We don’t use a fancy coffee machine, nor do we use instant coffee. Paul is the Barista. He makes our first coffee of day at around 6.30am, and he makes it the old fashioned way, brewed in a percolator with freshly ground beans. He even weighs the ground coffee, exactly 27gms goes into the percolator for two cups. Our first cup is always black. Later in the morning we have our second cup, and that’s always with frothed, full cream milk. When we’re out and buy a coffee, I’m usually disappointed. Paul makes lovely coffee.
We tried instant when we were off grid. That just didn’t do it! Initially we were tentative about using our power station for running anything with a heating element. I don’t know why. We’d been mainly using it to keep our second fridge/freezer, a 52 litre portable Bushman fridge/freezer running. I’ll tell you a bit more about the Bushman later. Today’s post is all about the all important: Coffee! When travelling between places we usually park up for the night with sufficient sunlight left to put a lot of charge into the power station. Paul tried plugging the van directly into the power station. However, the caravan 3 way fridge found the electrical source, switched off gas, and onto the electrical, subsequently depleting all the power from the station. Then he tried not plugging the van into the power station, and instead used the milk frother and coffee grinder directly onto the station. Eureka! It hardly touched the power available, and now we have our morning coffees, brewed fresh and hot, just the way we like it, even when we’re in the middle of nowhere. All we need is a couple of hours of sun to charge our station. We use a 2000 watt power station, with 300 watts of portable solar panels.
Screenshot
We hadn’t thought of unplugging the caravan 3 way fridge from its electrical source, forcing it to keep running on it’s gas source when off grid. When we leave for our return trip to home in a week or two we’ll try that. We think that having the van plugged directly into the station, without the 3 way fridge sucking up all the available power that everything we use inside the van including our all important, coffee making, stuff, will work as per normal. It won’t matter if it doesn’t work, but a bit more convenience if it does. We’ll see.
But now, my all important second cup of freshly brewed coffee, with it’s frothy milk sitting on top, is all hot and is calling to me. Ahhh, yes – But first coffee!!!!
When we were still working (gosh that was a lot of years ago now), we always started our week-ends by having a Finger Food dinner on Friday nights. It was often the only night of the week that I had an alcoholic beverage, and when coupled with the Finger Food it seemed to jet propel us out of the working week, and into the relaxation of the week-end quickly. Our working days are long since behind us, but it’s a tradition we’ve continued on with. It keeps us in touch with what day of the week it is, and without a few little rituals kept for certain days we’d be sure to lose touch.
Friends are up here in Broome for a month staying in accommodation. We invited them to join us for our Finger Food Friday at Gantheaume Point. We could watch the sun go down together.
Not having brought my thermos server with us on this trip, I had to think what food would work and how to keep it hot. We were picking Jill and John up at 4.30 so timing was everything. Dip and crackers – no problems, they’d stay cool in a cool bag, only I forgot to put the crackers in. Luckily I’d also packed some celery and capsicum pieces. Dessert also was easy, 4 supermarket creme caramels, cream to dollop, and some fresh raspberries. A container of coleslaw made earlier in the day for our burgers also went into the cool bag. The cold food was easy. I didn’t know if my idea to keep our mains hot would work….
I don’t have an oven in the caravan, but I do have an air fryer. I put marinated chicken drumsticks into the air fryer at 3.30pm. I peeled the outside leaves back on four fresh corn cobs, removed the silk, replaced the leaves and wrapped each one individually in foil. (I’ve done this before and heated them in the coals of fire. Providing the silk is removed, and they’re wrapped up well, it works a treat. The silk will burn). These I placed in a dry frypan over the gas and kept turning them to get them hot through. I cooked mini burger patties in a second frypan, (just a flattened ball of minced beef – not extra lean, extra lean won’t stick together), and I wrapped small brioche hamburger rolls in foil. These I also heated in a dry frypan. Everything had to be turned often to prevent it from burning, and timed it all so as to come off the heat as close as we could get to 4.15pm. That’d give us time to get everything in the car, and be on time to pick up our guests. Whilst I dealt with the cooking, which took a bit of juggling, Paul packed chair’s, table, plates, music etc into the car. Jill and John were bringing the drinks.
I didn’t know if what I’d planned would keep things hot enough. Just before 4.15pm I tightly wrapped the cooked drumsticks in foil and then wrapped them in a towel. Same with the cooked burger patties. The corn cobs and small burger buns were already foil wrapped and were hot, these also got wrapped up in a towel, and everything then went into an insulated cooler bag. I made sure there were no gaps – (no cooler pack of course – it had to stay hot).
So – did it work, did it stay hot? We ate dinner to the dulcet tones of Rod Stewart’s Great American Song Book. Firstly our dip and celery, (minus the crackers). We didn’t linger too long before we put the hot food onto the table. I didn’t want to chance it cooling down to much. First the chicken and corn, then the burgers. The chicken was fine, still nice and warm and tender and juicy. The corn as still warm, but not piping hot. Dobs of butter dotted over it didn’t melt. The burgers followed. The rolls had burnt a little on the tops in the frypan, but they too were okay. I’m sure the wine that Jill and John brought helped everything else to be acceptable. The same food without any wine, and eaten around a normal dining table may have allowed the preparation flaws to show a little more….. Dessert followed. That was fine.
