Somewhere between the Cook Islands and Fiji....
I’m writing this heading west, on passage, somewhere between the island of Suwarrow in the Cook Islands and Fiji.
We are, at some point soon, about to cross the date line - quite an extraordinary event, and one I can't quite get my head round!
This means, we will go from being 11 hours behind the UK, to being 11 hours ahead, or more accurately, we will, somewhere, in the ether, lose 24 hours!
I'll let you know how that goes - we are at sea, so I can't imagine it will make any difference at all to us, but imagine if you had a party booked - you would miss it. I am already feeling the FOMO.
We’ve been on passage around 8 days now, heading West, expecting to arrive in Fiji tomorrow and meanwhile the food/beverage situation on Nauplios is getting interesting again! More on this later.
Maupiha'a
In the last blog, we were just about to arrive on Maupiha'a -a tiny atoll, one of the most westerly islands in French Polynesia
This was the most amazing of places -we loved it, could definitely have stayed a lot longer, and had to drag ourselves away after around 11 days.
It being an atoll, meant more coral reefs to avoid hitting, more bombies to potentially get your anchor chain wrapped around (we did this) and another pass to navigate - but even so, it was all totally worth it.
I don’t want to bore you with more palm trees, white sandy beaches, and photos of blue blue sea but I’m sorry - I have to - it was incredible!
There are 8 people living on this island - a few cute dogs, a million coconut crabs ( some are actually ginormous) and enough seabirds to film a dozen Alfred Hitchcock movies .
On our first trip ashore we were welcomed by a gorgeous Polynesian couple - Harry and Norma who are two of eight locals living on this 13km long atoll.
Over the period of time we were on Maupiha'a - we, and the other cruisers in the anchorage, and lots of cruisers before us (Norma has a guest book) got to know and love this beautiful, friendly couple.
Harry and Norma are originally from Maupiti - a more developed French Polynesian island around 130 miles north. They previously had careers, a family and houses on Maupiti before electing to come and live the simple life on Maupiha'a.
When I say simple - I'm not sure how simple it actually is. Their job is to farm the coconut meat, or COPRA, as it is known. We bumped into them one day as they were working - collecting fallen coconuts from paths, clearing branches, reaching up and picking coconuts from the tall trees. It was the middle of the day, it was roasting, they both looked exhausted - but as soon as they saw us, they came straight over - big French Polynesian smiles, and Harry picked us a fresh coconut each from a massively tall tree.
After collecting the coconuts, the white meat is taken from the shell and dried out in the sun. (Photo below) When a certain weight of copra is reached, they phone the mainland on a satellite phone which is used only for Copra or emergencies (its really expensive) to tell someone "Copra ready"
This reminds me of that old Del Monte advert "The man, (or woman) from Maupiha'a, he say - Copra ready"
A supply ship comes in occasionally, once or twice a year, to pick up the Copra, or to remove the 8 residents to safety if a cyclone is expected. This island is on the cyclone path and we saw the evidence of previous cyclone damage on a few of the small ramshackle buildings.
Their simple, but very beautiful home is a little shack on the beach with solar power and water from the ground. They cook outside on an open fire, and Norma's kitchen sink is a unit (wooden crate with water attached) overlooking the beautiful blue sea. They eat food from the sea, coconuts, fresh tropical fruit, and obviously, to wash it all down a good supply of Harry's home made beer.
Harry and Norma speak Polynesian and French (It being French Polynesia) We did pick up a few polynesian words - please, thankyou etc, but it was interesting how much French I remembered.
Merci-Madame Crooks from Carlton Miniott infant school who is French, spoke French a lot of the time (often muttering under her breath) and renamed all us little kids with French sounding names. ( I was 5, and this seemed perfectly normal at the time)
My French name was Lucienne - is that not aka the devil? My sister Jackie was Claudette.
I think it's fair to say we've had quite a lot of mileage over the years with those French names.
