Don't worry, they write - it's easy to tell if a egg is no good.

Nothing we'd read prepared us for the vile, black mess that came oozing out of one of the eggs. Or the smell that filled the galley and salon and the back of our throats. Had it spoken up and cursed us for disturbing it we would not have been surprised. And yes, the food bloggers were right -- there was no question of whether this egg was "off".

We got the devil egg out of Abracadabra as soon as we could and tried to return to cooking the bejeezus out of the pink goo. But no matter how much we cooked it and the remaining eggs (about which we remained somewhat suspicious) the smell of The Evil Egg clung to them. And to us. 

Finally, we loaded "dinner" into the trash at the end of the dock, sat out in the cockpit to get away from the smell for awhile, and ate our last two granola bars.  

[Lest you worry we are starving to death, we are happy to report that we went food shopping in San Salvador the very next day and the dinghy engine is now working, so we can get to La Herradura for future provisioning. Our one remaining question is how long it will be before we can crack an egg without flinching.]