Perishables

Just before noon I set off for Sam's Club for my big run for perishables.  I got lucky with the buses and I was there in about 20 minutes.

I brought back the following:

Beef:
- lump, 0.85 kg
- lump, 1.12 kg
- lump, 1.37 kg
- pieces, 0.76 kg
- steaks (5 medium size) 0.99 kg

That comes to a total of a hefty 5.09 kg (about ll lbs) of beef.

I bought turkey sandwich meat as follow:

- 2 x 1.0 kg packs
- 6 x 250 g packs

That represents a total of 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) for turkey sandwich meat.

Then there was cheese:

- 3 x 907 g cheddar
- 1 x 2.26 kg Monterey Jack

which yields a total of 5 kg (11 lb) of cheese.

Finally there's the butter:

- 24 x 90 g sticks

which yields 2.16 (4.75 lb) of butter - REAL butter.

I also purchased 4 loaves of good, heavy wholemeal bread and another 4 kg of oat meal, bringing my total supply of oatmeal to 16 kg.  I thought that the additional oat meal was warranted because I expect to eat a lot of it, regardless of whether the temperature is warm or cold. The bulky and heavy oatmeal was almost a bridge too far, but I seem to have a knack for estimating what I can carry and sure enough, everything just managed to fit in my backpack and the duffel bag.  The cold stuff, by the way, fit nicely (and barely) into my two insulated bags which I then placed into the duffle bag.

The return to the marina is worth mentioning.  As I made the long push of the trolly from Sam's Club, along the frontage of WalMart to the bus stop, a cab driver asked if I needed a ride.  Instinctively I shook my head in the negative.  But as I pushed on I began to think, Hang on, it's the middle of the day and hot as hell, I've got 1700 pesos worth of perishables in this trolly, and do I really want to wait perhaps 20 minutes for a bus, endure a bumpy 20 minute ride, then make that long and hot 15-minute walk from the dropoff to the MLP humping what is probably the heaviest load I've had in the duffel bag, when I could take a cab?

I went back and asked Quanto por la Marina de la Paz? The reply was Ochenta Pesos.
Eighty pesos ($6.00) seemed like good value to me and before I knew it I was being dropped off inside of the MLP in front of the jetty trollies.  Ochenta pesos?  I asked.  Si was the response.  I handed him a 100 peso bill saying Cien, mi amigo.  He took the hundred peso bill then shook my hand and wished me good fortune on my coming voyage, which I had described to him along the way.  So here I was in front of the gate to my jetty at the MLP with my heavy and perishable load, finally smart about the use of taxis.  (I can be a slow learner.)  The entire round trip had taken only 90 minutes.

I put most of the meat in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.  I placed the 5 steaks into individual plastic food bags and divided the pieces of beef into two food bags, each to be thawed for a pressure cooker meal. 

I placed some of the sandwich meat in the non-freezer section, expecting to use it during my breakout to the open sea. 

... You'll notice that there is no chilled or frozen fish in my inventory.  I plan to plug that gap with all of the fish that I will catch along the way.  (Yea, right!)