Madame Crooks input at my young age clearly did something to instill a bit of french in my young unpolluted brain.
Anyway,on that first day we went ashore - Norma told me she had terrible toothache.
Oh dear - no dentist on Maupiha'a, no 111 emergency dentist, no A&E, no pharmacy, no nothing. No way of getting her off the island (their home island would be a bash into the wind for 130 miles)
There were a few cruising boats in the anchorage, and I asked around to find out if there were any dentists in town - there was a vet, and me - a doctor.
A GP, who- in the UK, gets potentially “struck off” for treating dental problems ( we’re not dentists)
Retrospectively I think the vet would have been better placed to treat her.
She seemed ok - but her gum around the sore tooth was really red and inflamed. I did my usual, which, as my husband will tell you is "take some ibuprofen and man up" (I obviously didn't say "man up" to the very gorgeous Norma)
A day or so later, and she was in more pain, so the next thing was antibiotics.
I always say anyone can be a GP if they know the doses of ibuprofen, amoxicillin and betnovate steroid cream.
So I started talking to her about antibiotics (Me in English/French/Spanish, her in Polynesian/French) - she had an amazing first aid kit and had some amoxicillin which she was happy to start taking.
A day or two later, she was a bit better, but still in a lot of pain and the swelling was worse.
Clearly the ibuprofen, manning up, and amoxicillin wasn't really working- the next antibiotic of choice would be metronidazole - or flagyl. Used most commonly for mouth, bowel, and genital infections.
It's not very nice, and a lot of people react to it, in terms of feeling sick, developing diarrhoea,gastric problems etc (Bearing in mind, it is often given for bowel infections, diarrhoea is the last thing people need)
So it is generally used cautiously and the other caution about metronidazole is that it really is the only antibiotic that will interact badly with alcohol.
We always tell people not to drink alcohol whilst taking it, but quite often we are ignored - or, more appropriately, once people get the script in their hand, they stop listening/forget everything the doctor has said, then a few days later when they're feeling better ..... "fancy a pint? .... " "Aye....."
I've seen people so ill after drinking alcohol while they are on metronidazole they end up in A&E.
Back to Norma and her dental problem - I checked her first aid kit again - no metronidazole.
Unsurprisingly, we have an amazing first aid kit on Nauplios (although a lot of it is out of date now) so I brought some over to her.
It was interesting/slightly nerve wracking doing the pre medication questions - eg are you taking any medication? Are you allergic to anything? Have you taken this before? Do you drink alcohol?
I wondered briefly where I stood in terms of litigation?
a) I am not a dentist,
b) I "examined" her on a deserted beach
c) Hands washed thoroughly with hibiscrub and double gloves - or more accurately - dirty, sweaty hands, wiped on a wet wipe from a grotty sandy rucksack then dried off on my shorts.
d)We do not speak the same language, no translation service was available on Maupiha'a
If she chose to sue me for misprescribing or whatever? Oh well - what can you do?
When we saw her a few days later, she seemed a lot better and was smiling - properly!
Thank goodness- also, no adverse outcomes with the metronidazole!!
They invited us and another cruising couple for dinner (the lovely, and very funny - Helen (UK) and Steve (NZ) from SV Cerulean - we knew we liked them instantly, but the friendship was sealed when they told us their 5l fuel cans were full of gin and rum.🤣🤣)
We had a truly, once in a lifetime opportunity - an unbelievable meal, with local Polynesians who were, by now our besties, in an unbelievable dining room, on an unbelievable beach! I won't go on, but, it was quite amazing.
Fresh (caught that day) coconut crab starter, with fresh lobster (caught that day) Helen took some salads and rice which was also delicious.
We took some chocolate brownies and some rum which was drank with fresh coconut milk and then later on Harry's home brewed beer. Delicious.