It was just after 4.30pm when we arrived at the beach. As the tide was on the way out, we parked with the boot of our car facing towards the water’s edge, and set up our table and chairs within about 2 meters of the shoreline. The photo below was taken about an hour later – the water’s edge was a a lot more than 2 meters away! That’s Broome, that’s the Broome tides.
Broome is towards the eastern side of WA, so the sun comes up a bit earlier in the day, and also sets a bit earlier than in does in the metropolitan area in Perth. This following photo was taken at 6.23pm. The sun had long gone. With such beautiful warm days, it’s alway a bit of surprise when you look at your watch here and realise it’s barely late afternoon and already pitch black. You’ll notice this following photo is also a little hazy. That’s from the night time dew which was making the air damp by this stage. It was still around 20 degrees though, so a lovely warm evening, despite the dew. The stars were plentiful and beautiful.
Eating dinner as we watch the day turn into night overlooking in the beach is one of our greatest pleasures in life. A simple pleasure, that’s priceless! I do hope Jill and John enjoyed it too.
It was quite cool this morning, only around 10 degrees, so we lingered a bit before taking Tilz for a walk. A bit of scrolling while we had our first cup of coffee for the day. This time it wasn’t mindless scrolling, we had some research to do. Our three way fridge has stopped working on both 12 volt and on 240 volt. We didn’t want to try it on gas until we’d done a bit of research into possible causes, remedy’s, and to see if it was safe to try on gas. After a bit of research, both on the net, and by way of removing the vents to check for possibly ammonia leakage, we deemed it safe to light the gas. That was around 6 hours ago. Anyone who’s familiar with 3 way fridges will know they don’t cool down quickly, but it is slightly cooler than it was this morning, so fingers crossed. We contemplated trying to get someone out to take a look at it, but we’ve ruled that out. Being 15 years old, it’s probably nearly due for replacement. We’re still in the research stage, but it seems like it may be a good time to consider changing over to a more modern caravan compressor fridge. That’ll be an exercise best done at home, and if the worst comes to the worst in the meantime, that is the fridge is unable to be used even on gas, we do have a good sized Bushman portable fridge. We won’t be stuck.
Research completed, it was time for Tilz to be walked. It’s approximately 15 minutes walk from our caravan park (Tarangau) to the surf club at Cable Beach, a good distance for an early morning walk. A few people were out and about, and why not – it was about as perfect as a morning can be for a walk. What am I saying, of course it was a perfect morning for a walk. Every morning is perfect for a walk at this time of year in Broome. That’s why we come here.
We walked past Resorts and coffee shops and restaurants, even the occasional huge holiday home. The walk was well shaded, the gardens beautifully tropical. There were Boabs, colourful Bougainvillea, and stunning palms to walk past.
We didn’t walk down on the beach today. Instead we took a look at the work being done up near the surf life saving club. A few years ago Town Beach on the opposite side of Broome was all upgraded, and is now quite beautiful. Now it’s time for Cable Beach side. The work won’t be completed this season, but there’s definitely a lot going on. I can’t wait to see it all next year, that’s presuming it’ll be finished by then. The old Zanders Coffee shop is now Cable Beach House. We enquired if it was ‘dog friendly’ in the outside area, and were thrilled to find out it most certainly is. We decided to treat ourselves to breakfast.
The waitress brought us out a bottle of water, two glasses, and a bowl of water for Mr Tilly. We ordered a cappuccino each, and a smashed avocado on toasted sourdough to share. Fortunately we didn’t each order a breakfast, it was huge. Three small pieces of sour dough toasted and spread with smashed avocado. Then topped with a good amount of salad of baby spinach and rocket, crispy chick peas, roasted baby tomatoes, bocconcini, and a flavoursome garnish of a slightly sweet vinegar. The meal was delicious, and not too badly priced ($40 including the two coffees). And the view…… Well that was priceless!
Cable Beach House is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There’s both an inside and an outside area, and it’s licensed. Both areas overlook the turquoise waters of Cable Beach. Dogs are only allowed in the outside area, so if booking a table, (and I’d certainly recommend booking if you’re planning to go for dinner), be sure to stipulate that you have a dog with you so you require seating in the outside area. I was warned by our waitress to ask the person taking the booking to actually write on the booking that a dog will be with us. Apparently some of the staff neglect to specify this which ends up in an inside table being booked by mistake. As always during the busy season overseas backpackers make up a lot of the hospitality staff, so English is often a second language – so apparently there’s a need to be assertive when booking.
We had walked down to the same place yesterday evening, taking a beer and a light dinner with us, and we sat in the lawn area outside to watch the sunset. (That’s free, not actually part of the restaurant area). It was absolutely stunning as it always is. How much more magical this would be if had been sipping a cocktail and having a special dinner in one of the seats of Cable Beach House. We’re here for another month yet, so perhaps we’ll try it one evening and I’ll let you know what their dinners and cocktails are like.
For now though, I can certainly recommend breakfast. What a pleasure!
Life of Riley - on wheels (with a dog) 