A Food Vacation, Part One

When you live on a Caribbean island like we do, the first question we invariably get when meeting people on vacation is "Why would you need a vacation from there?" Well, as great as it is here, everyone gets a little Island Fever! And of course, we love to try the food in other places. Yes, I'll admit it, our vacations mostly revolve around food!

We just returned from a week in New Orleans and a week on a cruise to Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. New Orleans was split into two parts, four days before the cruise and 3 days after. Our flight arrived after midnight, but it's no problem finding food and drink 24 hours a day. Our hotel on this leg was on the corner of Canal and Bourbon, so we wandered the French Quarter for a few hours checking out some of my favorite bars (I lived here about 10 years ago but haven't been back since. Husband had never been.) Our very late dinner was lots of Krystal burgers (kind of like White Castle) then back to the hotel about 3 am. This is riduculously late for us, but we were up and ready to go again in the morning!

First stop, Pat O'Brien's! I had a Bloody Mary that was the best I've ever had (with pickled green beans!) and breakfast in itself. T's breakfast was three Hurricanes and he was feeling fine!

We both love oysters, and there are some restaurants on the island that serve them, but since they are shipped in, they are NOT GOOD. I don't think you can go wrong finding good oysters in New Orleans. I have heard that there is really only one company that sells to all the restaurants, so it's not worth wasting hours in line at Acme Oyster House with all the other tourists. We decided on Crescent City Brewhouse, where they brew their own beer (and claim you'll never get a hangover from it since there are no preservatives), and sat at the oyster bar. The shucker asked if we would like small, medium, or large (we chose medium) then proceeded to open and choose the best oysters for us.

I like mine on a saltine cracker with cocktail sauce, and I like to chew them. T likes his with hot sauce and gulps them. Either way, they were fantastic!!

On to Muffulattas! The spelling can vary (muffaletta, muffelatta, etc etc), but this is a huge sandwich on a round italian bread with meats and cheeses, and topped with a marinated olive salad. Lots of places sell them and we got ours from Central Grocery, which claims to have invented them. We took it to go and ate in the park. For $13 we shared one sandwich and even had some left over!

We really loved our cooking class when we were in Paris and wanted to find one in New Orleans, but didn't want to take up the whole day, so we decided on a cooking demonstration at the New Orleans School of Cooking. It was about 3 hours long and cost only $25 per person, and included free beer and lunch! Our chef was great- he talked a lot about the history of cooking and food in New Orleans as he walked us through making gumbo, jambalaya, and bread pudding. Unfortunately, I am allergic to green peppers, so I couldn't eat either the gumbo or the jambalya, but they smelled fantastic and T had 2 helping of each! I did have the bread pudding and it was delicious.After lunch, we left the French Quarter, and I showed T around my old neighborhood in the Lower Garden District. We ended up at my favorite neighborhood bar, the Half Moon. The bartender turned out to be a guy I worked with at a different place 10 years ago, and we shared memories over many, many shots of Southern Comfort. This was at one in the afternoon and I will spare you the details of the rest of our day!

Stay tuned for Part Two, on the ship and ports of call!

Valentine's Day Pierogis

Do you remember the first meal you ever cooked for your significant other? Mine was about 6 years ago, and my first meal for now-husband T was Pierogi's! I am 100% Polish, and I love to make the dishes that Grandma used to make. I don't make Pierogi's often, though, teeny kitchen on the boat, teeny cutting board for rolling out dough. I save them for a special occassion, and that's what I made for T for this Valentine's Day. I made three fillings: sauerkraut with onion, potato with onion, and mushroom with cheese, and halved the recipe so I made 18. Of course this took all afternoon, but it was worth it!

First you make the dough, roll it, and stuff it

Then you boil them a few at a time until they float

And then you pan fry them in butter! Serve with sour cream and applesauce...mmm just like Grandma used to make!

I also served them with a side of pickled beets.

The budget went REALLY well this week...we spent only $46, so we were able to put $59 into the vacation fund! We try to do a budget of $105 for the week, food and drink, and the extra goes for vacation! So this is what we ate:

Sunday: Superbowl party at friends, we brought chips and homemade salsa

Monday: Squash soup and Au Gratin potatoes

Tuesday: Visiting friends took us to dinner at Schnitzel House. We had schnitzel.

Wednesday: Made a pizza with goat cheese, olives, tomato, cilantro, and cheddar

Thursday: Baked Potatoes, I had mine with soup and T had his with steak

Friday: Asparagus and mushroom crepes

Saturday: Tapas- almonds, olives, bread

Our hanging tomato plant is doing great! We still have tons of blossoms and 8 tomatoes that I hope to be eating soon!

