Olympia is the kind of town where blueberries grow in the public landscapes. If we visit later in the year, we’ll be able to graze as we walk.  We like Olympia. It’s a liberal town where artistic expression is appreciated on both the personal and collective levels. Public areas that are beautiful as well as functional are valued and kept groomed. And it’s not a bad cruising destination, either. We’ve been at the work dock at Swantown again getting our fiberglass repair done and our mizzen mast stepped. We’re kind of glad to be back.

This artistic door is the entrance to the food bank close to the downtown area. The other door is equally beautiful.

Monday we discovered that we’d run out of propane on the main tank, so on Tuesday morning I went on a little cruiser adventure to find more. “Cruiser adventures” illustrate how our new lives are different from the old, usual lifestyle we used to embrace.

The Google showed me that Acme Fuel was less than a mile from the dock; one of the benefits of being in a working port town. Great! I was going to be getting my exercise, something I can no longer take for granted, much to my dismay.  I deployed the Magna Cart, attached the aluminum tank, inserted earbuds for my book-for-the-road, grabbed my parasol,  and set off to find Acme and their unlimited amounts of propane and propane accessories at low, low prices.

The burbling stream in the background is part of the children’s museum so I deemed it unseemly that I should play in it.

One thing about Olympia is that people have a very flexible attitude toward clothing and personal accoutrements. I appreciate this and noticed that I got barely a second glance from others as I trundled down the road, one hand on the tank laden Magna Cart, the other holding my little silk parasol to keep the hot summer PNW sun off my delicate skin. It’s nice to know that there are places close to home where my increasingly cruiser-casual wardrobe doesn’t cause anyone to bat an eye, much less cross the street in distress to avoid me.

Rounding the corner by the Hands On Children’s Museum, which, quite frankly makes me want to borrow a small child for a day just so I can play with all the cool stuff and go up in their tiny lighthouse, I spied a large Acme propane tank behind a fence. And yet, how to get passed that fence? And where was the Acme office? My googly map told me the place was close to the corner of Franklin and Thurston streets. The large tank with the friendly sun logo was close to the corner of Franklin and Thurston street. I walked the block, but no office was in sight. I saw other tanks, but they were way too big for Galapagos.

You see the big tank, too, right?

I was feeling chagrined and on the verge of getting confused, if not lost, when a representative of Cruiser’s Karma stepped lightly out of a nearby, cleverly concealed doorway, propane accessory in hand. He was a youngish man, which most men I see are, nowadays, dressed in average every day clothes. He smiled broadly, teeth gleaming in the morning Olympia sunshine. Was that a starry twinkle I saw in his eye?

“ Good morning! You must certainly be looking for the propane place! I work there and am walking there now. Please allow me to carry your tank for you. Come this way.”

These are close to his actual words. I was slightly dazzled. I am now at the time of my life where when youngish men ( or any age man, really, or any woman for that matter) with gleaming teeth and twinkling eyes come stealthily out of concealed doorways and offer to carry a feather-light tank for me (because ours are aluminum and are light as a feather) I just say , ‘Thank you kind sir!’ and hand it over. I will not make any fuss at all about being able to carry it myself or any of that nonsense. If he wants to carry my tank, he can carry my darned tank. I retained my parasol.

We crossed the street and a gravel parking lot to an obscure one-story building with a small, neat propane station in the front. In less than 5 minutes, and about 10$ later, I had a filled tank, a nice conversation about propane,  and was ready for the walk back to the boat. He never even had to take the tank off the Magna Cart. He was that good.

Not an unusual scene in Olympia. Just your run of the mill dog in a side car.

I dropped the tank off at Galapagos and carried on for the rest of my walk. The city has put in a nice path along the water. I walked the path, secure in the knowlege that I’d done my ‘one thing’ for the day, stopped at Batdorf and Bronson for coffee, and walked back to the boat. This cruising life. We could be loving it.

The famous Dancing Goats of Batdorf and Bronson. Their coffee is pretty good, too.

Did you read the sad news about the guy in Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge Island, who was shooting at people from his boat? The story ends tragically as he was killed by police when he fired his weapon at them. I wish we knew more about the man. I hope we can eventually know why this person was shooting at people from his boat.  He was sailing Flying Gull, the 1940 Sparkman and Stevens sailboat we fell in love with and almost bought 4 years ago. Although we know we made the right choice in walking away from that boat, I find myself feeling very sad, indeed, that this beautiful boat would be the stage for such violence. Aside from the obvious human tragedy involved, this boat deserves better than that. I guess I hoped that when we walked away someone else had bought it and loved it like we would have. We have several posts about Flying Gull on the blog. If you are interested in reading them, just search ‘Flying Gull’ in the search box up top.

Our blog has seen lots of action on the Flying Gull page since this unfolded. I know this is because of the shooting, but I hope someone will read the review and decide that if Flying Gull ever goes up for auction, they will buy it and bring it back to its former glory.  This is a truly beautiful boat. 

