Contentment – Life Hack #1 – Ep 6

The Secret To Life – Contentment

0:00 Kerry

I think I’ve found the secret to life. It’s not a new secret. It’s something that’s been around for a long, long time and we keep reinventing the wheel. Stephen talked about Paul the Apostle in the Bible who said:

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

Paul the Apostle (NLT)

Before he said that Paul also said:

Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.

Paul the Apostle (NLT)

That’s what I’m really feeling here living in Croatia living on our boat.

Many years ago when I was living in Jakarta in Indonesia we lived in a massive house. There was the seven of us. We had staff, we had a gardener, we had a cook, we had a driver, we had everything that we could possibly want or desire. We were content. very content. Now I’m living on a 37 foot (11.3m) Bavaria yacht in a marina in a little island of Hvar in a little town called Vrbosca. There might be 500 people (548 actually) in this little town of Vrboska – very small.

The space that we’re living in is quite small but you know what, I feel so content. I feel so peaceful. I feel so happy. We have everything we need.

Our Galley (kitchen)

Cooking

1:29 Kerry

I want to show you my little kitchen that I cook in and give you some idea of my little space that we can do miracles in.

How blessed am I? Not only do I have one method of cooking I have two methods of cooking in this small galley.

The first method I have is my gas burner. It’s a twin burner and the exciting thing about this is that when I’m out on passage and we’re travelling and the boat’s rocking this actually rocks with the boat and so my food stays flat and doesn’t spill. So that’s a wonderful, wonderful cooker.

I don’t use the gas cooker when we’re at shore because I have shore power and I can use my rice cooker. I use my rice cooker to cook everything. I’ve cooked roast chicken in it. I’ve cooked omelettes, soups and even hamburgers and rissoles. It’s an alternative way of cooking. So content.

So, if I’m at shore i can use the rice cooker and if I’m at anchor or I’m travelling I can use the gas burners. Content because I have not just one method of cooking but two.

Fridge But No Freezer

2:48 Kerry

I also want to show you my fridge. This is pretty exciting. My bench turns into my fridge space and there’s my fridge. It’s quite big actually. At the moment I’ve got Stephen’s cake sitting there for his birthday all iced and ready to go.

I don’t have a freezer but what we do have is a local store that’s only a five minute walk away. If we want frozen broccoli for dinner for example, Stephen will just walk down and get me frozen broccoli and we can use it straight away. Last night we felt like ice cream. We can’t actually keep ice cream on the boat so we just walked down and had dessert down at the local shops.

So i feel so content I’ve got my fridge and I’ve got my freezer down at the local shop. I’ve got everything that I need.

Pantry

3:41 Kerry

Another special thing on our boat is that my sitting area doubles up as my pantry. Let me show you. If I lift the seat up, there you go plenty of space. I’m so content. We’ve got so much space. If we lift the back of the seat up there’s all this room that we haven’t even used.

We had watched sailing videos and we thought ˝Oh, our boat’s quite little. How are we going to fit everything on.˝ Yet, we have plenty of space and on the other side we’ve got water and again we’ve got a lot more space that we haven’t even used yet. It’s amazing to me that we have probably one-fifth of the things that we had in Australia yet we’re so content. We don’t need more. We’ve got everything that we need.

Local Croatian Produce

4:41 Kerry

Hvala Natalija and Prežo. Thank you for the wine. It’s homegrown grapes. Homemade wine made from their vines in their house.

Something that we’ve noticed with quite a lot of our Croatian friends is that many of them have their own olive trees, they have their own vineyards, they have their own cabbage patches. They also have a lot of fruit trees. A lot of Croatians, from what we’ve seen, grow their own so a lot of the food that’s produced here is fresh and local. It’s learning to be content with what the seasons grow at the moment. It’s been winter so we eat cabbage and we eat potatoes and as summer comes we’ll have lots of fruits and strawberries and berries and beautiful summer fruits that we can enjoy too.

We have a little shop down here which has the basics. We went down there to buy some chicken the other night because I felt like chicken for dinner but they didn’t have anything so we had to choose something else. I think we had vegetables that night. I’m not used to that because, normally in Australia, we can go down to the Coles or the Woolies 24/7. They´re always open seven days a week and we can buy whatever we want. We don’t have that on this little island. We don’t have takeaways or shops open on Sundays. Here they’re closed so we have really needed to learn what it’s like to be content however we find ourselves.

Catching Our Own Food

6:16 Kerry

Last night I even tried to catch a fish. We see them swimming past. There are big ones sometimes. We actually had a fishing rod with the boat so I’m giving it a go. I don’t actually like to eat fish but I guess I’ll just be content if I ever catch something.

Cooking Onboard Our Boat

6:33 Kerry

Now I’m going to show you how I made one of those dinners in the rice cooker.

This is actually one of my all-time, favourite small appliances. It´s perfect for the boat because it doesn’t use any power. I’ve just put my onions in there and there you go, all chopped up ready to go.

The onion is in, the garlic’s in. Some oils in and I’m just going to give that a bit of a cook before I put the meat in. We know that this is beef. Not because it says beef in English but because it’s got a cow on it. That’s how we shop.

It’s already starting to smell fabulous. Really the rice cooker is acting like a frying pan where i can just cook it all first. Once it’s cooked then I’ll add the other ingredients and let it simmer away for probably half an hour. To the mince, the garlic and the onion I’m going to add chopped up cabbage, chopped up carrot, tomato, chickpeas, corn, salt, chives and a little bit of seasoning mix to give it a bit more flavour. When that’s all cooked we’ll be having it on some lettuce leaves.

The tomato paste, the chickpeas and the corn have been added. I’ve added the chives, the tomato, and seasoning. I’ve added the salt and now I’m going to give it a stir. I’m just going to put the lid on and let it cook until the red light turns off. I’ll check it to see if it needs to have a second cycle and then it’s done.

In my little kitchen I like to turn this all around so that the steam from the cooker goes out the window of the boat so we don’t fill up the cabin with steam.

Well, it’s cooked now and I’m going to put it on to some lettuce leaves with cheese and tomato on the top.

Again, all in the one pot so cleanup has been so easy. I’m going to leave any leftovers in the pot and stick the whole pot into the fridge. Then tomorrow for lunch we’ll put the pot back into the rice cooker, warm it up and again it’s just one pot to wash up.

Dinner is served: vegetable mince on lettuce leaves with tomato and grated cheese. We’ve even got some beautiful flowers from Natalija from her garden. She lives here on the island of Hvar.

Okay Stephen, what’s the verdict on dinner?

9:37 Stephen

Well, that was terrific and that’s what’s left.

9:43 Kerry

out of 10?

9:45 Stephen

10!

9:45 Kerry

Yay – well done.

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