Yes, that is a flower behind Crawford's right ear.........😂😂
One day, Harry and Norma asked if they could call their family using the Wi-Fi on our boat (the starlink)
They came out to the anchorage, and with Facebook messenger, video called their daughter who had arranged for 4 of their 5 kids and all the grandchildren to be present. This was the first time they had managed, ever, to video call their children and they were both very emotional. Witnessing this was really quite special.
They were in the cockpit with the phone - talking, laughing and crying with their family- me and Crawford were in the galley, pretending to be busy, trying not to listen, trying and failing not to get emotional- he will deny this but I did see the Sned shed a little tear!
For an island of this size, it was unbelievable how busy we were during our time here
Checking out "the birds", walking all over the island, trying to open coconuts without severing a tendon, eating and drinking fresh coconut, eating fishy little birds eggs, eating fresh papaya, swimming and snorkelling in that blue water.
Speaking of eggs - with all those birds around, a lot of the unfertilised eggs were going spare - we were given 24 fresh eggs - here they are....
These eggs look a bit like the mouldy eggs we grew on our pacific crossing - no, mould here - picked fresh off the beach that morning!
With some trepidation we ate them -and the strangest flavour - eggs tasting of fish?
I guess the seabirds just eat fish all the time so it stands to reason, they will taste of fish.
We love eggs, so, not to look a gift horse in the eye, we boiled them all up and pickled them (like you do if you are from the North of England and love pickled eggs!)
Now that was an interesting flavour- hard boiled eggs which looked like eggs but tasted of fish, and vinegar - hmmmm. Not sure. Still we ate most of them, and I think we enjoyed them.
When we had arrived in Maupiha'a, we managed, eventually, to catch up with some of our friends from Mexico. We had all left at slightly different times, and, because, when people get to French Polynesia, they have only three months to see the whole place, most people just keep moving ....so we kept missing seeing them.
At last, however, we got to meet up with SV Midnight Breeze (Caroline and Richard) SV Susimi (Hazel and Paul) and SV Beleza (Michelle and Chris)
A few late night drinking sessions happened (well, for cruisers, this is anything after 8pm!) and we had lots of fun catching up on all the sailing adventures since Mexico.
At this stage in the journey, everyone, (unless you have a "still" on board) is running out of booze - we had ran out of beer in French Polynesia, and because FP is so expensive, we decided just to drink what we had on board.
We had bought 4 x 5 litre boxes of red wine from Sams Club in Mexico (a bit like Costco but American)
When we tasted it in Mexico, it was delicious - however, by the time we got to French Polynesia, it was..... to say the least - dodgy!
The other thing - I couldn't find it anywhere on the boat.
I thought maybe my husband had secretly drank it, but then I found it in the grab bag. The grab bag!
The grab bag - for non sailors, is a (usually) waterproof bag which is prepared before a passage and is ready, just to "grab" in case you need to leave the boat - eg on a life raft. 🤞
I had carefully packed it before we left the Canary Islands in 2019, and it had been in one of the back cabins untouched since (Luckily)
So - imagine my surprise, when I found the grab bag, with 4 x 5 litre bags of red wine in it!
My super cautious husband - Captain Safety, whose motto is "safety never takes a day off"- decided to use the grab bag to stow the wine!!!!
Imagine if you actually need the grab bag, and when you get into the life raft, you reach for the grab bag for some water, or some high protein bar, or, heaven forbid, some seasickness tablets - no not available - but you can have 20 litres of red wine?
Hmm - oh well, what to do - except drink the red wine asap and get the grab bag back up and running.
That red wine though, oh dear - it wasn't good. Most wine tastes OK after the first, and if it's really bad, the second glass. This didn't.
Still, luckily, in true cruiser style, it didn't stop people and everyone enjoyed the delicious red wine, even though it was disgusting.
Unfortunately, the next day, the red wine drinkers were feeling unwell and a few people (me included) were definitely, on the wagon!
Hazel coined the phrase that we had been "Naupliosed" and Paul was blaming my new Mexican glasses for his 'mystery illness'
The nice thing about meeting up with other cruisers, is that everyone shares their sailing and boat knowledge.