The Joy of...English Muffins!

I just bought my very first Joy of Cooking!...what a funny book! (Did people really used to eat all those aspic recipes?) There is a thrift store on the island that is great for used books, and cookbooks go really fast- this was the first time I've actually seen any cookbook. And all 915 hardcover pages for $1!

Of course I am addicted to AR, but also love to flip through a good cookbook, and this has everything. The first recipe I tried was English Muffins, which I have never made, but always wanted to try. They cost almost $5 here, so I only buy them on sale. It was a pretty easy standard dough recipe, the surprise to me was that they are cooked on the stove top and not in the oven! I halved the recipe so only made 12. After the dough rose I rollled it out and cut circles to rise again, until about doubled

Unfortunately, when I touched them to place on the griddle, they fell flat! The muffins rose slightly while cooking, but not as high as they had been.

Time for the real test...would they have nooks and crannies? The recipe advised to fork-split them holding 2 forks back to back and gently pulling apart.

And they were perfect! I toasted up and ate 4 on the spot, and we have been enjoying them all week!

We were just under budget this week, which is $105 for food and drink. We spent $104.37 and this is what we ate:

Sunday: Taco Salad

Monday: Veggie ribs with mashed potatoes and corn

Tuesday: Turkey Chimichangas (baked in the oven not deep fried)

Wednesday: Steak salad with avocado

Thursday: Buffalo Chicken salad

Friday: Corn chowder and lobster bites (little chunks battered and fried from a lobster husband caught that day)

Saturday: Dinner at a friends, they cooked fillet tails, baked potatoes, and caprese salad

Seems like we ate a lot of meat this week! Will try to finish this week out veggie...hope eveyone has a great week!!

A Pancake Love Story

Saturday was the end of our budget week, and we did so well all week that I didn't want to spend much for Saturday's dinner, though there wasn't much in the fridge. Husband felt like something Mexican, so I went to the trusty ingredient search here on AR. You wouldn't think I would find many recipes to use up half an avocado, pancake mix, and sour cream.

Well- Avocado Stuffed Yams and Jalepeno Pancakes sounded pretty good to me! I knew that husband wouldn't be thrilled, because he thinks I experiment on him too much. But it is kind of Mexican, right? He wasn't thrilled. He thought it was weird and would make ok side dishes but not a MEAL.

We were at happy hour not feeling very happy. I was feeling unappreciated and he was feeling underfed. We sulked for a few minutes, then both looked at each other.
"Skirt Steak", he said
"Rolled in the pancake!" I finished.
(This is why we can't play Trivial Pursuit AGAINST each other.)

Anyway, it was perfect! The Jalepeno Pancakes are just pancakes with about half a can of jalepenos... we grilled the skirt steak and added sour cream and cilantro, then rolled up the pancake. It was kind of like a thick crepe! The Avocado Stuffed Yams were also great...you wouldn't think the flavors would go together so well. Our avocado was a day old and slightly brown, so this dish would have been prettier with a new avocado. But we both agreed this was one of the best meals in a while.

We spent $90.63 this week, so about $15 into vacation fund, and this is what we ate:
Sunday- Chicken Sandwiches with Pesto from our garden
Monday- Salsa Meatloaf with Parmesan Potatoes
Tuesday- Soup and Salad
Wednesday- Jambalaya
Thursday- Pesto Pasta
Friday- Roasted Red Pepper and Artichoke Pizza
Saturday- Pancakes and Yams

Our tomato did fantastic this week! If you remember, here he was a week ago:

And here he is today! We actually have one little tomato, too!

Container Gardening

One of the great things about living in the tropics is that you can garden all year round! Since we live on a boat, we have to container garden in a small space. Right now we are growing tomatoes, basil, and cilantro. The tomato seeds were from our neighbors, who call this type "50 day tomatoes". Supposedly they go from seed to fruit in 50 days. Here is our plant at about 40 days.

I think our plant is the runt of the litter...the neighbors is 5 times as big with 20 or so blooms, and will probably be bearing fruit very soon! These tomatoes are supposed to be great in a container as they are small and cascading.

I love to grow basil...fresh basil is so good on everything! We gave ours a haircut yesterday in order to make pesto sauce. I used about a half cup of almonds instead of pine nuts (too expensive!) that I blanched and peeled first, 4 cloves of garlic, half cup of parmesan, about 3 cups of basil. Enough olive oil to blend up nicely...wow it was good on our grilled chicken sandwiches on homemade bread!