Meanwhile in lighter news:

We’ve now been cruisers for over a month.  You’d think that by this time we’d be in Canada watching whales, or in Mexico eating all the fish tacos. But alas, instead we spent three weeks in Gig Harbor. By the time we got out of there we had become part of the local scenery. Now we’re anchored in Olympia in great anticipation of the coming week and hopefully, finally, getting this repair to the aft deck finished. Let’s all spit a few times and do some twirling together to let the gods of boat repair know that we’re seriously ready to get out of here. Okay? There are whales to watch out there and we need to commence watching them!

Since we aren’t in Mexico yet, we can at least eat well here. In preparation for all the long passages we have yet to make, I purchased the cruiser version of a slow cooker. Called a ‘thermal cooker’,  it works on the principle that says if you just get something hot enough and keep it hot long enough, it will turn out to be cooked by the end of the day. On paper, it sounds dead easy. In the galley, I’m not so sure.

Mt. Rainier lording it over Penrose St. Park.

I ordered a thermal cooker from Amazon and when it came, it was very small. I thought, ‘this is too small’, so I sent it back. I should probably have kept that one. Instead, I ordered one of these huge units from Saratoga Jacks. It comes with an insert that allows you to cook two foods at once.  Why cook only one thing when you can cook two? My friend Donna from SV Denali Rose has one and she likes it and uses it. So when these went on sale last year, I got one. I like to be part of the popular crowd. But I think Donna must be a better cook than I am.

Here’s my take on this unit: I’m lukewarm about it. I literally go ‘meh…’ and shrug my shoulders when asked if I like it. This thing is supposed to save propane on board, and we all want to save propane, don’t we? It’s supposed to allow you to fix dinner and heat up the galley in the morning when it’s less hot than the Mexican afternoons. So let me give you the low down on how I used it today to make tonight’s dinner:

Melissa’s Fabulous Mango Beef Soft Tacos

1.5 lbs beef stew meat (works well with chicken or pork, too)
1 quart size mason jar of Melissa’s home made mango salsa, canned in 2011
(What? You don’t have any of Melissa’s special mango salsa, you say? Just use any old salsa you have laying around. A pint, a quart, green salsa, red salsa, literally whatever you have. We don’t stand on ceremony or persnickety measuring in our galley.)

Taco fixings: Steamed corn or flour tortillas, shredded cabbage, avocado, chopped cilantro, lime wedges, and crema sauce. Make that with Mexican crema or sour cream. Stir in a little lime juice, some cumin, some chili powder, and a couple of drops of honey. Just go ahead and play with the amounts. You can’t really mess this up. Heck, add THREE drops of honey! Treat yourself!

Looks pretty good at the end of a long day. All the space above the meat needs to be filled with thermal mass.

Now you want to brown the meat in the thermal cooker pot. When it’s brown, add all the salsa. You will cook this for a few minutes until you know the meat is heated all the way through (I.E. already cooked) and everything is boiling hot. Meanwhile, you want to preheat the thermal unit. This is necessary or it will steal heat from your ingredients and they won’t stay at cooking temperature. So boil some water on the stove while you are cooking, I mean browning, the meat.

When the water boils, pour it into the thermal cooker and close the lid. Your meat will be brown by now but don’t let it cool. Just keep cooking it on the stove. Do you see what I’m getting at here?

Thermal mass is everything when using a thermal cooker, so I decided to make up some rice at the same time. I retained some of the boiling water for this. 1.5 cups of rice, three cups of water. That makes a LOT of rice. But you want the huge pot filled up with thermal mass. Air in the pot is the enemy of thermal cooking.

Rice pudding, anyone?

Pour your hot water from the unit into the sink to do dishes later. Then put the pan of meat and salsa into the unit, the rice and boiling water on top. Put on the lid and close the unit and walk away. Open the hatches to let out all the steam and heat collected from boiling two things on the stove at once. Whew! I saved a ton of propane.

I put my pot to rest at 11:00am when we upped anchor in Penrose St. Park. I opened the unit at 6:00 at anchor in Olympia. The rice was done to perfection but cool to the touch. The meat was done, but frankly it was done when I put it in the cooker. It was, however, probably more tender than it would have been. I honestly do not know how long this meal stayed at cooking temp because the whole thing was less than lukewarm by the time we ate, 7 hours later. I needed to heat it up again to serve it. Still, I didn’t have to cook dinner. It was already done. So that’s a plus.

It’s hard to go wrong with a taco and Mexican beer.

I’m not ready to commit to this unit yet. Aside from the doubts I have that it’s actually going to save me much propane, I’m not sure it’s going to suit the way we generally eat. This thing holds a LOT of food and there are only two of us. I was hoping that this would take the place of my small crockpot, which I used several times a week when we were at the marina. Try this recipe in your own slow cooker. You won’t be disappointed, even without the mangos.

Do you have experience with thermal cooking? Any ideas on how to do this better?