A few nights later, Michelle (Beleza) shared some impressive knowledge - "how to make dodgy red wine taste good"
This involves adding citrus fruit drink sachets and some soda water - bingo!! Sangria. Yummmmm. So there we were again - on it!
I also heard some reassuring news today from SV Midnight Blue who have fashioned a special type of "Baileys" out of various galley contents, and some very lovely "home brew" - glad to hear Caroline and Richard have recovered.
When we left the Atoll, Norma and Harry had given us lots of food and our fridge was full of papaya, coconuts, coconut milk, 🦅 birds eggs, fresh coconut crab.....
In return we’d given Harry and Norma loads of drugs, (the legal kind) some rum, loads of batteries and any flour/sugar/dry food/ supplies we had spare.
It was sad saying goodbye, knowing we would likely never visit this part of the world again, but what an amazing experience it had been, getting to know this beautiful place, and the people who live here.
It was now time to head west, and this meant leaving the gorgeous Atoll of Maupiha'a, and the scariest pass we had encountered so far.
This is backtracking a bit, but, below is a picture of the Atoll Taou, in the Tuamotus. I flew over it when I went back to the UK and its easier to envisage it from the air. Only a few days earlier, we had been inside this atoll, wrestling with bommies and sharks!
As you can see from the photo, the Atoll is a ring shaped island, which surrounds a lagoon. On the outside of the atoll, is coral, and sand, palm trees, rocks etc, and inside the lagoon, there are usually lots of coral rocks (known as bommies) and reefs.
In some atolls, (not all) there is a gap in the surrounding coral/rock or a pass in which it is deep enough and wide enough for a boat to cross through into the lagoon of the atoll. Each atoll may have any number of passes. Some atolls have none.
The Pacific ocean is tidal, and the pass - invariably, has tidal water flooding in or out. Depending on when you enter or leave the atoll, and depending on whether the wind is with the tide or against the tide, it can be quite tricky.
If the water is flooding out, and the wind is blowing in the opposite direction, the waves and sea can kick up with rough, dangerous scary breaking waves and overfalls.
The other slight addition to the danger of the Maupiha'a pass, was that, the previous week we had been told of a boat who had accidentally hit a whale, lurking in the very narrow pass. What a shame - I hope that whale is ok, and I hope the boat is ok. When we crossed the Pacific, we heard of a boat who accidentally (well, it's obviously accidentally!) hit a whale, and their boat sank within 20 minutes apparently. They were rescued by another cruising boat fortunately.
The safest time to go through the pass would be when the water is at its most "still" which can be either when the water is standing at either high or low water.
The tide changes every 6 hours, and working out when is high water, when is low water, and when would be the safest time to go through the pass, suddenly felt frighteningly real.
Learning all this stuff in a classroom, circa 20 years ago, felt like a long time ago.
Jill Warn, and myself - (both ex Midwives - we met on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where she taught me to measure and plot all the observations ( breathing rate, oxygen levels, heart rate etc etc) of very premature babies. (smaller, sometimes than your hand) It was all numbers, and plotting, in a way, a bit like working out tidal heights) We both loved the precision of calculating tidal heights. Well I think we both did. I did anyway and Jill was good at it.
One funny thing did happen, however, which I will share. With our day skipper exam approaching, we asked our instructor to go over a couple of things - next thing - a Saturday morning day skipper revision meeting at Jill's house.
What a lovely kind man - he went over everything so patiently, and we were ready to sit the exam.
Unfortunately, as he was leaving, we both noticed he had 'acquired' 4 x pretty polly stickers stuck to the back of his jeans (Jills daughters had been busy!!)
We didn't tell him, but I imagine he was curious as to why we were both purple and struggling to speak. Also, I will always wonder what his wife said when he got home.