We did great on the budget this week, spent only $79 so we put $26 into vacation fund, and this is what we ate:

Sunday: Fried Egg Tostadas with rice

Monday: Fish Tacos from a Mahi husband caught

Tuesday: Tourtiere (this is a French meat pie that is SO good...several different recipes on AR)

Wednesday: Taco Salad

Thursday: BLT sandwiches with tomato soup

Friday: Maple Bacon Pancake (from AR...GREAT!) with hashbrowns

Saturday: Tapas...we bought a nice bottle of Spanish wine and had 2 kinds of olives, fresh baked bread, tomato basil salad, French cheese (on sale), pate (on sale), sausages, and toasted almonds. Yum!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Lamb Stew...or Goat Water?

We started off our menu week on Sunday having leftover lamb stew that I made on Saturday. I really liked it the first day, but by the following day it had become much more...flavorful. Normally when I eat lamb, it's just a little chop, a little bit of flavor, but this stew was slow cooked with a bunch of vegetables, and infused with lambiness. Husband T mentioned that it was probably because I bought goat meat in disguise.

Now, goat is a very popular dish here in the Virgin Islands. A lot of people raise them and if you eat at a cafeteria or from the hot line at the grocery, you will find Goat Water. Not a great name, but basically goat stew. Curiously, I have never found anyone making fresh goat cheese here. Anyway, the thought of goat stew kind of turned my taste buds off. But what is the difference between a goat and a lamb? Husband insists that they are the same, but I can tell you after a little internet research, they are different, and many say goat meat tastes a little more beefy. Well, I may be waiting a while before making another lamb dish.

We had quiche twice this week, what a great way to use up the random stuff in the fridge! We don't always keep eggs because they take up so much room in the tiny fridge that we have on the boat, but it's a really affordable main dish. Eggs here are about $2.99/dozen. For one of the meals I made "quichelettes" (is that a word?) in these little dishes that are single serving size, great if you are having a big salad to go with!


I baked more bread this week...am loving my new loaf pans! Almost embarassed to say, but I just discovered bread flour (it was on sale!). What a difference! The bread was amazing. We had it one night with salad, and the next to make pizza breads.


T tried his hand at pizza dough one night, turned out great with the bread flour. We made a deep dish Chicago style pizza, which we love with a layer of italian sausage. We had our veggie neighbors for dinner, so T made "sausage tofu" instead. He drained it forever, shredded it, mixed with spices like sage and fennel, then pan fried it. Really good. I am thinking about trying to make tofu meatballs this week.

Another highlight of the menu this week was Fire and Ice Pasta from AR...will definitely be making this one again! We spent $101.71 this week, just slightly under budget. We didn't spend too much on food, but did buy a couple of nice wines this week.

Hope everyone has a great week! (And is staying warm!!)

Noodles of Meat

This week I tried out a few new recipes from a cookbook called "Tapas" that I got for Christmas. Husband and I have been to Barcelona twice and we LOVE the way they eat, especially the small plates. Tapas can be made entree sized too, intended to serve many people. I tried a Pork in Almond Sauce and Fried Garlic Mushrooms. The sauce for the pork was kind of labor intensive...blanch the almonds, fry them, puree them along with bread cubes, tomatoes, and onions, and garlic that have all been pan-fried. The sauce went into the crockpot (ok this was not in the recipe but I had stuff to do!) along with the pork tenderloin and I left it for about 8 hours. Perfect. Falling off the bone tender (if there was a bone!) Husband set to "shredding" it and remarked, "Now this is how I love my meat. Like ribbons. Like noodles. Noodles of meat." Well, that doesn't sound too appealing to me, but it was true. It didn't shred like pork normally does, it really looked like noodles of meat. Anyway, we served it on a bed of wilted spinach with the fried garlic mushrooms on the side. (Super easy...pan fry the mushrooms, then simmer them with a bunch of garlic in white wine.) Can't wait to try more recipes from this book!

We came in about $10 under budget for the week- we try to do $105 for the week, breakfast and lunch, food and drink- and this is what we ate:

Sunday was meatball and ricotta pizza

Monday was curried lentil soup with grilled ham and cheese sandwiches

Tuesday was the Almond Pork

Wednesday we snacked on olives and toasted almonds and had soup and sandwiches again

Thursday we had Chinese take out, our New Years Eve tradition

Friday we had dinner at a friends, they made smoked ribs and asian slaw, and we brought shrimp cocktail

Saturday I made a lamb stew and fresh bread. I got a couple bread pans for Christmas (I have always just made flat bread) so it was very exciting to make a loaf of bread. It was beautiful and delicious and quite photogenic! Unfortunately my laptop with photos is on the fritz...so this is my first post ever without photos!

Hope everyone has a great week!