BTW, don't get the wrong idea - these were not "private" lessons - the instructor was absolutely lovely, but probably, at least twice our age, and we were quite old even then!
Anyway, the point is, balancing theory in a classroom and practice in the real world is really quite different - and scary!
Luckily my supercool / unflappable/ never seen him shout or lose his rag husband is the skipper.
Even he though! - he asked me if I had ‘butterflies’ just before we went through the pass on Maupiha'a.
This is a video as we were leaving, and the skipper pretending he’s not scared.
You will see why, I had, not only butterflies, but was pretty much wetting myself!
Still, it’s always good to test the adrenaline response
Back out to sea, safely - Thank You God!
We leave the waters of French Polynesia 🇵🇫 to arrive in the Cook Islands 5 days later
Suwarrow
We’re now onto a different group of islands - the Cook Islands.
15 islands in the South Pacific - they are self governing, but in free association with New Zealand. Im not sure what this means in practice, but we decided to go to Suwarrow on our way over to Fiji.
We made this decision based on hours of research- not really - we just followed our friends who were already there.
Suwarrow is another atoll (omfg - here we go again!!) Around 11 miles across, Suwarrow has one main anchorage called “anchorage island” which is nestled behind a small white sandy beach island.
Getting into the Atoll was easy ( to be honest, after Maupiha'a anything is easy)
We steamed in through the pass and made our way to the anchorage feeling - dare I say it - smug?
Hmm that will learn us - 3 hours later and a good public “telling off” by Ranger (who looks after the island/Atoll) over the radio for trying to anchor in the wrong place - we eventually managed to get our anchor to hold! (It normally takes about ten minutes to anchor!)
The atoll is full of the dreaded bommies wherever you look, along with, not only some really shallow reefs but also some really deep areas - like 35m deep- too deep to put the anchor down. So its a challenge!
The island was put on the map by a New Zealander called Tom Neale, who wrote a book, after living a hermits life on the island between 1953-1978 - apparently, preferring the company of his cats, to women. (Weirdo)
The book is called. “An island to oneself” by Tom Neale
Here is an interesting web article about him …
Because of the amount of nature, coral and wildlife on the island, the Cook island government has identified Suwarrow as a nature reserve and bird sanctuary. As such, a Ranger has been appointed to take care of the island.
As we arrived at Suwarrow, on the radio, we heard another sailing boat asking Ranger permission to enter the atoll .
We thought we had better do the same, and, a very posh English accent came on the radio “This is Ranger” - thankfully giving us permission to enter.
At the time, we didn’t realise, how lucky we were - until around 4 hours later, we heard Harry (Ranger) declining a boat entry.
Apparently there is a limit on the number of boats allowed into the atoll ( when we arrived we were boat 23 and I think the limit is meant to be 17)
I wonder if Harry watching us struggle to lay our anchor amongst, not only the reefs and bommies but the high number of cruising boats in a relatively small anchorage was the catalyst for him to decline entry to the next boat.
We were really surprised when we heard him on the radio, to the next boat after us, saying - “just stay outside and I’ll tell you when you can come in”
Ffs - “just stay outside......"
It’s not a nightclub, where you stand and wait, usually bladdered, with your mates - then when somebody comes out, you go in.
It’s the pacific effing ocean out there - heaving to, hopefully - if the wind/sea state allows - probably, for x number of hours, more than likely overnight! We felt sorry for them.
So we were relieved to hear, a couple of hours later, one of the other cruising boats (SV Matilda - Thankyou! 🙏 ) had planned to leave the Atoll the next day, decided to leave early to let SV Cerulean in.
I love the cruisers kindness and the way everyone helps everyone- praise the lord!
In the meantime, as we were recovering after our 5 day passage, I looked across the anchorage, and this vision of loveliness appeared ….
Michelle and Chris of SV Beleza - had inflated this little beast.
Looks like party time! A few hours later, there we were, living the dream, sitting in a plastic, inflatable unicorn, with other cruisers, sipping delicious red wine (?) and having a right laugh.
What an absolutely hilarious time on HMS Unicorn 🦄
Thank you Beleza for an amazingly fun day and sorry we drank you out of moonshine!
If anyone is wondering what to buy us for christmas though....... This!!
Other than recovering after a drinking binge on an inflatable unicorn, Suwarrow was so much fun - snorkelling, looking for whales, walking round this unbelievably beautiful island and having parties with other cruisers.
So it happened that many of the boats in the anchorage were all taking the same weather window to head west onto the next destination. Although we were all in the same place, the boats are going to different places from here - we’re heading to Fiji to catch a flight back to the UK for a month or so, then will either spend the hurricane season ( November to May) in Fiji, or if we have the time and a good weather window, we may sail down to Australia.
Fiji is in the cyclone belt, meaning, if we stay, and there is a cyclone - put simply, we could get whacked. There are lots of weather gurus talking about this year being something called an El Niño year - meaning- I think -it's bad news and the weather is more likely to misbehave/ more chance of cyclones happening.
Some of our friends have decided to stay in Fiji for the season and have booked a specific hurricane mooring - super strong/ safe etc.
So IF that wind does come along, they and their boat will be as safe as possible. We may do the same if we don’t get to Australia.
Other friends are going, mainly, on to New Zealand for the season but via places like American Samoa, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, and somewhere called New Potato which I think is a Tongan island - I haven’t looked it up because we’re not going, but Andy Hill, I’m hoping you will ❤️
All these islands sound amazing and I’m sure they are. Unfortunately, however, we can’t stay everywhere and we have to pick and choose which places we really want to see, then just carry on heading west until we are safe. Maybe next year.
A lot of boat insurance companies won’t pay out for any damage sustained to your boat if you are in a cyclone area. This is why there is often a mass exodus from certain areas at certain times.
As an example, November 1st is the beginning of cyclone season in the South Pacific so in the few weeks running up to that time there will be boats legging it to get far enough south outside of the cyclone belt.
For us, that will be south of around 25' on the Queensland coast, but insurance companies will dictate.
Sometimes sailing is annoying - it’s hard to plan for sure - it’s all about managing the uncertainty of the wind/weather and just taking the decision of the least risk, even if that means not actually making a decision until the last minute! Still, I’m not arguing with a cyclone.
The night before we all left Suwarrow for different destinations, one of our friends - Helen - had a big birthday and had organised a pot luck dinner ashore.
Before we came cruising, I’d never heard of pot luck dinners. Initially i was thinking it was something pot noodle related? I think it’s an American thing or maybe Australian?
Basically everyone brings something to eat, enough for you and a bit more, then it all goes on a table and you just eat what is there.
By now, the term ‘potluck’ rolls off my tongue. I’ve been to many many of these things by now- it's a big cruiser thing and so easy. I'm always amazed at some of the amazing food people can cobble together, from, sometimes, nothing.
I made a chickpea curry with rice - it was a good one - super spicy with loads of jalapeños, but we ate some gorgeous things that night - vegetable fritters with hot sauce, falafel, some amazing dips, breadsticks and gorgeous soft fresh bread, (not my usual hockey putt) a fresh cabbage coleslaw type thing, savoury rice, and some gorgeous brownies, biscuits and cake.
I had googled - “how to make a cake without eggs and no milk” (our current situation)
What came out of the oven was kind of like a bubbly, sticky, runny toffee inside a pan, with black burnt edges. Hmm - not my best attempt at a birthday cake.
I scooped it all into a little bowl and put some icing and candles on it.
After, frankly, a quite amazing meal, I brought this “cake” out. The cruiser kids were looking hopefully at it, and I was thinking “stay away”
I was a bit too embarrassed to present it and very kindly, one of Helen’s friends Susan did the announcement, gave Helen this strange looking cake in a sort of kids cereal bowl ( can you see why I was embarrassed?) and we all sang happy birthday.
It was fun. And lovely.
Later, unfortunately, Helen did actually try to eat some of the cake and the effect was equivalent to her having her jaw wired. Oh dear!
As Crawford spooned the cake in the sea that night, I wondered if there would be any fish swimming around Suwarrow with their mouths permanently glued together?
To be honest, it’s probably just as well we left Suwarrow- with the combination of boozy cruisers on there, things could easily have gone very wrong. Like permanent irreversible alcohol induced liver damage wrong.
Here we are - 1 day East of Fiji, just crossed the date line and we have gone from Saturday morning, to Sunday morning in half a second- Oh well!
I know "over and out" isn't technically correct but I do love saying it just to wind people up …. 😂😂
So over and out until the next blog xxxxxx
Sailing notes
Maupiha'a
For information regarding the pass at Maupiha'a, the soggy paws compendium has really useful information and tidal height charts. Thankyou SV Soggy Paws - we have bought you a beer!
https://svsoggypaws.com/files/
We entered and left the atoll around mid morning and it was (sort of) ok both times.
Maupiha'a anchorages - two anchorages - (see Navionics) both amazing- the South anchorage I think is nicer but I would suggest stay as long as you can and stay at both.
Suwarrow
Call Harry on Ch 16 before entering Suwarrow to ask permission.
The pass at Suwarrow is fairly straightforward but allow yourself extra time to anchor, float your anchor chain and keep an eye your chain doesn't get wrapped around a rock like ours did when we were lifting it.
Take/wear loads of mossie spray when you go ashore on Suwarrow.
It costs $60 NZ or US to enter the Cook Islands - you need cash!
From Nauplios' Galley
Sometimes, you will get an announcement, saying "potluck tonight 5pm"
You will be thinking "shiiiiiiiiittttttttt, what can I take?"
This is a good one and uses all dried/canned ingredients plus it's vegan/veggie friendly and probably quite healthy.
Ingredients
1 bag dried chickpeas or a couple of tins of chickpeas ready to go.
( onions, carrots, butternut squash if you have fresh veg - if you don't it's not essential)
Stock cube - veg/chicken/beef - whatever you have
Tinned tomatoes ( not essential)
Tinned mushrooms ( not essential)
Passata ( not essential)
Coconut milk( not essential)
Garlic - fresh, dried or canned.
Chilli powder, curry powder, cumin, paprika
A tin of jalapeños
Soak the chickpeas until they double in size - ideally overnight but I have done this in a couple of hours before and it was fine.
Boil up/cook the chickpeas until soft
( If you are short on time, use tinned chick peas)
Method
Fry the onions and garlic until soft
If you have fresh vegetables, chop them up, add them now, and saute them a little.
Add a big tablespoon or two of curry powder, some chilli powder, ( I use 1 tsp but it depends on your taste and how hot the chilli powder is) a big tsp of paprika, and a big tsp of cumin.
Stir all the spices in and let them cook - if it gets too dry just add a little bit of water
Add a couple of stock cubes and dissolve in the water ( add a little bit more water if necessary)
Chop up the jalapeños- I use a small tin and it's hot but delicious- but just fiddle around with the flavour you prefer.
If I have tomatoes, Passata and coconut milk, I put all of those in, ( but just 3/4 of the coconut milk - Save the rest until right at the end)
Top up with water to fill the pan ( I use a 2 litre pan) and simmer/boil/ let the fluid reduce for as long a time as you have.
If it's a bit watery, you can mash the chick peas with a potato masher to thicken the sauce.
If it's too dry just add more water.
Right at the end, or, as you are serving ( with rice/ naan/flatbreads/ hot sauce) pour on a little drop of coconut milk.
This is probably quite healthy! And delicious.
You can also make a huge pan, take some to the potluck, freeze some, or just eat it. It will be good for around a week in the fridge, then the chick peas start to get a bit "fizzy"
